Personal Staples

A food staple is a food that makes up the dominant part of a population’s diet. Food staples are eaten regularly—even daily—and supply a major proportion of a person’s energy and nutritional needs.

Personal staples should meet certain criteria and are likely to be more specific than rice, corn (maize) or wheat. For modern peoples who buy most staples at a grocery store rather than raising their own food, staples are more likely to be things like a specific kind of bread, a specific brand of noodle or a specific brand of juice.

There are more than 50,000 edible plants in the world, but just 15 of them provide 90 percent of the world’s food energy intake. Rice, corn (maize), and wheat make up two-thirds of this.

A staple should be something you can eat regularly. This can be tricky if you have food intolerances and need to limit your consumption of certain things.

A staple should be something you can consume all of or almost all of on a regular basis before it goes bad. It can help to rely on traditional staples, like hard cheeses and noodles, that keep unusually well for some portion of your staples and have other staples that don't keep as well but which will be routinely used up quickly without you growing tired of them.

A staple should accommodate your personal quirks well. For example, I knew a single woman who rarely used milk but kept small boxes of shelf-stable irradiated milk in the cupboard which did not need to be refrigerated until after they were open so that milk was always immediately available if she had need of it for a recipe, a guest in her home or to have a bowl of breakfast cereal.

Don't get overly hung up on cost. Yes, it needs to make sense for your budget, but keep in mind that a package containing a volume that will be used up in a timely fashion and not land you in the ER with food poisoning because you kept it too long is probably the optimal size, even if the cost per ounce is nominally a little higher than some other package.

Your staples may vary over time, both seasonally and as living arrangements change. They may be different depending upon how many people are in the household, where you currently live (because what's available varies anytime you move someplace new), etc.

It's fine. Don't get too hung up on that either.

A staple should ideally have some flexibility in how you use it. For example, flat bread can be eaten as is cold to go with steak or used to make quesadillas.

If your lifestyle changes and it impacts your diet and you suddenly start having minor health issues, like leg cramps, take a bit of time to think what changed and what nutrient you may be shorting youself on due to your unplanned dietary changes. A small change, like finding a new brand of potato chip, may fix you right up without a lot of fuss.

A healthy diet will likely have a mix of fresh and shelf stable staples. Generally speaking, I use up fresh meat within 24 hours, fresh fruit within a few days and fresh vegetables within about a week. If I buy more meat than I expect to cook in the next day or so, I typically freeze it.

On the other hand, shelf stable snacks, roasted nuts, salad dressing and similar may stick around for a few weeks. Unlike a lot of people, no, I don't keep any food items for months. I like food that is fairly fresh.