To the Editor: The article by Haug and colleagues on household food stockpiling is a useful contribution to a neglected aspect of disaster planning.1 However, rather than providing a guide to what foods should be stockpiled, it may be more valuable to encourage families to increase the amount and rotation of the non-perishables they currently purchase. The authors seek to promote a balanced nutritional diet, but encouraging a family to continue their usual purchasing patterns when stockpiling for a pandemic or other disaster is a simpler, more sustainable, and possibly more effective way to promote household food stockpiling. We must assume that the family currently survives, for better or worse, on their current food purchase pattern.
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- 1 Hunter New England Population Health, Hunter New England Area Health Service, Newcastle, NSW.
- 2 NSW Public Health Officer Training Program, NSW Department of Health, Sydney, NSW.
- 1. Haug A, Brand-Miller JC, Christophersen OA, et al. A food “life-boat”: food and nutrition considerations in the event of a pandemic or other cata-strophe. Med J Aust 2007; 187: 674-676. <MJA full text>
- 2. Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. The Australian health management plan for pandemic influenza. Commonwealth of Australia, 2006. http://www.health.gov.au/pandemic (accessed Feb 2008).
- 3. US Department of Health and Human Services. PandemicFlu.gov. AvianFlu.gov. A guide for individuals and families. http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/individual/familyguide.html (accessed Jan 2008).