Food Theory: How Long Could You SURVIVE Locked In A Grocery Store?

ah nothing like reading some comments first thing in the morning oh this one looks interesting food theory idea how long could you survive in a locked supermarket just using the food in there oh that was really good i'll have to think about it yeah that is a pretty good question [Music] hello internet welcome to food theory the show you can still safely consume well past its expiration date theorists i just want to start off by saying how much i love the theory ideas you submit especially when they result in episodes like the one today but uh as i soon learned answers like these are not easy to come by friends i mean i originated pixel measurements i have been finding numbers where numbers don't exist for a decade now but grocery store survival may just be one of the trickiest challenges that i've faced in the last 10 years of making youtube videos for one thing we're dealing with a lot of food products here see each distinct product in a grocery store gets assigned an sku or stock keeping unit the average grocery store has an sku count of about 33 000 that is 33 000 different product offerings and that's not even taking into account the multiples of each item that the store has in its inventory which means that even an average sized grocery store likely has hundreds of thousands of items on its shelves but how long can those items actually sustain a human being in order to answer that we'll need to go a step beyond counting the number of items and actually quantify the amount of food in a grocery store after all not every item in a grocery store is edible and those that are edible have drastically different nutritional values plus there's an added layer of complexity that has to be taken into account here spoilage this is actually one of our biggest factors because it's not as though our hypothetical person trapped inside the grocery store can just eat millions and millions of calories on day one before anything spoils and then coast off a body fat for the next 50 years sadly the human stomach can only hold so much this is coming from experience test those limits each and every time i step foot inside a cheesecake factory so this means that our hypothetical person who i'm gonna call evan in honor of today's commenter is gonna have to employ an actual strategy to maximize the amount of food going into his stomach and minimize the amount of food that's going to spoil theorists today's prompt is an absolute beast that has a lot of moving parts so that's what's going to make it so fun to answer hope you've all worked up an appetite and appetite for knowledge that is because today we're sinking our teeth into supermarket survival for today's purposes we're gonna quantify food in terms of calories the fda uses 2 000 calories per day as a general guide for nutrition advice though they're also quick to admit that this is an oversimplification and there's really no one-size-fits-all number for caloric intake but for this hypothetical exercise it's gonna have to do the trick we're also gonna assume that evan is locked inside an average sized grocery store which these days is about 38 000 square feet according to progressive grocer and that's actually fantastic news for us because one of our food theory field researchers luke just so happens to live up the street from a grocery store exactly that size see today's episode is going to require some good old-fashioned elbow grease friends this is a very specific question that we're attempting to answer and the very specific inventory information that we need isn't publicly available knowledge in order to get that info we have no choice but to count the calories of grocery store items manually and if that sounds like a ridiculous amount of work yes but this is food theory people if we're not gonna answer the question that one person was curious about in the comments and who else will finally we need to make a couple of assumptions about evan's circumstances we're gonna actually assume that the power is out in evan's post-apocalyptic survival scenario that means no ovens no refrigerators and no freezers we'll also assume that he has no running water why are we making things so hard on poor evan well because our answer becomes more useful that way if we determine that evan can live out his entire natural lifespan inside a worst-case scenario grocery store with no utilities then we know that he can also live a full life span inside a grocery store where water is easy to come by and the shelf life of many foods can be extended using refrigeration so with all that housekeeping out of the way the time has finally come to determine evan's fate how long is the maximum amount of time that one person can survive inside of a grocery store well let's talk about that crucial first day me i see it plan out a little something like this disheveled evan stumbles into a strikingly average sized grocery store in this case called stator brothers but it could be interchangeable for any around the u.s he frantically locks the doors behind him outside some super intense doomsday scenario is raging on i'm thinking aliens zombies alien zombies you know the works the only other person with the key to the store is also the person with a key to evan's heart his true love a theory stuff together they swore that if they were ever separated amid the chaos they would rendezvous here at the skater brothers where they started their love in the frozen food aisle being the first to arrive it is now evan's sacred duty to wait and to survive for as long as he possibly can without leaving look we put a lot of work into this episode we are gonna amp it up with the drama the grocery store is power is out which means that the dairy section and the deli section are gonna be the first to spoil evan knows that he has to act quickly bacteria can render room temperature dairy and raw meat too dangerous for human consumption within hours so if those calories are gonna count his survival he's gonna have to move and move fast evan's first order of business is to begin extending the shelf life of any quick spoiling foods he possibly can evan knows that in addition to calories his body needs 20 different amino acids in order to survive plus a variety of minerals and vitamins so the more varied his diet is the better amino acids you gotta catch them all evan also knows that he should be able to extend the life of various raw meats by about a month or two even without refrigeration and electricity the store has everything he needs there's 377 pounds of salt in aisle six for curing the meat and there's a downright shocking amount of fire building supplies in aisle 13 for smoking the meat via curing and smoking he's able to save 120 000 calories worth of raw meat from spoiling which while impressive is a mere fraction of the 10.7 million meat supplied calories that would be available to him in the section if things didn't spoil but hey extra time is extra time by doing this all important first step evan can ensure that red meat poultry and even seafood are a part of his diet for the first couple months of his grocery store stay plus packaged deli meats like salami will last for a month or so unrefrigerated the fire which evan built near an open window so the smoke can escape continues to be useful even after the meat's been smoked evan is able to dehydrate fruits and veggies with some success over his primitive campfire setup the dehydrated vegetables wind up with a shelf life of about six months and the dehydrated fruits last up to a year and perhaps best of all the open window will allow evan to collect rain water from here to the rest of his stay once the bottled water runs out so by spending his first days in the grocery store hard at work evan manages to secure a year's worth of calories out of food that would have otherwise spoiled in a matter of weeks way to go evan life handed you lemons and you made dehydrated lemons ever the overachiever though evan goes on and makes his already varied diet even more varied by working baked goods from the bakery section into his meals thanks to ziploc bags he's able to get a few good weeks out of the cookies and breads before they mold over he also takes full advantage of the vitamins in aisle 10. since many