sugar sweet sugar

SUGAR, SWEET SUGAR

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Note: I've ordered the latest book from Engdahl, "The Lost Hegemon".  This is a $20+ book and given his last failure I sure didn't want to risk the money on it.  Yet, given his history with wonderful books I had to try.  Don't spend your money just yet.  If it is worthy ( no reviews on Amazon as of yet ) I'll sing his praises and implore you to get your own copy.  His first book, "A Century Of War" is one of the best geopolitical books ever, in my opinion.
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Note: this is article 2 of 2 today.  A guest article was posted previously
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The traditional Mormon Four ( wheat, powdered milk, honey and salt ) was a great compromise between cost and variety.  I’ve always been a fan of wheat.  Powdered milk, for a time, was substituted by myself with dry beans but too long ago beans started going up in price due to a combination of farmland to corn ( we don’t have soil banks anymore, and what cropland we do have contracts with population growth.  It doesn’t expand anymore.  Even if land yields corn that can  both be animal feed and ethanol, that land isn’t used to grow other human crops.  That puts price pressure on all human feed plants ) and the Latino population surge as well as California farms drying up.  But you have to admit it is bizarre that animal protein is cheaper per pound than the inferior legume protein.  You are almost better off now going back to powdered milk.

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Honey, you might as well forget about.  Thanks to genetically modified crops as well as other pollutants ( Congress-asswhores were bribed and bullspit-ed on GMO’s being the saving grace of humankind and overpopulation.  All they are is a pollutant masquerading as food hiding a profitable patent ), bees are a dying breed and honey is liquid gold price-wise.  Salt is as dirt cheap as ever ( but will quickly go back to priceless in a lot in landlocked locales, so stockpile it.  No, water softener salt is not ideal.  But it will do in a pinch.  Get it?  Pinch of salt.  Whatever dude.  I’m not sure why I’m wasting my A material on you people.  It is better than nothing although iodine is needed daily so keep stockpiling grocery store one pound cardboard tubes of the fifty cent iodine salt.  The sodium chloride [NOT potassium chloride] bags will work in food preserving ).

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Wheat, surprisingly, has gone down in price.  I believe, per minion comments, that wheat climates and corn climates don’t mix, so wheat is not displaced by corn like a lot of other items are.  Plus, processed white flour is now more expensive than whole kernels so while Top Ramen and spaghetti noodles and what-not goes up in price ( I have no idea why unless whole grain bread is more popular than ever and white flour is no longer in surplus.  I can‘t imagine it is transportation or packaging cost.  Oil prices are dipping.  Perhaps company consolidation and increased debt payments.  Or, simply, pasta wheat isn’t available as before.  Although that doesn’t account for plain bread flour cost increases but not kernels  ), whole kernels stay affordable.  Who knows how long that will last, so take advantage. 

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Honey is easily substituted with table sugar.  I’m not sure of the difference between cane sugar or beet sugar price wise, but do try to go with cane if possible.  Less processing and a slight bit more healthy ( some would argue sugar is the root cause of all disease.  It might be, but eating sugar sure does improve the taste of that Fukishima radiation.  I say, all things in moderation ) according to some.  Now, I would argue that you should store more sugar on hand than just the baking supplement amounts in the Mormon Four.  Unless you think the stuff is pure poison, sugar is a great stockpile item.  First off, it is really no less healthy than white flour or white rice.  It is an empty carbohydrate, just as white flour or white rice is ( I‘m discounting the diabetes and similar health aspect, but see below ) .  There is no nutrients included, just calories.  Empty calories are okay for you, as long as they supplement your main food rather than become your main food ( which, sadly, too many Americans try to do ).   A big heaping bowl of wheat gruel is very healthy for you, and adding sugar to that does not subtract from those nutrients.  It just adds a lot of extra taste and calories.  Which you WILL need, eating all that damn wheat. 

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White rice has 1600 calories a pound, wheat flour 1500 and sugar 1700.  As rice and sugar are about the same price per pound, why not get that extra 100 calories by going with sugar?  Which, I believe I’ve mentioned, as a bonus has FLAVOR.  Of the three white foods, it is the only one with flavor.  Rice, at least to me, taste like bland dried glue.  Flour can give you variety.  But only sugar has both calories and flavor.  If you are going to stockpile processed foods, I’d stock sugar way before I’d consider TVP or other monstrosities. 

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I’m not necessarily recommending you make sugar a meal, such as workmen in old timey Britain did ( some would argue that slaves fed the Industrial Revolution as a large portion of calories in the form of Caribbean sugar fed factory workers cheap calories ).  Sugar is more than twice the price of wheat kernels ( but the same price as rice.  Yes, I still think something is up with the rice price increase ), so it is purely a supplement.  But as a combination of calories and flavor, it should be a very important supplement in your stockpile.

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