Best Food to Stockpile for Food Shortages and Family Emergencies

The best food to stockpile for shortages is non-perishable dry goods like white rice, beans, wheat, and shelf-stable canned foods. The goal is to use these foods to stockpile a minimum of 2000 calories per day to feed each person in your group. I suggest you start by stockpiling a minimum of 180,000 calories each, which is enough for three months. I bought most of my food at Sam’s Club, Costco, and local grocery stores.

As a side note, 2000 calories per day is the minimum to store for each person. the actual calorie count needed per person is as high as 4000 per day for a soldier in combat.

Next is a list of staple food that provides enough calories for one person for three months.

Chart #1 Food Stockpile List (Staple Food)

Below is a list of dry staples including the quantity to store for a 3 months supply.

Staple Food	Quantity
Hard Wheat Berries	25 lbs
White Rice	10 lbs
Flour-All Purpose	15 lbs
Rolled Oats	5 lbs
Dry Pasta	4 lbs
Corn Meal	1 lb
Bis-quick or Pancake Mix	2 lb
Dry Cereal	6 lbs
Sugar
White Granulated	13 lbs
Honey	2 lb
Maple Syrup	1 gallon
Jellies and Preserves	1 gallon
Non Fat Powdered Milk	4.5 lbs
Fats and Cooking Oil	____
Vegetable Oil	1 gallon
Olive Oil	1/2 gallon
Peanut Butter	2 lbs.
Canned or Powdered Butter	1 lbs
Meat	____
Canned Chicken/Turkey	6 lbs
Canned Beef, Ham or Spam	6 lbs
Canned Tuna	12 cans
Dried Beans/Legumes	____
Pinto, Kidney, Lentils	6 lbs, or increase to use as a meat substitute
Canned Beans	10 cans
Drinks	__
Powdered Drink Mix	2 lbs
Hershey’s Powder/Cocoa Mix	2 lbs
Bottled Fruit Juice	3 gallons
Condiments	__
Soy Sauce	1/2 gallon (used on rice or as a seasoning or marinade)
Canned Olives, Pickles, Hot Peppers,	1/2 gallon
Ketchup	14 oz
Mustard	19 oz

Chart #2 Food Stockpile List (Shelf Stable Food)

Shelf-stable foods include canned meat, fruit and vegetables, and a sundry of other foods. These are some of the best emergency food you can store for short-term emergencies. Next, Let’s take a look at a 3-month supply of canned and other shelf-stable foods that will provide an average of 2000 calories per day.

Canned Foods	Quantity
Canned Soup or Dinty Moore Stew	24 cans
Canned Fruit Sauces	1 gallon
Canned Vegetables	12-28 oz cans
Canned Tomatoes (plus spices for spaghetti sauce)	12 x16 oz.
Canned/ Jarred Salsa	1 gallon
Salt	1/2 lb
Yeast	8 oz.
Vinegar	1 gallon
Favorite Spices: Black pepper, Red pepper flakes, Cummin, Nutmeg, Paprika, Chili Powder, Cayenne Pepper, Onion powder, Curry Powder, Garlic powder, Dried Italian Spice Mix, Creole Spice mix, Bay Leaf, Cinnamon, Clove, Allspice	1+ oz.

Chart #3 Shelf Stable Foods

Shelf Stables Foods	Quantity
Vegetable, Chicken, and Beef Broth or Bouillon Cubes	1 can each of broth or 1 jar each of bouillon cubes
Top Ramen or Dry Packaged Soup	24 Pack
Side dishes like wild rice, cheese, and broccoli rice or Spanish rice	4 boxes
Macaroni and Cheese	6 boxes
Scalloped potatoes	3 boxes
Knorr Pasta and Rice Sides ( You can get these at Walmart for less than $2.00 a pack)	6 bags
Pancake Mix	2 boxes
Brownie and cake mixes	2 boxes
Cliff bars, Oatmeal bars, Power bars, SOS survival bars	50
Saltine Crackers	4 boxes
Potato Chips, Doritos, Fritos, Pretzels	6 Family Size Bags
Popcorn (kernels for cooking)	2 lb
Fruit snacks	1 lb
Cookies: chocolate chip, fig newton, vanilla wafers	2 lb
Jolly Ranchers, Lollypops, Worther’s, hard candy	1.5 lb
Cake/ Brownie Mix	4 boxes
Pre-packaged muffin, pancake, or scone mix	3 boxes
Multivitamins, Vitamin C tabs	90 tabs per
Dried fruit medley, figs, cranberries, raisins	2 lbs
Instant Potatoes	4 lb
Vanilla	8 oz.
Pam	8 oz.
Cornstarch	8 oz.
Lipton Onion Soup Mix	2 packets

Chart #4 Food Stockpile List (Professional Emergency Food)

If you want to pre-purchase foods and throw them in a closet, consider a Duration kit of pre-packaged dehydrated and freeze-dried foods. These emergency food kits provide a specific amount of calories per day for a specified time but be warned, you’ll pay more for this type of food than if you stockpile dry staples.