of the vitamins begin to lose their potency after a couple of years evan knows that he might as well use him early and often to round out his diet finally after one year and more than 730 000 calories consumed the dehydrated fruit begins to spoil and evans celebrates his one year anniversary inside the grocery store but the celebration is a somber one as there is still no sign of the fair fairy stuff once year two rolls around evan doesn't have to do nearly as much work well aside from stirring the compost pile every once in a while all the spoiled food from the deli produce dairy and bakery sections really pile up and that's not even mentioning the human waste these days evan is munching on foods with lengthy shelf lives like dried pasta white rice rolled oats powdered milk molasses potato flakes whole wheat grains factory sealed jerky dried beans and lentils in order to get some fruits and veggies into his diet he also starts dipping into certain canned foods that have relatively short shelf lives due to their high acidity such as canned fruit pickles and jellies all told these foods provide him with 5.1 million calories over the course of seven years when his eighth anniversary inside the grocery store arrives life is pretty pleasant for evan you know aside from the fact that his beloved theorista has yet to show up evan understands that two types of food await him on the shelves from this point forward foods with indefinite shelf lives and factory sealed foods that degrade over time indefinite shelf-life foods include products like raw honey jell-o mix sugar hard alcohol soy sauce cornstarch and others these products if stored properly will be just as tasty and nutritious decades down the line as they are today the same cannot be said for the foods in the second category foods like canned goods wine breakfast cereal and peanut butter which all degrade over time but it's worth knowing that these foods don't spoil like the raw meat and dairy did as long as they remain unopened and completely sealed these canned and factory sealed foods don't really become inedible despite what their expiration dates might suggest now it doesn't mean that the foods won't turn stale or rancid they absolutely will but even in their most disgusting forms these foods won't make you ill and they'll retain at least some of their nutritional value to evan that is assuming he can manage to keep him down after all rancid peanut butter isn't exactly pleasant to eat and perhaps the only thing less appetizing than eating wet dog food is eating expired wet dog food deep down evan knows that he needs to eat his way through the latter category first so let's get to it for three stock now there are a lot of foods that fall into this category which means evan is forced to eat a lot of stale and rancid food over the next few decades you heard that right decades the remaining canned goods alone account for 3.4 million calories or 4.6 years worth of food because canned food is sterile and sealed bacteria can't really get into it unless the can gets dented or damaged in some way similarly factory sealed products like cereal cookies crackers and chips will go stale and degrade over time but they still should technically remain edible this also applies to drinks such as soda beer and wine and many jarred products like peanut butter and jarred nuts all told these products and others add up to 30.8 million calories that is enough food to last evan another whopping 42.2 years if he's able to space it out right now it's hard to describe how unpleasant this 42.2 year stretch is for evan i mean to get to this point he would have had to have gone through 5100 cans of wet pet food but he persists and now he gets to enjoy the good life again because the indefinite shelf-life foods await him and they all still taste great even 50 years after he got first locked into this place when added together these indefinite shelf life products accounted for 13.1 years worth of food and once those 13.1 years run out well the shelves are empty and evan runs out as the final drop of vodka drips onto his tongue evan feels the icy grip of death overtake him he collapses onto the ground soon to become one with the compost pile he cultivated for so many decades and as his eyes close forever he finally gets the answer he so desperately sought as a younger man 63.3 years a person can survive locked inside a grocery store using only the food inside for 63.3 years but suddenly moments after evan draws his final breath we hear a key turn in the lock it's therista at long last she's made it to their agreed-upon rendezvous point she got waylaid for a few decades by i don't know what did i say zombie aliens something anyway through it all she never stopped thinking about her true love evan alas though she's too late yeah it is a super bummer of an ending if only evan had figured out a way to stay alive just a wee bit longer they could have held each other one last time but there's no way evan could have pulled that one off the shelves are empty there's nothing else he could have done unless [Music] that's right theorists evan still has one last card to play farming a lot of grocery stores have at least a small flower section with potted plants our stator brothers was no different and it had about four cubic feet of potting soil in all this soil of course can be used to create a small garden with seeds and spores harvested from the produce section in the early days potatoes which conveniently contain all the essential amino acids are the crop that evan probably should focus on when he first arrives in the store unfortunately with such a limited supply of soil evan is never going to be able to survive entirely off his garden even if he doubles his soil volume by mixing in 50 compost which is the maximum ratio recommended eight cubic feet of soil can support about 24 potato plants each plant produces about 10 110 calorie potatoes per year for 26 400 calories annually theorists that is not even two weeks worth of food if only there was a crop that could grow in a hundred percent compost after all evan's got way more than four cubic feet of that lion around and his compost pile only grows bigger with every passing day well i've got good news for you evan because there is such a crop it requires no sunlight to grow minimal water and is readily available in grocery stores i'm talking mushrooms mushroom stems from the grocery store are really easy to propagate pretty much all you need to create a mushroom terrarium is an empty plastic bottle and coffee grounds and of course evan has plenty of access to those from there mushrooms can be introduced into the compost pile and from here the numbers start working out in evan's favor in a big way one pound of button mushrooms contains 100 calories a growing area of around 200 square feet can produce 5 000 pounds of mushroom per year that means that in order to get the 2 000 calories per day he needs to survive evan would only need to plant about 3 000 square feet of button mushrooms and in a 30 000 square foot grocery store i don't think 10 of your floor space is too much to sacrifice for a crop that will spare you the indignity of gulping down expired baby food between the mushrooms and the potato garden evan will have renewable resources of essential amino acids vitamins and minerals not to mention a surplus of calories so not only will farming allow evan to survive long enough to see his beloved therista again he won't have to eat a single expired food product along the way so at long last theorists we're finally able to answer the question in full not only can a person survive their entire natural life locked inside of a grocery store using only the food inside but that person's family and future generations can make do as well evan's story has a happy ending and it's all thanks to farming but hey that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit thanks for supporting the food theory channel friends if you enjoyed today's episode i would recommend heading over and watching our episode on pizza optimization next we ran real world tests to determine which pizza chain can give you the most bang for your buck it's youtube that you can use so give her a watch give that subscribe button a click and i'll see you all next week

