All You Need to Know About Prepping Your Two-Week Emergency Food Supply List

Get Ready To Prepare Your Two-Week Emergency Food Supply List

Being prepared for emergencies will bring you peace of mind that you can tackle the most difficult of situations with confidence. And faced with a crisis, nothing is more important than having a two-week emergency food supply list as FEMA and the Red Cross recommends.

For a two-week emergency food supply list, you need a mixture of non-perishable foods – such as rice, beans, pasta and canned vegetables – along with semi-perishable foods, like onions and potatoes. This will ensure you will get the correct nutrients needed to last you the fortnight. If you are on a budget, you will want to stockpile over time instead of buying everything in one go. 

Many experts and organisations believe that three days’ worth of food and water supplies is enough, but two weeks is definitely better – even if it is unlikely that you will be left without any food for this long. If you’re living in a city, you probably don’t have a lot of room to store food and two weeks may sound too ambitious. So it’s best to evaluate your situation and do what you can with what you’ve got.

This article will look at how you can best prepare two weeks of emergency food ahead of time. And don’t worry, even if you’re on a strict budget, there’s always a way to build up your emergency food supply – as you’ll find out later in this post.

Remember that when planning for emergencies, you will need to consider what disaster is likely to hit your area. Do you tend to get power cuts in your area? What about floods? The history of your area will go a long way in helping you with what to prepare for and why. But no matter where you are based, you will still want to stock up for emergencies that come out of the blue.

What to Include On Your Two-Week Emergency Food Supply List?

When deciding what to include on your two-week food supply list it can be easy to get overwhelmed. This is why it is important for all you beginners out there to start by taking a close look at your weekly shopping list and sorting it into three sections as below:

• Perishable Foods
• Non-perishable foods
• Semi-perishable foods

Let’s start with listing your perishable foods. This is food that goes off quickly – like fresh fruit and vegetables and bread from the bakery. As you will be aware, it’s usually best to buy this kind of food on a daily/every other day basis. Unfortunately, this is no good for an emergency food supply. The point of fresh food is that it’s, well, fresh – so keeping old rotting fruit and veg in your house isn’t exactly conducive to building a successful food stockpile.

However, one thing you could do if you generally prefer fresh food (and who doesn’t) is to grow your own fruit and vegetables. You won’t be able to know ahead of time when an emergency could happen so it will be tricky planning ahead. But you’ll be surprised at what you can achieve in the smallest of spaces. Even if you’re living in a small apartment in a city, you can grow some food even if you are on a budget. This isn’t for everyone, but it is fun if you are motivated to learn new skills.

Next, let’s take a look at non-perishable foods. Make a list of all the food you buy each week that falls under this category. Non-perishable foods are those that you can store for a long time – examples include grains such as rice, beans, pasta, ready-to-eat meals, canned foods, frozen foods and other common survival foods you may not have considered.

And finally, semi-perishable foods. These are foods that last a bit of time but not as long as non-perishable types. Think potatoes, biscuits, garlic, ginger – anything that you can store for a bit longer before it starts to spoil.

Finalising Your Emergency Supply List

Once you have your weekly shopping list, swap out all of the food on the perishable list for non-perishable foods. Ham could become canned ham. Fruit could become tinned fruit. Carrots could become frozen carrots, and so on. In terms of semi-perishable food, you can keep some of these foods on your list as some of these options can last two weeks. But if you are thinking of food for long-term storage you will want to strike off all semi-perishable food and keep to non-perishable foods.

Now you should have whittled down your list to what you buy on a daily basis for you and your family and have a list of food that will last quite a while. Just don’t forget water! Depending on how many family members you have, you will want to stock up on at least half a gallon a day of fresh water.

As discussed in the article about how much food to stockpile per person, the quick rule to remember about water is the “8×8” rule where you should drink eight 8-ounce glasses per day. If you multiply this by the number of people in your family, it can be easy to get overwhelmed about how much water you may need in a disaster-type situation.

