How much emergency food should you store? A per-person guide
The maths done for you: turn about 2,000 kcal and 3 litres of water per person per day into concrete food and water shopping lists for 1, 2 and 4 people.
Water, food and a way to cook it
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as of 5 Nov 2026, 22:07 GMT · Details
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By Tom Calder · Updated 2 November 2026 · Sourced to GOV.UK Be Ready, the NHS, the British Red Cross & Ready Scotland
In the US? Our sister site has the US version, built on Ready.gov and CDC guidance: PreparedStates.
Earlier changes
6 Oct Corrected who says what about water: the 2.5 to 3 litres is the World Health Organisation’s survival minimum, which GOV.UK Prepare quotes, the 10 litres a day is GOV.UK’s own figure, and the 3 days are the British Red Cross and Ready Scotland figure.
Two numbers do all the work
Emergency-food planning sounds complicated until you reduce it to two figures the government and the NHS already publish. The NHS puts an average adult's needs at around 2,000 kcal a day for women and 2,500 for men, so 2,000 kcal per person per day is a sensible, slightly conservative planning floor. For water, the government's Be Ready checklist says 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, with more needed for cooking and washing; the old GOV.UK Prepare advice put a more comfortable amount, covering basic cooking and hygiene too, at about 10 litres a day. Everything below is just those two numbers multiplied by days and by people.
Hold the calorie figure loosely. A teenager or someone doing heavy physical work needs more; a small child needs less. The point of a round 2,000 is not precision but a floor you can shop against without a spreadsheet.
Start with 72 hours, not a bunker
GOV.UK deliberately does not tell you to build a bunker. Its Be Ready campaign, which replaced GOV.UK Prepare on 22 October 2026, asks households to be ready for 3 days of disruption such as a storm, a power cut or a water outage, rather than a siege. So 72 hours is the official first target and, for most households, the last one they will ever need. At 2,000 kcal a day that is 6,000 kcal per person, which is genuinely modest.
For one adult, that is roughly: two tins of baked or mixed beans, two tins of ready-to-eat meat or a canned meal, a tin of fish, a pack of crackers or crispbread, a jar of peanut butter, two tins of fruit, a pack of biscuits or cereal bars, and a litre of UHT milk — plus a manual tin opener and 9 litres of bottled water. Scaling is arithmetic, not judgement: for two people, double every line and store 18 litres of water; for a family of four, quadruple it and store 36 litres. GOV.UK stresses food "that doesn't need cooking", because in a power cut you may have no hob, so bias the 72-hour tier towards things you can eat cold, straight from the tin.
Scaling up: one week and two weeks
If you want more headroom, the next rungs are one week and two weeks — the latter a comfortable upper limit for most households, not a target everyone must hit. Think in per-person weekly baskets of about 14,000 kcal each: around five tins of beans, four tins of meat or ready meals, three tins of fish, 500g of pasta with a jar of sauce, 500g of rice, a 500g bag of porridge oats, a 340g jar of peanut butter, a pack of crackers, four tins of fruit and veg, two litres of UHT milk, and a pack of biscuits or cereal bars.
Then multiply. One week for two people is two of those baskets; two weeks for a family of four is eight of them, plus roughly 168 litres of drinking water. The pasta and rice add cheap calories but need boiling, so any store beyond a few days assumes you can cook — a camping stove or a working gas hob covers it. If you can't cook, weight the basket back towards tins you can open and eat cold.
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Buy food your household already eats, in long-life form: tinned beans, fish and meat, pasta and sauce, rice, oats, UHT milk, tinned fruit and veg, peanut butter, crackers, biscuits and cereal bars. A few comforts — tea, coffee, a bar of chocolate — matter more than their calories suggest when the power is out. Keep a manual tin opener in the box; an electric one is useless in a cut.
Then the people and animals a bare calorie count misses. Add pet food to the same standard. If there is a baby, ready-to-feed liquid formula needs no water and is the simplest thing to store; powdered formula must be made with water boiled and cooled to no less than 70°C, per NHS guidance. Keep at least a week's buffer of any prescription medicine, and note anything the household can't eat — allergens, coeliac, halal, kosher, vegetarian — so your store is food you will actually open.
Water: the other half of the sum
Food gets the attention, but water is heavier, runs out faster and is easily underestimated. At 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, a 72-hour store is 9 litres each, a week is 21, and two weeks is 42 — so a family of four planning two weeks needs about 168 litres of drinking water alone, and considerably more if you want the 10-litre-a-day comfort level that covers cooking and washing. Supermarket multipack bottled water is sealed, date-stamped and costs pence per litre; buy a few packs more than usual and rotate them through normal drinking before their best-before dates.
A hosepipe ban does not touch your tap supply, so it is never a reason to panic-buy bottles. During an official "boil water" or "do not drink" notice from your water company, follow that notice above all else.
Build it gradually, size it to your house
None of this needs a single big spend or a special "prepper" shop. The cheapest, least wasteful way to build a two-week store is to add two or three long-life items you already eat to each normal shop, and eat the oldest ones first so nothing expires. The cost is spread over weeks, and the food never goes to waste because it is just your cupboard, slightly deeper.
The exact quantities shift with ages, appetites, pets and diets, which is fiddly to do in your head. Our kit builder takes your household and turns these figures into a single, printable shopping list sized to you.
Common questions
How much emergency food do I need per person, per day?
Plan on about 2,000 kcal per person per day — the NHS figure for an average woman, with an average man nearer 2,500. In concrete terms that is roughly two tins of beans, a tin of meat and a tin of fish, some crackers, a little peanut butter, tinned fruit and some milk for one adult for one day.
How many days of food should I store?
The government's Be Ready campaign (22 October 2026) asks households to be ready for 3 days of disruption, the same figure the British Red Cross and Ready Scotland use, so 72 hours is the starting target, and two weeks is a comfortable upper limit for most households — not an official requirement. You do not need more than that.
How much water should I store per person per day?
The government's Be Ready checklist says 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, with more needed for cooking and washing; the old GOV.UK Prepare advice put a more comfortable amount, covering basic cooking and hygiene too, at about 10 litres a day. So plan on 9 litres of drinking water per person for 72 hours, or 42 litres for two weeks.
Do I need special emergency ration packs or freeze-dried food?
No. Ordinary tinned and dry food you already eat is far cheaper per calorie and rotates through normal meals with no waste. Freeze-dried ration packs suit hiking and long expeditions, not a home cupboard, and they also need water to rehydrate — which is the very thing that may be short.
Roughly what does a two-week food store cost?
Built gradually — a few extra long-life items added to each normal shop — a per-person two-week store is a modest cost spread over several weeks, and effectively free in the long run because you eat and replace it. The expensive mistake is buying it all in one panic trip, or paying a premium for branded 'survival' food.
Should emergency food be able to be eaten without cooking?
For the 72-hour tier, yes — bias towards food you can eat cold, because a power cut may leave you without a hob, and GOV.UK specifically recommends food "that doesn't need cooking". For longer stores, pasta and rice add cheap calories if you have a camping stove or a working gas supply to boil water.
Sources (6)
- GOV.UK Be Ready — Be ready for emergencies (3 days; 3 litres of drinking water per person per day; non-perishable food for 3 days), read 2 November 2026
- NHS — Understanding calories
- Defra — United Kingdom Food Security Report 2024
- NHS — How to make up baby formula
- British Red Cross — Prepare an emergency kit3 days’ supply of bottled water and long-life, ready-to-eat food
- Ready Scotland — Emergency kit3 days’ supply of bottled water and food that does not need cooking
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