How much emergency food per person, for 3, 14 or 30 days

The sum, in four steps

Every emergency list has a line that says “food”, and almost none says how much. The sum that turns that line into a shopping weight takes two numbers you pick and one you read off a label. It works for one person or a household, and for three days or thirty.

Step by step

1. Pick the days

   Take the number your own country asks for; the tables further down give it for ten countries and the EU, from three days to two weeks.

2. Pick the kcal a day

   2,000 kcal is the reference intake the EU prints on food labels for an average adult;¹ Germany’s federal food agency, the BLE, builds its ten-day table on 2,200.² Either is a yardstick for planning, not a ration.

3. Multiply

   Days × kcal a day gives the energy the reserve has to hold: 14 days at 2,000 kcal is 28,000 kcal.

4. Turn it into kilos

   Divide by the food’s kcal per 100 g, from the nutrition table on the pack, then by 10. At 350 kcal per 100 g, 28,000 kcal is 80 units of 100 g, so 8 kg.

Step four decides whether the answer is a shelf or a whole cupboard. Dry pasta and rice carry about 355 kcal per 100 g in the BLE’s own figures.² Tinned food carries its water with it: tinned vegetables in the same table run from 11 to 81 kcal per 100 g, tinned meat and fish from 100 to 345.² About 100 is a fair round figure for a tinned meal.

3, 14 and 30 days: kcal and kilos per person

Nobody eats only pasta or only tins, so the honest answer sits between the two columns. The BLE’s one-day table, the mix of bread, tins, dairy, fruit, fat and dry goods it suggests for one person, adds up to about 2,200 kcal in about 1.4 kg of food, plus 2 litres of drinks.² That works out at about 160 kcal per 100 g across the whole table, a real supermarket stock rather than a sack of rice.

For a household, multiply by the people. Four adults for two weeks on the BLE’s mix is close to 78 kg of food, which is why a two-week reserve is built over a few months of shopping rather than in one trip. Those kilos, as a list by food group, are in a two-week pantry from the supermarket; a single day packed from the same shelves is a 24-hour ration from the supermarket.

Reading a kit’s label: servings aren’t days

Emergency food kits are sold by days or by “servings”, and the two say less than they seem to. A serving is whatever the maker decides it is. Across nine kits from seven makers, read on the makers’ own pages, a serving held from about 174 to 450 kcal, and a day from 1,290 to about 2,200. The only sum that compares them is total kcal divided by days.

Read the first column twice. The Mountain House 30-day box is sold for one person for a month or two people for 15 days; for two, that’s about 866 kcal each a day.¹⁹ Four of the nine pages don’t say how many people the kit is for, so the day is worked out as if for one. The Expedition Foods pack is a trekking ration, not sold as emergency food, and stands in the table as the British row.

The test for any kit in any shop: find the total kcal on the maker’s page, divide by the days on the box, and set the result against 2,000. If the page gives only servings and kcal per serving, multiply those first.

What the official tables ask for

The days differ more than the kcal, because almost no authority gives kcal at all. Ready.gov, FEMA’s preparedness site, asks for “at least a several-day supply” and puts no number on it.⁴ Only the BLE and the Austrian Zivilschutzverband publish a household reserve in kcal and kilos.

Two tables built on different kcal figures land close together. The BLE’s ten days, scaled to fourteen, and the Austrian two weeks agree within about a quarter on grains, meat and fish, dairy and fat; they part on vegetables and fruit, 9.1 kg against 6.0.³¹³ The Austrian brochure also says that a home without a storeroom can halve its amounts, which then last about a week.¹³

Latin America’s figures are days too, with no kcal. Mexico’s disaster prevention centre, CENAPRED, asks for tinned food and bottled water for two days on one page,²⁷ and on another says the emergency bag should cover the first 72 hours;²⁸ Colombia’s disaster agency, the UNGRD, asks for non-perishable food such as grains and tins for at least 5 days.²⁹

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gives no kcal but a way to build up: take what your household eats in a day, multiply by seven for a week, then grow it to a month and three months, with food from your normal diet, and without going into debt for it.¹⁷

Our box, by the same sum

The same four steps apply to our food. Each pouch prints its kcal and its kcal per 100 g, so step four works on it like on any label.

Three pouches from the 72-hour box: weight, energy per pouch and per 100 g, and shelf life

Pouch	Net weight	Energy	Energy per 100 g	Keeps for
Chicken & RiceLarge	200 g	834 kcal	417 kcal	at least 12 months
Lentil & Vegetable StewLarge	200 g	731 kcal	365 kcal	at least 12 months
Porridge & Fruit	90 g	341 kcal	379 kcal	at least 12 months

Three pouches from the 72-hour box: weight, energy per pouch and per 100 g, and shelf life

• Chicken & RiceLarge

  Net weight

  200 g

  Energy

  834 kcal

  Energy per 100 g

  417 kcal

  Keeps for

  at least 12 months

• Lentil & Vegetable StewLarge

  Net weight

  200 g

  Energy

  731 kcal

  Energy per 100 g

  365 kcal

  Keeps for

  at least 12 months

• Porridge & Fruit

  Net weight

  90 g

  Energy

  341 kcal

  Energy per 100 g

  379 kcal

  Keeps for

  at least 12 months

The 72-Hour Food Reserve holds 9 pouches for 3 days, a porridge such as Porridge & Fruit and two Large mains a day, among them Chicken & Rice and the vegan Lentil & Vegetable Stew. That comes to 1,976 kcal a day: just under the 2,000 kcal reference on EU labels, and below the BLE’s 2,200. For the BLE’s figure, add a snack a day from the cupboard.

Freeze-dried food is light for its energy and needs water added, so count that water too: the box takes 3.1 l to make up. Three neighbouring sums are worked out elsewhere: price and weight per day against tins, bars and wet rations in emergency food compared, kcal per 100 g for the rucksack in backpacking food by calorie density, and why dry staples keep for decades when a cooked meal doesn’t in long-term food storage.

From our range

72-Hour Food Reserve

3 days of breakfast and two mains, 1,976 kcal a day.

€112.90Hear from us before the shop opensSee the box