I don't have time to get into it too deep at the moment, but wanted to get a thread out here in SF since several folks are chatting about this in the big GD coronavirus thread and some folks in there don't appreciate that one being pulled too far off track.

My super-quick summary to get things rolling:  before the virus threat even really emerged, it dawned on me that 90% of my preps were incompatible with the keto diet I've become convinced is the "right" way for people to be eating.  There are some distinct advantages to keto in a survival situation; fat is more energy-dense so (ounce for ounce) you don't eat as much, hunger and cravings are easier to control, and you just feel better, both physically and mentally.  Downsides are that a lot of the keto-friendly foods are harder to store long-term, and unless everybody in your family/group/whatever is doing it, carbs are still going to have to be part of the plan.

I'm just starting to figure out how to work this into my prepper stuff, but I've always been heavily skewed towards not only storing, but being able to produce food... livestock, gardens, etc.  There's definitely some room for keto-compatibility there.

More later, but in the meantime I'd like to hear from others who have maybe had the same thoughts cross their minds.

Lots of Spam.  Canned bacon.

Aren't beans and lentils good for low-carb meals?  Canned sardines and tuna should also keep for years.

For me, this was the hard part of keto, to begin with.  My wife had no interest in following keto and neither did my kids.

Next Mike Meals for freezer dried portable option. Pricey. I’ve bout tuna sand chicken salad pouches. Miracle noodles and beef or chicken broth. Canned Chicken or Beef.

I'm a fan of Keto. I'm not currently doing it because it's not the best diet for my goals, but I've used it in the past with great results and have a pretty good understanding of how it works.

Having said that, 95% of the benefits of keto can be achieved with any diet that helps you not be a fat ass. In any situation where you're forced to live on preps, living in a caloric surplus isn't really an option.

Having gone through the whole analysis of prepping for keto (while I was on it in the past) I came to the conclusion that is was a fool's errand unless money is no object. You're better off stocking away as many calories as you can afford regardless of macros.

No, beans are very high carb.  High protein is not equal to low carb, sadly.

A large part of our preps were acquired pre-keto, hence we have a lot of carbs.  We do have a lot of freeze dried and canned meats & LTS fats though.  I actually recalculated our inventory a few weeks back to see how many days worth of keto foods we had in LTS (not the pantry, per se).  We're good to go.  Previously, I only had each item in inventory coded according to the dreadful food pyramid - and then calculated 2,000 calories per person per day.  I've added a code to all items that is simply "is it keto?  Y or N"; so now I can calculate 2,000 calorie days off that.

I'll feed the carbs to the rest of our family that doesn't follow low carb.  If we run out of keto foods, I'm pretty sure it's time to eat the neighbors

Keto's the only one that helps suppress appetite and the cravings that make most diets unsustainable, and - this was the biggie for me - actually reverses Type 2 diabetes.  I've been back and forth to all the extremes of dieting/weight loss/heart disease, and the only thing that's been consistent is that carbs are a real problem.  I won't say it's impossible to eat at a calorie deficit or maintenance level long-term without keto, but *I* can't do it, and the obesity/T2D stats for the last 50 years say few others can, either.

That being said, in a true survival situation, you eat what's available. I'm not dumping all those O2/mylar-packed buckets of rice, beans, corn and wheat I've got stacked up in the basement just yet, but I'm lookin' at them in a whole different light now.  Storing carbs to survive seems to be a self-defeating "solution"; in times when food will necessarily be rationed, why stockpile stuff that compels you to eat more, instead of less? Doesn't it make much more sense to concentrate on energy-dense items that not only require less storage space for a given energy/nutrient content, but also help people comfortably eat what they truly need to eat, and nothing more?

It all boils down to one unequivocal, indisputable fact that I've proven to myself with 14 months of measured, controlled experimentation and observation:  I can comfortably subsist on 1200 calories/day when in ketosis, but struggle (so far unsuccessfully) to do the same on any other eating regimen, including "low" carb diets.

