For the longest time, experts have been urging households and motorists to have 72-hours of food and water on hand. Now, experts recommend 30-days’ worth of food and water. Let me add one more item which has my attention the last several months: Nutritional Supplements.

Food and water have been, literally, a staple of sustenance and survival. We eat every day. But what do we do when our foods are genetically modified to dilute or remove the basic nutrients from the produce?

Genetically modified foods are also social engineering in terms of results. Many foods are engineered to take longer to ripen, or some may be built to sustain frost or other environmental hazards to their economy and harvest. Makes sense.

But for us on the receiving end, it’s a shortchange of nutrients. You might say that it becomes a food shortage.

What this means is that the food we depend on in adhering to good habits of “eating right” are no longer a reliable part of our health and wellness plan. It don’t work no more. The practice of “eating right” is short-circuited.

And when it comes to storing food and water for disaster preparedness, we’re putting second-rate food on the shelf. It will be second-rate when it’s needed in an emergency.

Not all foods are subject to this practice; we can find emergency food, for instance, which is not so depleted. But not everyone is thinking of depleted foods when shopping on the 10% formula: the 10% formula is to buy 10% more food for your larder in storage for emergency when shopping. There are other formulas, but fresh food or canned is increasingly subject to the harvest of this season and future seasons, and this alert is then most relevant.

I have read several articles about disasters worldwide and documents on recommendations. Many center about the chronically ill as “vulnerable” in disaster; others report findings of additional hazards to the population; other treatises and monographs address severe weather warning systems while others talk about public education on the subject. Some even insist on more centralization of assets and authority.

Something is missing: How is the population going to endure the stresses and adversities of a disaster when genetically modified foods serve up depleted produce and few citizens actually consider wellness as a survival tool?

Enter the nutritional supplements.

Supplements are nutrients the body needs and cannot get in proper nutrition, especially these days. When you have Diabetes, you need a prescription for a supplement: Insulin. It is not a medication in the strict sense, and it is not a Vitamin: it is a hormone which must be supplemented for the safety of the patient. As a degenerative disease, Diabetes without Insulin is well known worldwide.

There are other nutritional findings identified by experts: that our so-called recommended dosages of nutrients have been under-estimated. Translation: Our bodies need more of those nutrients in order to fight off degenerative disease.

Naturally, then, it didn’t take long for Diabetes experts to advise patients to take megadoses of various supplements for this reason. Professionals have known forever that many degenerative diseases develop from poor nutrition and that health and wellness depend very much on good nutrition.

This brings us to the smart thing of adding supplements to your disaster plan when your safety depends on being alert and as fit as you can be.

Supplements are not Vitamins, they are the many things which your body needs – really needs – to build and maintain its immune system, to manage stress, to resist various assaults on the body, and to have plenty of strength, energy, alertness and well-being.

We know that when disaster strikes, we are own our own on so many levels. We will have no EMS or Police, no electricity, no incoming transportation of food in the pipeline, and a great deal of stress and confusion; disruptions in topsoil release microbes into the air and toxins can abound. People will get little sleep; they will skip meals at times to be alert and will postpone decisions and make trade-offs as they prioritize emergency solutions first. All of these rapidly deplete your health and strength at a time when your body needs to function at 100% at times.

Those who are prepared will respond instead of reacting and will likely be ahead of the incident in safety and survival. These people will be more alert, less stressed and generally better able to aid others in need.

The ability to better endure the incident – no matter how long the local recovery takes – will depend on being fit before the disaster strikes and remaining fit in the face of whatever adversity may come.

Now is the time to learn about the role of nutritional supplements in your safety and survival not as part of your disaster kit, but as part of your disaster plan.

John Longenecker is a former Los Angeles Paramedic. His wife Aurea is a Trauma ICU Nurse. Together, they operate Wellness Priority One, nutritionals specializing in disaster preparedness.