Skill guide · Water & Food

Auditing Your Food Supply

The Ready, Set, Ready assessment asks a simple-sounding question: do you know, as an actual count and not a guess, how many days of food you currently have? Most people don't, and there's no shame in that, almost nobody has ever actually counted. This guide is the counting method itself: no kitchen scale required, no nutrition background assumed, just a worksheet, a worked example to copy, and a calculator. It's the reverse of Calorie Planning for Your Food Supply, that guide tells you how much to buy to hit a target from zero; this one tells you how far what's already in the house actually gets you.

You don't need to be exact, you need to be honest

Two things make this feel harder than it is. First, most food packaging doesn't advertise itself in a form that's easy to add up, a box of pasta says nothing about "days," it says "16 oz." Second, nobody's pantry is a clean, full set of sealed packages, it's half a bag of rice, three cans of something, a jar that's mostly empty. Both problems have the same fix: round down when unsure, and use the label that's already on the package instead of trying to estimate from scratch.

Most bags and boxes already tell you the weight. Look on the front or side panel for a number in pounds (lb) or ounces (oz). 16 oz is 1 lb. If a bag of rice says "20 lb" and looks about half full, count it as 10 lb, not 20.
Cans and jars are counted, not weighed. You don't need a scale for these, just count how many you have. The worksheet below tells you exactly what to count.
When in doubt, guess low. A pantry that turns out to cover a little more than you counted is a pleasant surprise. A pantry you overcounted is a real gap you didn't know you had. This whole exercise is about removing a blind spot, not passing a test, so err toward the number that keeps you honest about what's actually missing.
"Kcal" is just "Calories." The Calories number on a nutrition label and "kcal" are the same unit, food-energy content. This guide uses kcal because that's what the USDA's own reference data uses, but every number below means exactly what the Nutrition Facts panel on a can already means.

Two ways to count, pick based on how much time you have

Neither method below is the "wrong" one. Use whichever actually gets done.

The fast version: count meals, not calories

Walk your kitchen and count how many complete meals you could actually put together right now, a protein plus a starch plus something to go with it. Ten cans of vegetables alone isn't ten meals, it's a side dish with nothing to pair it with; be honest about what's actually assemble-able. Divide the total meal count by 3 meals per person per day to get a rough day estimate. This takes about five minutes and misses some nuance (it won't catch a pantry that's calorie-heavy but nutritionally thin, or the reverse), but a rough number today is worth more than a perfect one you never get around to.

The worksheet below is the precise version: an actual calorie count, using the same per-pound and per-item figures already published in Calorie Planning for Your Food Supply, so nothing here contradicts that guide. It takes closer to fifteen or twenty minutes the first time, and gives a real number instead of an estimate.

The worksheet: what to actually count, and how

Walk the pantry, freezer, and any other food storage area once, and write down what you find for each row below. Use the unit shown, pounds for bagged staples, a simple count for cans and packaged meals, and check the specific product's label if you want more precision than the average figure gives you.

Category	What to count	Unit to use	Assumed calories
Dry staples (rice, oats, pasta)	Total weight, check the bag's label; estimate a partially-used bag by how full it looks	Pounds	~1,700 kcal/lb
Dried beans (not canned)	Total weight, check the bag's label	Pounds	~1,575 kcal/lb
Cooking oil	Total weight; a standard 48 oz bottle is about 3 lb	Pounds	~4,000 kcal/lb
Peanut or nut butter	Total weight; a standard 16 oz jar is about 1 lb	Pounds	~2,650 kcal/lb
Nonfat dry milk (powder)	Total weight, check the container's label	Pounds	~1,600 kcal/lb
Granulated sugar	Total weight, check the bag's label	Pounds	~1,800 kcal/lb
Canned goods (any kind)	Number of standard 14-16 oz cans	Count	~350 kcal/can (average; a meat-based can often runs higher, check the label for a precise number)
MREs	Number of complete MRE meals	Count	~1,250 kcal/MRE
Freeze-dried entrees (#10 can)	Number of #10 cans	Count	~5,000 kcal/can (varies by product; check the label for a precise number)
Freeze-dried fruits & vegetables (#10 can)	Number of #10 cans, counted separately from entrees	Count	~1,500 kcal/can (varies more than entrees do; check the label, a can of freeze-dried peas and a can of freeze-dried strawberries aren't the same)

Now do the math: fill in what you actually counted. Each row multiplies straight across to a subtotal, so the only addition left is the Total row.