Wheat, corn, beans, rice... all staples in the long-term prepper pantry... and the very substances (along with plain old sugar not disguised as carbs) that have pretty much trashed the metabolisms of the majority of the country.  It's a nonsensical dietary death spiral that we should be fighting to break free from, not struggling to maintain under the misnomer of "survival".

I've had bad experiences with SPAM as a survival food, and it doesn't seem to be an isolated incident.  Canned bacon, on the other hand, gets generally good reviews... it's just god-awful expensive if you go with a commercial solution.  Home-canning bacon is possible, and although we can a lot of other stuff, it's something I've never tried personally.  Going to take another look at it now, though.

I've always looked at prepping as not just a matter of storing food, but being able to produce it... more self reliance than survival.  It's really the only truly long-term solution, and more of a lifestyle than "something you do" to prepare for a specific event.  I'm fortunate in that our homestead is a ten-acre hobby farm in a distinctly rural area, so livestock, extensive gardens, fruit trees, berries, and medicinal herbs/plants have always been part of the picture.

That's going to help a lot from a keto perspective, but it does mean I'm going to have to ramp up on not only producing more keto-friendly consumables, but also on storing them.  Home canning's a given, but I'm going to have to concentrate more on meats, fats, and some veggies than I have in the past.  I doubled the size of our asparagus bed last year, and going to double that again this spring... so 4x the amount of square footage than I had two years ago.

Some of the other areas that come to mind:
- We've always had strawberry and raspberry beds, but that's another one we'll be expanding significantly this year.
- We're blessed with an abundance of wild blackberries/black raspberries; will probably pay more attention to some of the thickets and clear some weeds and any overhanging trees to make life a little easier on them.
- Chickens.  Eggs are a major player on the 'approved for keto' list, and our flock produces enough that my whole family could subsist on eggs alone for quite some time if it came to it.  Chicken meat is of course a great protein source, but not particularly high fat... but "chunked up" chicken meat fried in reserved bacon grease helps bring some fat back into that picture, and is already one of my keto staples.  Our chickens were originally about 80% free-range, with only light supplementary feeding depending on season.  We've had to scale back on that some over the last few years, though, mainly because we need to gear up on fencing to keep the suckers out of the gardens.  So some fence work is going back on the list this year.
- Nuts... about 15 years ago we planted 4 or 5 pecan trees, which should finally start producing within the next couple of years.  Pecans are a great keto food... almost ideal from a survival perspective when you're not concerned about limiting calories.  We also have tons of native black walnuts, which generally go to waste because they're such a PITA to process.  Gonna be looking at them from a different perspective now, though.  At first glance, they're right up there with pecans from a carb/fiber/fat aspect, and maybe even a little better.
- Broccoli/spinach.  Aside from the asparagus already mentioned, these are my other keto staple veggies.  Unfortunately neither are good candidates for canning (unlike asparagus), so LTS options for them are limited.  Broccoli freezes well, and I do freeze up a bunch.  But from a real survival perspective, freezing is an iffy solution since it depends on electricity.  I've never tried freezing spinach; doesn't seem particularly yummy but wouldn't mind hearing about others' experience with that.

On spinach and other greens:  one reason I haven't focused much on storing those is because it's actually practical grow them fresh year-round, with a little investment in hardware.  We've got a greenhouse that helps extend the growing season for that kind of stuff, and will be adding in some cold frames to add a little more buffer in that area.  We also grow a lot of stuff under lights... primarily bedding plants up until the last couple of years, but have recently really ramped up on efforts to grow usable quantities under lights from start to finish.  Spinach and different lettuces are pretty easy, though it does take some square footage to make it worthwhile... and of course there's that dependency on electricity again.

Need to put some more thought into fats.  Wonder if I can home-can bacon grease?  Have some Red Feather butter, probably need more (or a milk cow ). Coconut oil shelf life?  Definitely have more reading and thinking to do...

I don't follow the keto diet, I just cut most carbs and all processed food from my diet. But, if I was ever in a situation where I needed to eat my food storage I probably wouldn't care too much if it was keto friendly. I'd just be happy to have something to eat.