Company	Food Supply Period (Days)	Daily Calories
Ready Hour (6 Water Resistant Buckets)	90	2000
My Patriot Supply	90	2000+
A-Pack MRE’s Meals Ready to Eat (Ready Store)	90	1700
Mountain House Freeze Dried Food Kits	14	1718
Emergency Essentials	90	2011
Saratoga Farms #10 Cans, freeze-dried and dehydrated	90	1998
Wise Food Storage	90	2000
Augason Farms	30	1854

If pre-packaged food isn’t for you, get familiar with re-packaging and storing your food. Click here to get started with Mylar bags, food-grade buckets and Oxygen absorbers.

For a more in-depth look at daily calories, see the charts below or check out the article, How Much Food To Stockpile Per Person, or the video below.

Up next, daily calorie requirements.

Daily Calorie Requirements For Males: USDA

There are a lot of variables to consider when figuring out how many calories to store for each person. The USDA calorie requirements are based on age, sex, activity levels, and the size of your group or family. Use the figures in chart #4, below to figure out how many calories you want to store for each male in your survival group.

Your activity levels will likely be way up in a long-term survival situation. Focus on storing enough calories to fit an active lifestyle. Chances are you won’t be sitting on the couch eating cinnamon buns.

Scott, Ready Squirrel

Chart #5 Required Daily Calories (Male)

Males By Age In Years	Sedentary* Lifestyle	Moderate** Lifestyle	Active*** Lifestyle
2	1000	1000	1000
3	1000	1400	1400
4	1200	1400	1600
5	1200	1400	1600
6	1400	1600	1800
7	1400	1600	1800
8	1400	1600	2000
9	1600	1800	2000
10	1600	1800	2200
11	1800	2000	2200
12	1800	2200	2400
13	2000	2200	2600
14	2000	2400	2800
15	2200	2600	3000
16-18	2400	2800	3200
19-20	2600	2800	3000
21-25	2400	2800	3000
31-35	2400	2600	3000
36-40	2400	2600	3000
41-45	2200	2600	2800
46-50	2200	2400	2800
51-55	2200	2400	2800
56-60	2200	2400	2600
61-65	2000	2400	2600
66-75	2000	2200	2600
76 and Up	2000	2200	2400

Daily Calorie Requirements For Females: USDA

Females require fewer calories but not by much. To ensure you store enough calories, consider everyone in your group as male to pad the calorie count.

Chart #6 Required Daily Calorie Count (Female)

Females By Age In Years	Sedentary* Lifestyle	Moderate** Lifestyle	Active*** Lifestyle
2	1000	1000	1000
3	1000	1200	1400
4	1200	1400	1400
5	1200	1400	1600
6	1200	1400	1600
7	1200	1600	1800
8	1400	1600	1800
9	1400	1600	1800
10	1400	1800	2000
11	1600	1800	2000
12	1600	2000	2200
13	1600	2000	2200
14	1800	2000	2400
15	1800	2000	2400
16-18	1800	2000	2400
19-20	2000	2200	2400
21-25	2000	2200	2400
31-35	1800	2000	2200
36-40	1800	2000	2200
41-45	1800	2000	2200
46-50	1800	2000	2200
51-55	1600	1800	2200
56-60	1600	1800	2200
61-65	1600	1800	2000
66-75	1600	1800	2000
76 and Up	1600	1800	2000

Planning For Food Shortages or Disaster

At best, we can guess the type of emergency scenario that will make us break into our three months food supply, so plan for the worst-case scenario. You are on foot with no power.

The best approach I’ve seen for this is to plan like you are getting ready to hike the Appalachian Trail. You may choose the bug-in scenario where you stay put, but I wanted to bring up at least the possibility that you’ll carry everything you need to survive.

If SHTF hits, you may be on the move, on foot, or in a vehicle, without electricity, gas, or other utilities. Plan to cook like your camping or not to cook at all. Depending on the circumstances, a box of Cliff bars might be better than a bag of dried beans. You open the package and eat for instant calories.

