Think the Earth

The gift of the day was canned bread bearing the "Gochisou and Bousai" logo. The bread may be stored for 3 years.

Do you keep emergency provisions at home for just in case? You might have bottled water, ship biscuits, and canned food deep inside your emergency pack or closet that you may have forgotten about. It may be hard to imagine "what would happen in case of an emergency," so an event was organized on September 11 by the "Food Loss Challenge Project" and "Common Passion - Agricultural Food Project" to help people become more aware of the importance of disaster preparedness.

The organizer, Ms. Hiromi Yoshida, an art director from the advertising agency, Hakuhodo Inc., greeted the many guests who gathered in a café in Tokyo's Minato Ward, with the following words, "Today we celebrate our safety and express our appreciation for not having had to use our emergency provisions by transforming them into a wonderful meal." After her toast, the excellent meal prepared by a professional chef from the emergency provisions was served. We heard many people express how delicious they thought the food was. The menu included a salad made from boil-in-the-bag food and dry gluten, a meal created with freeze-dried bean curd, canapé made from canned Danish bread, risotto created from rice made of pre-gelatinized starch, which can be prepared very easily by adding water, and tiramisu made using long life cookies.

All the foods used to create the meal are readily available. Ms. Yoshida refers to the "emergency provisions" as "disaster prevention foods," and also proposes the "rolling stock method" so that we eat the provisions regularly. The "rolling stock method" means that you should keep 12 meals - breakfast, lunch, and dinner to last 4 days - and each month you would eat one meal, and restock it. So after a year, the 12 meals would have been replaced. Establishing a one-year cycle such as this will help you consume familiar dried foods and boil-in-the-bag provisions.

At the event, candles for the "Team Tomosu Tohoku," which organizes events on the 11th of every month to help people remember Tohoku and to support victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake, were lit and two musicians also presented music that they composed for Tohoku. The bags containing gifts of emergency provisions for the guests were made by the "Minami-Sanriku Sewing Machine Studio" located in Miyagi Prefecture.

At this inaugural event, the organizers planned many ingenious presentations such as a video message from people in Tohoku who talked about what they ate immediately after the disaster to bring many people together. Preparing for disasters not only involves storing food, but it also taught us that the relationships between people are equally important. Ms. Yoshida said, "We would like to hold this event every year to celebrate safety."