The whole idea of prepping is to be able to carry on as normally as possible during some kind of unexpected, extended catastrophic event. So if that's what you normally eat, why not store keto-friendly (or in your case low-carb/minimally processed) food instead of buckets of wheat and rice?  Granted, canning/freezing/dehydrating or other preservation methods are a form of processing, but I'd rather have a Ball jar of home-canned roast beef on the shelf than a bunch of Ramen noodles and dried beans.

Anything's better than nothing; I get that.  But the benefit of prepping is that we have the opportunity to make those choices before the emergency is upon us.

Are you diabetic?

If it's not a major medical concern prep as normal, carbs aren't the devil, especially in lean times when you need fast calories.

As far as the "right" way of eating. I find it pretty fascinating that the poster children for Ketosis (the Inuits) have a mutation that keeps them out of ketosis.

I have a lot of keto-friendly stuff for short and medium term. It's also easy for me to eat on a regular basis and rotate.

Ghee (canned butter)
sardines
Bacon (bags of chopped bacon, good for six months on the shelf)
Dry salami
tuna
pork rinds
Peanut butter
nuts
olive oil
MCT oil
whey or collagen protein
coffee (as a fat delivery vehicle)
canned green veggies
olives

If I am in the position of needing to crack into my long term food, then shit has gone to hell and I'll be grateful for the calories & protein. That's what my 87 buckets of rice/beans/pasta is for.

I also have a lot of freeze-dried stuff (green veggies, cheese, butter, meat, protein, etc) that I don't rotate, but they are good for a couple of decades.

I talked with a BIL today who is a meat expert, and he said it's fine to freeze bacon.

You bet... I've got about 30 lbs. in the freezer as we speak.  It's a great item to buy in quantity when on sale; typically runs $5-6/lb here normally, but on sale regularly for ~$2.50.

A big part of my prepping strategy is buying in bulk during sales, then living off of that until the next sale comes around.  There's almost always an excess left over, so the end result is you never pay full price for that item while simultaneously building a stockpile for emergencies.  win win.

Why would it not be OK to freeze bacon?  We freeze bacon all the time and have for years.

Concerning dieting and weight loss, stress is a hell of a weight loss program.  Americans will soon be shedding beaucoup pounds.

The next step from keto is carnivore or zero carb.  So much easier than keto.  Wife and I are coming from a keto diet and find carnivore to be so much easier.  Same benefits if not better.  We have an extra freezer just for this.  Wife has an auto immune condition that has been controlled with this diet.  I'm glad she's on board with this.  Google "meatheals".  YMMV.

TJ, let me first say that I've read a lot of posts over the years and have a lot of respect for the advice and firsthand experience you've contributed to the forum.  You're a bona-fide asset to the community.  

I didn't mean for this thread to be a debate over the merits of keto, or a suggestion that anyone suddenly switch to it as a survival mechanism.  I do believe it's a more efficient diet for survival situations and food storage (for the reasons mentioned in the OP), but I'm not necessarily a zero-carb advocate either... I believe our bodies are built to take advantage of both fat and sugar as energy sources so we're better equipped to take advantage of whatever is most plentiful at any given time.  I also believe, though, that in practice we've got it backwards.  The main reason carbs are cheap and plentiful is that automation and mass production has made them so, and that the health of the nation has been compromised (take a look at obesity and T2D growth curves over the last 50 years compared to the previous 200 or so) because we are too invested - economically, academically, and politically - to change course now.  That's all based on personal experience and experimentation, but way too involved to get into here... if anybody's truly interested in that story, just search my screename in the main keto thread.

But again, I'm not trying to convince people to climb aboard the keto bandwagon, but rather to see if and how others who may already be there incorporate it into their survival/preparedness planning.  It just seemed like an interesting topic that hadn't really been discussed in any detail anywhere I've seen so far.

Burning fat lets me do a day's hard labor on half a salami while keeping my energy level constant, or several days of no intake at all aside from water. I have tested this.