Ready Squirrel

Types of Foods To Stockpile

The main goal of your three months food supply is to store high-calorie foods that will sustain you no matter what you’re doing. The following items are a list to get your creative juices flowing. You could decide to survive on just Dinty-Moore stew, but you might start talking in an Irish Brogue.

Store a minimum of 1 gallon of water per day per person or have the means to clean or filter it.

Balancing Carbs, Protein, and Fat

Now that you figured out daily calories plan to provide the three nutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. According to KaiserPermanente.org, The following nutrients should make up the daily calorie count.

Carbohydrates: 50% to 60% of your daily calorie intake

Proteins: 12% to 20% of your daily diet

Chart #7 High Carbohydrates Food

Food	Serving Size	Grams of Carbohydrates
Oats	1 cup	32 g
Rice	1 cup	45 g
Lentils	1 cup	40 g
Dried Peas	1 cup	22 g
Pasta	1 cup	43.2 g

Chart #8 High Protein Food

Food	Serving Size	Grams of Protein
Powdered Eggs	1 cup (cooked)	21 g
Almonds	1 cup	24 g
Lentils	1 cup	18 g
Oats	1 cup	6 g
Peanut Butter	1 cup	65 g

Chart #9 High-Fat Food

Food	Serving Size	Grams Of Fat
Almonds	1 cup	56 g
Olive Oil	1 cup	216 g
Dark Chocolate	10oz	101 g
Coconut Oil	1 cup	218 g
Vegetable Oil	1 cup	224 g

Chart #10 Typical Foods, Calorie Counts

Food	Serving Size	Brand/Name	Calories
Powdered Milk	1 cup	Regular Powdered Milk, Calories Non-fat PowderedbMilk, calories	635 244
Dried Fruit	1 cup	Dried Apricots Dried Raisins	314 434
Banana Chips	1oz 28.44 g	Banana Chips	147
Crackers	5 Crackers	Crackers	81
Potatoes		1 Medium Potato	163
Canned Meat	1 cup 12.5oz 12oz 4oz	Corned Beef Hash Kirkland/Costco Canned Chicken Spam Vienna Sausages	361 375 1044 260
Vegetable Soups	18.5oz	Progresso Garden Vegetable Soup	180
Meat Soups	15oz 18.5oz	Dinty Moore Beef Stew Progresso Beef and Vegetable	400 200
Canned Fruit	15oz	Del Monte Fruit Cocktail in Heavy Syrup	210
Canned Juice	6oz 5.5oz	Dole 100% Pineapple Juice Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail	100 70
Canned Vegetables	14.5oz 15.25oz	Del Monte, mixed vegetables Green Giant whole kernel sweet corn	157 158
Cold Cereal	10.8oz	Cheerios	1870
Hot Cereal	1 cup	Oatmeal Grits	158 143
Peanut Butter	2tbsp	Jif Creamy Peanut Butter	190
Jelly	1 tbsp	Smucker’s Concord Grape Jelly	50
Vitamins		–
Hard Candy	3 Pieces	Jolly Rancher Hard Candy	70
Trail Snacks	3 tbsp	Planters Sweet and Salty Trail Mix	150
Power Bars	1 Bar	Power Bar Cliff Bar-peanut butter	210 260
Instant Ramen Noodles	1 pack	Top Ramen-Chicken flavor	380

Long-Term Staples

If you’ve got a year’s supply of food or plan on starting one, the staples below will be the backbone of your emergency supplies. Properly stored, you can get a shelf-life of 30+ years from many of these foods.

If you plan on using these foods, you will have to know how to cook because most of them are incorporated into recipes. Also, you will need a way to prepare them when the power is out, and you’ll want to include the water needed for preparation in your emergency stores.

Chart #11 Dry Staple Food (Calorie Count)

Food	Serving Size	Calories
Wheat Flour/ all-purpose	1 cup	455
Vegetable Oils	1 cup	1984
Soybeans	1 cup of roasted	811
White Rice	1 cup	206
Sugar/White Granulated	1 cup	773
Pasta	1 cup	75
Chicken, Beef or Vegetable Cubes	1 cube/1tsp	11
Rolled Oats	1 cup	266
Dried Legumes	1 cup (cooked)	245
Potato Flakes	1 cup (cooked)	159
Dried Eggs	1 cup (cooked)	357

One-Year Emergency Food Supply

One person’s one-year supply of survival food is 730,000 cooked calories based on the FDA daily calorie requirement of 2000 calories per day.

