A 30-day emergency food supply for a family of four: what to buy and what it costs (UK)

The short answer

No UK official source asks households to keep a month of food. Be Ready asks for 3 days, Sweden at least a week and Germany 10 days. If you want to go further, a month for two adults and two children is about 230 tins plus dry food such as oats, pasta and rice. Using the Office for National Statistics' average UK prices for September 2026, our example list costs about £387, or about £3.23 per person per day. Build it slowly from food you already eat, eat the oldest first, and keep a no-cook week inside it in case the power goes.

Prints the checklist without the menus.

Do this now

Get the official 3 days sorted first. Food that keeps without a fridge or cooking, and 3 litres of water per person per day (Be Ready). Our 7-day no-cook food box covers this.
Count what's already in your cupboards. Most families have several days of food at home without trying.
Add a few extra tins to each normal shop from the list below. Over two or three months you'll have a month's store without one big bill.
Put a manual tin opener with the tins.
Set a 6-month reminder to check dates, as Be Ready suggests.

Free · 2 PDFs · print and phone

Free: the Alert Action Card

The first six steps for a nuclear or radiation alert, a missile or air attack alert, no water from the tap and a power cut, on one page for the fridge, plus a phone version you can open offline. Every step checked against GOV.UK, UKHSA and Be Ready on 3 November 2026. No sign-up needed.

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What official advice says, and where it stops

No UK official source we found asks households to keep a month of food. Here's what the official advice says:

Who	How long	What they say
UK, GOV.UK Be Ready	3 days	Non-perishable food that doesn't need a fridge or cooking, such as tinned meat, fish or vegetables, dried fruit and nuts. Bottled water, 3 litres per person per day
Sweden, MCF	At least a week	Be able to manage on your own for at least a week: water, food, communication and heating
Germany, BBK	10 days	Food and drink for 10 days, mostly things your family normally eats; about 14 litres of drinks per person per week

So a month is your choice, not official advice. It makes sense if you want a bigger buffer for illness, job loss, bad weather or long disruption to shops. If money or space is tight, 3 days and then a week are the useful steps. A month is extra.

How we built this list

Family: two adults and two children, three meals a day for 30 days.
Portion sizes: from the British Nutrition Foundation: about 75g of dry pasta or rice and about 40g of breakfast cereal per adult portion. We used adult portions for everyone. Children usually eat less, so treat the extra as spare.
Fruit and veg: the NHS says a portion of tinned fruit or veg is about the same as a fresh portion, for example 3 heaped tablespoons of sweetcorn. Beans and pulses only ever count as one of your 5 A Day.
Prices: the Office for National Statistics' average UK prices for September 2026, the latest month in its shopping prices data (file updated 27 October 2026). These are averages of what's on sale across brands, not the cheapest price. Own-brand is usually cheaper.
What we didn't do: we haven't counted calories, because we'd need nutrition figures for each product. The NHS says an average man needs about 2,500kcal a day and an average woman about 2,000kcal, and it varies with age, size and activity. Check pack labels if you need to.

The example meal plan

Meal	Every day	Notes
Breakfast	Porridge (40g oats each), honey or sugar	Make with water, or milk if you have it. Needs heat
Lunch	Tinned soup (half a 400g tin each), crackers	Most soups can be eaten cold in a power cut
Dinner	Pasta or rice (75g each), a tin of tomatoes, a tin of sweetcorn, plus one of: tuna, canned meat with beans, or baked beans	Rotate the three dinners through the month
Pudding	Tinned fruit	One 400g tin between four
Snacks	Dried fruit, nuts, biscuits, peanut butter and jam on crackers	Keep some for children who don't like the main meals
Drinks	Tea, coffee, squash	Tap water as normal

The shopping list, with average prices

Prices are ONS average UK prices for September 2026. Pack sizes are the ones the ONS uses.