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 7,085,946

Rating: 4.9550562 out of 5

Keywords: grocery store, how to survive, locked in a grocery store, apocalypse, zombie apocalypse, trapped in a grocery store, 24 hours in target, 24 hours in walmart, food theory, grocery store theory, grocery store secrets, supermarket, supermarket sweep, supermarket secrets, supermarket secrets documentary, food, recipe, food rationing, food history, food science, food theorists, game theory, film theory, matpat, binging with babish, eat the menu, delish, taste test, shopping

Id: KTKNl08hwUY

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/NeoMegaRyuMKII]

This was a very fun episode. I do think that if we are going for worst-case scenario as MatPat wanted, there should have been some element of allergies implemented into it (I was going to say "picky eater" but that would make the research more subjective), but overall it was enjoyable.

[u/TheDoveTheorist]

THEORISTA!

[u/fightthesacreligious]

Poor Evan. He waited 63 years before Theorista could save him. Truly, a story more compelling than the Titanic.

[u/JimRoad-Arson]

Long story short: Evan went vegan.

[u/Krn_nijan]

A entire video on Reddit cool

[u/Skyhawk_Illusions]

MrBeast: Last To Leave Supermaket Wins $1,000,000!!!!!!

[u/queeneve84]

This ep was a blast! The real question is how many people would think of smoking/salting meats and drying vegetables, tho.

[u/tundrat]

Lol, after all that work of trying to live on food from the shelves, in the end it became like The Martian. Simply just try to make a potato or mushroom farm.

[u/HertsOB]

Obviously it's all about worst case scenario, but I was thinking if Evan had firewood to start with, what was he using as burning/cooking supplies later on. Or was the implication that he was eating the long life foodstuffs in the later years all raw and as base ingredients?

I think if there's no electricity in the scenario then the biggest risk isn't food or water, it's freezing to death over winter, especially as the building starts to deteriorate. Even with a clothing section and recycling those clothes to the utmost I doubt you'd run out of the food before the lack of shelter aspect killed you. Those big hollow buildings take a lot of work to heat...

And if he does have fuel, then is there a way he could create some sort of steam powered generator to hook up a refrigerator(s)? Plenty wiring and magnets in the checkout and conveyors. This sort of scenario always fascinated me as a kid.