Chart #12 1-Year Food Supply

Long-term food items with a 30 Year Shelf Life (Unless Otherwise Stated)	Per Person Amount	Type	# Of Cases	Approximate Storage Weight
(Types of grain are interchangeable depending on preference, i.e. 1 case of rice for 1 case of wheat)	–	–	–	–
Wheat	24	#10 Cans	4	132 lbs
White Rice	12	#10 Cans	2	65 lbs
Rolled Oats	12	#10 Cans	2	29 lbs
Pasta	6	#10 Cans	1	21 lbs
Legumes (Beans, Split peas, Lentils)	12	#10 Cans	2	62 lbs
Milk (Nonfat-Dry, 15 yr shelf life)	12	#10 Cans	2	62 lbs
Sugar	12	#10 Cans	2	70 lbs
Dried Apple Slices	6	#10 Cans	1	6 lbs
Dried Carrots (10 Year shelf life)	3	#10 Cans	_	8 lbs
Potato Flakes	12	#10 Cans	2	22
Dried Onions	1	#10 Cans	_	2
Iodized Salt	8 lbs		_	_
Baking Soda (For baking and to soften old beans)	1 lb		_	_
Baking Powder	4 lbs		_	_
Vitamin C Tablet (90 mg)	365 Tablets		_	_

In addition to the long-term food items, you will need ingredients that don’t last as long. You can rotate these into your regular diet to always have stock.

Chart #13 Short-term foods in your long-term food supply

Short-term food items	Approximate unopened shelf-life in years	Per Person Amount Per Year
Fats and Oils (types are interchangeable based on individual preferences: storing a variety of fats helps with rotation.)	_	_
Cooking/Salad Oil (e.g., soy, olive.)	1+	2 Gallons
Shortening or Frying Oil	1+	3 cans or 3 lbs
Butter/Margarine (stored in the freezer)	1	6 lbs
Mayonaise/Salad Dressings	1	3 quarts
Peanut Butter/other nut butter	1+	6 lbs
Fruit Drink Mix	2	3 #10 Cans
Spices/Bouillion/Condiments	2+	_
Dried Eggs For Baking	3+	2 #10 Cans
Yeast	5+	2 lbs
Other Sweeteners (e.g. Honey, molasses, brown sugar, jams, jellies, syrups	_	_

11 Useful Tips For Food Storage

#1 Food You Like

Store food that your family likes to eat

Good for morale and cuts down on waste. I purchased a 50 lbs bag of quinoa and realized nobody would eat it. It made for an expensive bird-food

#2 Regular Food

Store food you can rotate into your regular diet

If you don’t like white rice now, you won’t like it when SHTF. Consider an alternative like bulk wheat or dried pasta.

#3 Alternate Cook Methods

Have a way to cook without electricity.

My preferred emergency cooking method is based on one of my favorite things: camp—weather permitting to set up an outdoor kitchen.

#4 Fuel

Make sure you have extra fuel canisters on hand.

If you depend on your propane grill or a backpacker’s stove, store extra fuel, so you don’t run out.

Please do not use any stove or cooking method in an enclosed space unless rated for indoor use to avoid Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide poisoning.

#5 Calories

Consider how many calories a food contains.

Staple food tends to be high in calories and easy to prepare; make them the bedrock on which you build your emergency food supply.

#6 Long & Short-term

Prepare for long and short-term food storage.

Maybe I’ve beaten this horse to death, but store foods for every possible scenario, short-term non-perishable, lightweight if you’re walking out on foot, etc.

#7 Carbohydrates, Protein & Fat

Plan for a blend of calories containing the three primary nutrients: carbohydrates, protein, and fats.

This will take a little more research, choose foods that provide specific nutrients, and are willing to eat in your regular diet.

#8 Long Shelf-life

Store foods that have a longer shelf-life.

You can open up options for food storage if you rotate your food and incorporate it into your healthy diet because you can add foods that last a year instead of 15 or thirty years. You don’t want to replace food X yearly if you aren’t consuming it.

#9 White Rice, Beans & Wheat

Build long-term food storage around staples like white rice, dried beans, and wheat.

These foods can be the bulk of your daily calorie count and make it much easier to flesh out nutrient and calorie requirements.

#10 Vary the foods you store

Living on just beans and rice gets old.

Variety is the spice of life. One of the essential tools when it comes to survival is hope and a positive state of mind. Looking forward to a good meal with foods you enjoy is a significant morale booster.

#11 Sprouting

Consider sprouting seeds to get additional nutrients. Sprouting seeds is like a secret survivalist weapon because you can grow in almost any season. Sprouts don’t add a lot of calories, but they are huge in vitamins and minerals.

Resources:

Thanks for stopping by Ready Squirrel. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.

Keep On Prepping!

Best Regards, Scott