But it’s best to prioritise water because despite being an abundant resource, it is the first thing to be in demand in an emergency and if the power goes off you may not be able to access it easily. So, if you can find a small section or space in your house to keep enough water for at least two weeks, it’s probably he best thing you could do to prep for a crisis.

How Many Calories Do You Need To Eat Per Day?

Once you have your emergency shopping list ready, you will need to figure out how many calories you need to eat per day. Now, this may not be something you are used to considering because when we shop, we don’t really tend to think about calories but rather the types of meals we want to cook. But in an emergency situation, you need to think more practically.

According to the UK’s national health service (NHS), the average man needs 2,500 calories a day while a woman needs 2,000 calories a day. If you do use this as a benchmark for how much you’ll need when preparing your two-week food supply list, this is 35,000 calories for men and 28,000 calories for women!

That may sound like a lot of food, but it is important to remember that this is just a guide rather than a solid figure. Everyone needs to take into account their personal situation. For example, you may not be in your house/flat or apartment that much, because you are out at work, or maybe you need to collect children from school etc. So, you will need to carefully assess the amount of calories you will need according to the type of life you lead.

Humans can live on very little food but because you never know how long you will be without food it is always worth being over-prepared rather than under-prepared.

How Many Calories Do Children Need?

You may have young children who will need fewer calories in comparison to teenagers and adults. According to the National Health Service in the UK, children of around ten years old need 2,023 calories (boys) and 1,936 calories (girls). The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition estimates the average daily energy requirements for children aged 7 to 10 years old are as the below:

AGE	BOYS	GIRLS
7	6,900kJ or 1,649kcal	6,400kJ or 1,530kcal
8	7,300kJ or 1,745kcal	6,800kJ or 1,625kcal
9	7,700kJ or 1,840kcal	7,200kJ or 1,721kcal
10	8,500kJ or 2,032kcal	8,100kJ or 1,936kcal

But these figures are just a guide and children may need more or less depending on factors such as how physically active they are. When it comes to types of food, non-perishable food options for children don’t differ hugely from those for adults (as long as they are over seven). Here are some examples of non-perishable food options for children:

• Small biscuits and crackers
• Breakfast cereal
• Granola bars
• Peanut butter
• Dried fruit bars
• Pasta
• Rice
• Canned soups and spaghetti hoops

It is also key to remember pet food if you have pets and of course don’t forget those necessities you can’t do without like toilet paper, soap and cooking oil.

Shopping For Your Emergency Food List On A Budget

The good news is that emergencies don’t happen every day. So, you have time to build up your emergency food supply list over time. You can start by adding a few surplus items to your shopping basket every time you go to do your shop. Over time, you will build up your supply and before you realise it you will have a food supply to last you a couple of weeks.

If you want to set a target and you are on a tight budget, you could go for £5 pounds/euros or $5 dollars of extra food on your list each week. While that doesn’t sound like much, for this price you can generally get at least four tinned cans of green beans, or any other vegetable as well as around two packets of brown rice.

A Few More Tips For Buying Healthy Nutritious Food On A Budget:

• Avoid overly processed foods.
• Don’t overload on rice and pasta – make sure you balance proteins with carbohydrates.
• If you opt for dried beans, take them out off the plastic packaging and store them in jars with tight-fitting lids.
• Vitamin-rich vegetables and fruit are important – even if they’re not as fresh as you’d normally enjoy.
• Get food that can be easily prepared in tricky situations (like power cuts).
• Don’t get too much frozen food – if there is a power cut it won’t stay frozen for long.

Two-Week Emergency Food Supply List: Final Thoughts

If you stock up for two weeks in case of emergencies you will be ahead of the game and well-prepped for disasters. According to experts, most people don’t even have three days’ worth of food let alone two weeks so by preparing ahead of time you can have peace of mind you can survive the most difficult situations.