Item	ONS pack size	Average price	How many	Cost
Oats or porridge	750g	£2.36	7	£16.52
Honey	400g	£2.22	2	£4.44
Sugar, white	1kg	£1.15	1	£1.15
Soup, tinned	400g	£1.19	60	£71.40
Crackers	250g	£1.32	15	£19.80
Pasta, dry	500g	£0.99	9	£8.91
Rice, basmati or jasmine	750g	£1.90	6	£11.40
Tomatoes, tinned	400g	£0.65	30	£19.50
Sweetcorn, tinned	250g	£0.93	30	£27.90
Tuna, tinned	150g	£1.09	30	£32.70
Canned meat	400g	£3.72	10	£37.20
Baked beans	425g	£0.88	20	£17.60
Other tinned beans (kidney beans, chickpeas)	400g	£0.67	20	£13.40
Fruit, tinned	400g	£1.17	30	£35.10
Dried fruit	200g	£2.77	8	£22.16
Nuts	225g	£1.81	4	£7.24
Peanut butter	300g	£2.02	4	£8.08
Jam	400g	£1.64	2	£3.28
Biscuits, sweet	250g	£1.27	8	£10.16
Tea bags	240g	£2.53	2	£5.06
Coffee, instant	100g	£3.51	2	£7.02
Fruit squash	1 litre	£1.75	4	£7.00
Total				£387.02

That's about £12.90 a day for the family, or £3.23 per person per day.

Not in the total: long-life milk, salt, stock cubes, cooking oil, herbs and spices, and anything fresh. The ONS list either doesn't include them or doesn't price them in a way we could use. Add them at your own shop's prices.

Allergies, special diets and babies: swap items as you need to. Keep the formula your baby already uses, and ask your health visitor if you are unsure: see babies and young children in an emergency. We don't link to or sell first infant formula.

How much space it takes

The list is about 230 tins plus about 15kg of dry food in packets. As a rough guide (our estimate, not an official figure), that's several kitchen cupboards or a few large storage boxes.

Keep it cool, dry and off the floor, away from radiators and damp.
Not in a garage or shed that floods or gets hot.
Split it if you're short of space: a box under each bed works. See prepping in a small flat.

Water: why a month of food doesn't mean a month of water

At Be Ready's 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, a family of four needs 360 litres for 30 days, and more for cooking pasta and rice. Few homes can store that.

A month's food store only makes sense if the taps still work. Keep the official 3 days of bottled water (36 litres for four), and see how much water to store and making water safe to drink for when they don't.

If the power goes off

Porridge, pasta and rice need cooking. So:

Keep a no-cook week inside the month: tuna, crackers, peanut butter, tinned fruit, dried fruit, nuts, and soups you're happy to eat cold. Our 7-day no-cook box lists one.
Eat fridge food first, then the freezer, then the tins. The Food Standards Agency says a fridge stays cold for up to 4 hours and a full freezer for up to 48 hours (24 if half full), if you keep the doors shut.
Cooking without power: the FSA says most camping stoves and barbecues are for outdoor use only. Never use them indoors, in a garage or in a tent, because of carbon monoxide. See cooking without electricity.

Build it slowly

Buying a month of food in one trip is expensive and leaves less on the shelf for others. A gentler way:

Week 1: finish your 3-day kit.
Weeks 2 to 4: add a few tins and one dry item to each shop until you have a week.
Months 2 and 3: keep adding until you reach a month.
From then on: eat from the store and replace what you use on your next shop, oldest at the front. See stock rotation.

Dates and rotation

Best before is about quality. GOV.UK says food is usually safe to eat after it, but may not be as good.
Use by is about safety. Don't eat food after its use-by date.
Be Ready suggests a reminder every six months to check dates and swap items.

Ready-made "one month" food kits

Specialist shops sell freeze-dried month kits for hundreds of pounds. One we checked on 1 November 2026 cost £356. We couldn't open its product page today to check how many people it feeds or how many calories a day it gives, so we can't compare it fairly. Before you buy one, check those two numbers, whether it needs hot water, and compare it with the supermarket list above. For most families, tins you already eat are cheaper and easier to rotate. Our guide to ready-made prepper kits has questions to ask.

Printable checklist

3-day kit done first: no-cook food and 3 litres of water per person per day
Manual tin opener kept with the tins
Breakfast: 7 × 750g oats, 2 jars honey, 1kg sugar
Lunch: 60 tins soup, 15 packs crackers
Dinner carbs: 9 × 500g pasta, 6 × 750g rice
Dinner tins: 30 tomatoes, 30 sweetcorn, 30 tuna, 10 canned meat, 20 baked beans, 20 other beans
Pudding and snacks: 30 tinned fruit, 8 dried fruit, 4 nuts, 4 peanut butter, 2 jam, 8 biscuits
Drinks: 2 tea, 2 instant coffee, 4 squash
Extras at your shop's prices: long-life milk, salt, stock cubes, oil
Swaps for allergies, special diets, babies and pets
A no-cook week set aside inside the store
Stored cool, dry, off the floor, not in a garage that floods
Oldest at the front; eat and replace
6-month reminder in the calendar to check dates

