How Much Food is Enough?

"I can't believe I ate the whole thing" - Alka-Seltzer 1970's commercial

There are several web sites that provide food supply calculators - plug in the number of people in different age brackets and the web page figures out how much wheat, flour, sugar, salt, etc. to buy for a one year supply. These sites assume you can cook. (See yesterday's post about storage using prepared meals.) If you don't want a year supply, just divide the amounts suggested or use a site that allows you to enter weeks or months.

http://www.thefoodguys.com/foodcalc.html
This detailed food calculator is based upon quantities suggested by the LDS Church's Home Production and Storage for a one year supply. (LDS = the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint, i.e. the Mormons). Since the LDS church encourages its 13 million members to store 1 year of supplies you'll find that many of the food storage sites are targeted to the LDS community. This particular food calculator requires just two numbers: the number of family members 6 and younger, the number of family members 7 and older. It provides a very detailed breakdown of food items to buy.

http://providentliving.org/content/display/0,11666,7498-1-4070-1,00.html
A very simple calculator that works in US or Metric units. Enter the family size and the number of months you want and the calculator tells you how much grain and beans to buy. Provident Living is an LDS site with recommendations for food/water storage and financial planning

http://www.whatifcolorado.com/ekc/index.html
This site is provided by the state of Colorado as part if its "What If? Colorado" public education. The calculator and check list is for 72-hour kits only but I like it because one of the entries asks for the number of pets in your household. Don't forget the pet food!

http://www.simplylivingsmart.com/tools/food-storage-calculator-4.html
This site is new to me but appears to be run by two individuals with a passion for preparedness and a talent for making educational videos. Their calculator supplies 8 categories: fats, sugar, grain, bean, dairy, water, leavening and salt. All you need enter is the number of weeks, adults (ages 12+) and children.

Bottom Line
While helpful keep in mind that these calculators are tools. You must customize the results for your family. Will you need infant formula and diapers? Pet food? Do you have food allergies? The Simply Living Smart and Provident Living web sites use generic categories like "grain" so you must decide how much of the grain will be wheat, rice, oats, corn, barley, pasta, etc. Don't like barley, no problem, just buy some other grain instead. Example: suppose the calculator recommends 100 lbs of grain. You could satisfy that as follows:

40 lbs wheat
20 lbs rice
10 lbs corn
20 lbs pasta
10 lbs oats
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100 lbs total