“Store some extra food” is the advice everyone gives and nobody can act on. How much is some? This page turns it into arithmetic: one number to plan around, a simple formula, and a concrete shopping list for one person for 30 days that you can multiply by your household.
The one number: 2,000 calories per person per day
Plan on roughly 2,000 kcal per adult per day. Active people, teenagers, and anyone doing physical work in a crisis will want more; small children less. It is a planning figure, not a diet – in an emergency you are buying energy and morale, not optimizing nutrition. Multiply it out and the targets stop being abstract:
- 3 days: about 6,000 kcal per person – a box of shelf-stable food in a closet
- 14 days: about 28,000 kcal per person
- 30 days: about 60,000 kcal per person
- 90 days: about 180,000 kcal per person
What 60,000 calories actually looks like
Dry staples are the engine: rice delivers roughly 1,600 kcal per pound, dry beans and lentils about 1,500-1,700, oats around 1,700, and peanut butter roughly 2,600 per pound. A realistic 30-day basket for one adult, mixing staples for calories with canned and freeze-dried food for variety and morale:
- 20 lb white rice (about 32,000 kcal)
- 10 lb dry beans or lentils (about 16,000 kcal)
- 5 lb oats (about 8,500 kcal)
- 4 lb peanut butter (about 10,000 kcal)
- A rotating layer of canned goods, pasta, and a few freeze-dried emergency meals for the days when nobody can face rice again
That basket overshoots 60,000 kcal on purpose – appetite varies, some food gets shared, and a buffer is the difference between “supplied” and “worried.” Store staples in food-grade buckets with sealed lids, label everything with the purchase date, and eat from the front of the shelf so stock rotates through your normal cooking.
Do not forget the other half of the equation
Dry food is inedible without water – rice and beans roughly double in weight cooked, and cooking plus drinking means the one-gallon-per-person-per-day rule from our water storage guide is part of this calculation, not a separate one. Build both together: our beginner’s food storage guide walks the full system, week by week, paycheck by paycheck. Start with 3 days. The math above shows it is a smaller pile of food than you feared – and 30 days is only ten of those piles.
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