How Much Food to Store Per Person: Start With One Week
How to work out how much food to keep for your family without overbuying: start with one week, grow to a month and build toward a three-month supply.
"How much food should I have at home?" is the question that stops most people, because the answer sounds huge: months of supplies, full shelves, a lot of money. The good news is that almost nobody starts there, and the guidance doesn't ask you to.
Start with one week
The food storage guide from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lays out a gradual path: one week of food first, then a month and, over time, a three-month supply. It adds a condition that's easy to miss: they should be foods your family already eats. And it asks for restraint: no extremes and no going into debt to build it.
One week is a goal anyone can reach in a couple of shopping trips, and it already covers an illness, a week without income or a storm that closes the roads.
A way to work it out without a scale
Forget grams-per-person tables. Do this instead:
- Write down seven dinners and seven lunches your family really eats.
- List the ingredients in each dish that need no refrigeration or keep for a good while: rice, noodles, lentils, beans, canned goods, oil, tomato sauce.
- Count how much of each you use in a normal week. That's your unit.
- Compare with what you already have and buy only the difference.
A week is those seven meals. A month is four of those weeks, and three months is twelve. When dishes repeat, the real number drops, so don't let the multiplication scare you.
Three things to watch
Variety. A week of nothing but rice and tuna lasts about a day. Include some protein, some fat, canned vegetables or fruit and a treat that lifts morale. A container garden can add fresh greens and herbs.
Special needs. Babies, older relatives, allergies or medical diets change the list. What can't be replaced at the last minute goes first.
Cooking without services. If gas or power fails, you need food that can be eaten cold or cooked quickly, and extra water to prepare it. If the problem is a power cut, first see what to do with the food in your refrigerator.
And the long-term part
Once you have the three months, the same guidance mentions a longer-lasting supply of basic staples such as wheat, white rice and beans, packaged properly. It's a later, optional step; no need to think about it until the earlier ones are done.
Where Despendo fits
When you register your family in the family profile and load your pantry, Despendo works out how many days of food your supplies cover, so "one week" stops being a feeling and becomes a number. The shopping suggestions flag what's missing, and FIFO rotation keeps what you bought from spoiling. Here is how rotation works step by step.
Sources and further reading
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