How much food storage do you actually need (per person, per day)?

JUNE 30, 2026 · BY PAT

"I should stock up" is a feeling. To actually prepare, you need a number. The good news is the math is simple, and once you have a target you can check it against what's already on your shelves.

Start with two daily needs: calories and water

Two things keep a person going day to day, and both scale cleanly per person:

• Calories: plan for roughly 2,000 calories per person, per day. Active adults and teens need more; small children need less, so it averages out for most households.
• Water: plan for 1 gallon per person, per day — about half for drinking, half for cooking and hygiene. Hot climates, pregnancy, and pets push this higher.

Pick a horizon

How many days do you want to cover? Common milestones:

• 3 days — the classic "grab bag" minimum for a short outage.
• 2 weeks — what most emergency agencies now recommend as a baseline.
• 1–3 months — a deep pantry that rides out job loss, supply gaps, or a bad winter.

Do the math

Multiply it out (or let the food storage calculator do it). For a household of four aiming at two weeks:

• Food: 4 people × 2,000 cal × 14 days = 112,000 calories.
• Water: 4 people × 1 gal × 14 days = 56 gallons.

Calories are easier to stock than they look: a single pound of rice is about 1,600 calories, and a big 40-ounce jar of peanut butter is around 6,600. The 112,000-calorie target works out to roughly 65 to 70 pounds of staples: a couple of totes, not a bunker.

Now check where you actually stand

The hard part isn't the target — it's knowing how close you are to it without counting cans on the floor. That's exactly what BeaglePrep does: you set your household size, and it tracks your days of supply per category (food, water, medical, fuel) against these same per-person needs, then rolls it into a single Prep Score so you can see the gaps at a glance.

Get BeaglePrep free on Android or iPhone and turn your stockpile into a number you can actually trust.