What to buy

About these links: plain links to ordinary retailer pages. We may earn from some links in future; we don't now. We haven’t tested these and we don’t rank them: they are examples that were in stock when we checked. Prices change. Check what you already own first. Full kit list

Manual tin opener
Look for: Works without power. Keep it with the tins.
Search Amazon UK
Food that needs no cooking, for 3 days
Look for: Tinned meat, fish or vegetables, dried fruit and nuts: food you already eat. Check dates every six months.
Search Amazon UK
Food-grade water containers with lids
Look for: Food-grade, with a lid, never one that held chemicals, fuel or paint. Date the water you store.
- Liquipak 25L Water Container BPA-Free Food Grade HDPE Jerry Can · Amazon UK · £14.99 (price on 1 November 2026) Shop
- SolaDirect Jerry Can 20 L with Tap Food Grade · Amazon UK · £27.99 (price on 1 November 2026) Shop

Frequently asked questions

How much food does a family of four need for 30 days?

There is no official UK figure for a month. Our example plan is three meals a day for two adults and two children, using British Nutrition Foundation portion sizes (75g of dry pasta or rice, 40g of cereal). That comes to about 230 tins, 4.8kg of oats, 4.5kg of pasta, 4.5kg of rice, plus crackers, dried fruit, nuts, spreads and drinks. The NHS says an average man needs about 2,500kcal a day and an average woman about 2,000kcal. We haven't counted calories in the list, so check pack labels if that matters for your family.

How much does a month of emergency food cost in the UK?

Our example list costs about £387 at the ONS average UK prices for September 2026, which is about £12.90 a day for the family, or £3.23 per person per day. ONS averages cover all brands, so own-brand tins usually cost less and premium brands more. It leaves out milk, salt, stock cubes, oil and fresh food, which the ONS list doesn't price in a form we could use.

Does the UK government recommend a month of food?

No. GOV.UK's Be Ready checklist asks for non-perishable food and bottled water for 3 days. Sweden's civil defence agency says be able to manage on your own for at least a week, and Germany's BBK says 10 days. A month goes well beyond any official advice we found.

Do I need to store a month of water too?

At Be Ready's 3 litres of drinking water per person per day, a family of four needs 360 litres for 30 days, which most homes can't store. A month's food store assumes the taps still work. Keep the official 3 days of bottled water (36 litres for four), and see our water storage guide if you want more.

What if the power goes off?

Pasta, rice and porridge need cooking. Keep a week of no-cook food inside your month store, such as tinned fish, crackers, peanut butter, tinned fruit and soups that can be eaten cold. The Food Standards Agency says most camping stoves and barbecues are for outdoor use only. Eat food from the fridge first, then the freezer: the FSA says a fridge stays cold for up to 4 hours and a full freezer for up to 48 hours.

Is it safe to eat tins after the best before date?

GOV.UK says best before dates are about quality, not safety: food is usually safe after the date but may not be as good. Use-by dates are about safety, and you shouldn't eat food after its use-by date. Eat the oldest tins first and replace them as you go.

Sources

We opened each page on the date shown. Official advice changes: if a source says something different now, follow the source.

GOV.UK Be Ready: be ready for emergencies (checklist: food and bottled water for 3 days, 6-month reminder) (read 2 November 2026)
Office for National Statistics: Shopping prices comparison tool (average prices of items in the consumer prices basket) (read 2 November 2026)
Office for National Statistics (ONSdigital on GitHub): shopping prices tool data, avgprice.csv and metadata.csv (latest month September 2026, file updated 27 Oct 2026) (read 2 November 2026)
British Nutrition Foundation: Portion sizes (read 2 November 2026)
NHS: Understanding calories (read 2 November 2026)
NHS: 5 A Day portion sizes (read 2 November 2026)
GOV.UK: Best before and use-by dates (read 2 November 2026)
Food Standards Agency (GOV.UK): Food safety in a power cut (read 2 November 2026)
Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency (MCF): Home preparedness, prepping for at least a week (read 2 November 2026)
BBK (Germany): Stockpiling (read 2 November 2026)

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30 days of emergency food for a family of four: a UK shopping list with real average prices