Basically just sticking with my normal diet unless we are deep into an an unrecoverable apocalyptic event.  No point in dramatically changing if I only have a couple of weeks or months of living off of my stores.

My Harvest Right freeze dryer arrives Wednesday.  I'll be freeze drying raw meat to cook after reconstituting.  I'll be experimenting with various fat contents to see how long it can/will keep.

The main reason I bought the thing is that I too also believe a low-carb diet is a necessity for my personal health, and I do a lot of back country canoe trips where we eat primarily freeze dried meals.  There are no real choices for low-carb eaters in purchased backbacking menus that I've found.  So my intent is to create them.  Even if it isn't reasonable, or possible, to maintain 20 net carbs a day, I think I can definitely come up with freeze dried meals that keep me under 50 grams a day while fulfilling caloric requirements.

Since (with the exception of freeze drying raw meat above) you generally prepare food as if you were going to consume it, then freeze dry it, basically every low-carb friendly meal I currently make is on the table for freeze drying and packaging.  Zucchini "noodle" spaghetti or lasagna.  Low carb chili.  Sugar free cheesecake.  Etc, etc.

Again I'm mainly doing this for camping, but I can prepare for camping and prep for disaster at the same time.

What kinds of fats do you store? I see the lard and ghee but didn't know if there where others

Fats are one of the more challenging things to figure out (and I'm really only starting to think about keto-centric preps).  I do have some Red Feather butter, and also store a bunch of pecans and green olives, both pretty high-fat.  I also save all our bacon grease... I've got a special little strainer can that lives in the fridge, and when it gets full I soften it up, pour it into small Gladware containers and freeze them.  Once they're good and hard I pop 'em out of there and vacuum seal them with a Foodsaver, then back in the freezer.

Olive oil's also supposed to be good for LTS, and Crisco lasts a long time too (though I'm really trying to get away from that from the health aspect).  You can also home-can butter; haven't tried it myself yet but probably will.   Red Feather's good stuff, but getting ridiculously expensive.

Bet others have some suggestions too...

Costco sells quart jars of Irish ghee for $16.99.

Olive oil is one of the most calorie dense foods around. Roman soldiers used to march using it as a sole food source during forced marches.

A tip regarding olive oil. Extra virgin is unprocessed and is the highest quality, but beware that many bottles that say extra virgin are not 100% extra virgin, but a mix of extra virgin with processed. Check the label. A general rule of thumb is that if the bottle is dark colored, it's extra virgin. If clear or very light colored, it's not. Also, 100% extra virgin is more expensive.

Year before last I ran across a product called Bacon Up. It's basically rendered bacon fat in a tub. They have a 14oz size and a 7.5lb size. My grandmother used to make bacon for breakfast every morning and pour the bacon grease into a Folgers coffee can. When time came to cook fried chicken, she'd start by taking a big scoop of bacon grease to throw in the pan. Best dang chicken ever.

Today I was in an HEB grocery store here in Texas. Lo and behold they have it! Since the last time I bought one was at a Bucees about a year and a half ago, I thought it would be good to get another one in case I'm forced to telework due to the Kung Flu.

I use it for a lot of cooking, including spaghetti. My wife never got into that but when I make it for myself it's fantastic. Everything tastes better with bacon flavoring!

I pick up most everything from Costco.

Ghee
Nuts
Costco Peanut butter (jars)
Costco Mixed Nut Butter (jars)
Costco tubs coconut oil
Canned salmon
Grain free granola bars (treats)
Avocado oil
Avocado mayo
Pork rinds
Grass fed beef sticks
Collagen peptides
Vitamin C
Wild Alaskan Salmon oil pills
Vitamin D
Spirulina
Kerry Gold Butter
MCT Creamer
Frozen Avocado chunks
Grass fed ground beef
Briskets
Beef Bouillon
Eggs
Coffee
Bacon

Take a look at "Ova-Easy Egg Crystals" as well.  Much better than normal powdered eggs.