Category	Amount	× Assumed calories	= Total kcal
Dry staples, lb (rice, oats, pasta)		1,700 kcal/lb
Dried beans, lb (not canned)		1,575 kcal/lb
Cooking oil, lb		4,000 kcal/lb
Peanut or nut butter, lb		2,650 kcal/lb
Nonfat dry milk, lb		1,600 kcal/lb
Granulated sugar, lb		1,800 kcal/lb
Canned goods, count		350 kcal/can
MREs, count		1,250 kcal/MRE
Freeze-dried entrees, #10 cans		5,000 kcal/can
Freeze-dried fruit/veg, #10 cans		1,500 kcal/can
Total calories on hand (add this column)

Don't count freeze-dried fruit or vegetables as an entree

A #10 can of freeze-dried fruit or vegetables is a different thing than a #10 can of freeze-dried entree, even though they look alike on a shelf. An entree can is built to be calorie-dense (fats, starches, protein), which is where that ~5,000 kcal figure comes from. A can of freeze-dried peas or strawberries is mostly what a plant already was before the water was removed, real calories, but roughly a third of an entree can's density, sometimes less for low-starch vegetables. Counting a shelf of freeze-dried green beans as if they were entrees overstates your real total by a wide margin.

What if something isn't on this list

Fresh produce, refrigerated food, and freezer food all count toward what you have today, but they don't count toward a multi-day emergency total the same way shelf-stable food does, they depend on power staying on or being eaten within days. Leave them off this worksheet entirely; see Food Safety After a Power Outage for how long refrigerated and frozen food actually stays safe once the power goes out. If you have a shelf-stable item that isn't listed above (crackers, granola bars, dried fruit), a close-enough substitute is fine: dried fruit and granola bars behave like a smaller version of the dry-staples row, crackers behave like a low-density version of the same row. Getting within a reasonable range matters more here than perfect categorization.

A worked example, copy this process with your own numbers

Here's what the whole method looks like for one real household: 2 adults, 1 child, moderately active (some hauling water and physical cleanup, not sedentary). Their pantry, after an honest walk-through:

What they found	Counted as	Calories
A 20 lb bag of rice, about half used	10 lb dry staples	10 × 1,700 = 17,000 kcal
A 4 lb bag of dried pinto beans, unopened	4 lb dried beans	4 × 1,575 = 6,300 kcal
One 48 oz bottle of vegetable oil, about a third used	1 lb cooking oil	1 × 4,000 = 4,000 kcal
One 16 oz jar of peanut butter, unopened	1 lb peanut butter	1 × 2,650 = 2,650 kcal
9 cans of mixed vegetables, soup, and beans	9 cans	9 × 350 = 3,150 kcal
No MREs or freeze-dried food	0	0 kcal

Total calories on hand: 17,000 + 6,300 + 4,000 + 2,650 + 3,150 = 33,100 kcal.

Their daily need, 2 adults at 2,200 kcal each (moderately active) plus 1 child at 80% of that (1,760 kcal, children scale at roughly 80% of the same activity tier's adult figure, see Calorie Planning for Your Food Supply for where that figure comes from): 2,200 + 2,200 + 1,760 = 6,160 kcal/day.

Days covered: 33,100 ÷ 6,160 ≈ 5.4 days. Against a 14-day target, that's a real, specific gap of about 8.6 days, not a vague sense that "we should probably get more food." That's the number this whole exercise exists to produce, and the same subtraction works for any target day count you pick for your own household.

Running the same math from your worksheet

The worked example above shows the exact method: add up your worksheet's calorie total, divide by your household's daily need, and that's your real day count; subtract from a target day count to see the actual gap.

Enter your household once, then your own worksheet numbers, to run that same math instantly and see what's left to close a target gap.

Step 1: Your household

Adults Children (roughly ages 4–13) Calculated at 80% of the adult rate for the same activity level. Household activity level Target days (optional)

Step 2: What you counted on the worksheet

Dry staples (lb) Dried beans (lb) Cooking oil (lb) Peanut butter (lb) Dry milk powder (lb) Sugar (lb) Canned goods (count) MREs (count) Freeze-dried entree #10 cans (count) Freeze-dried fruit/veg #10 cans (count)

Closing the gap

Once you have a real number, two guides pick up from here. Calorie Planning for Your Food Supply covers what to actually buy to close the gap well, not just cheaply: macro balance, the vitamin C and B12 gap in an all-shelf-stable diet, and why the same three meals on repeat undermines a plan that looks fine on paper. The Shopping List and Readiness Ledger are where the actual purchasing happens once you know what to buy.

Redo this periodically, not just once

A pantry changes: food gets eaten, rotated, or quietly expires. Treat this audit as something to redo every few months, not a one-time task to check off, the same way Storing Water Correctly recommends rotating stored water on a schedule rather than assuming a fill date holds forever.

Sources

USDA FoodData Central, calorie density per 100g for dry rice, rolled oats, dry pinto beans, peanut butter, soybean/vegetable oil, and nonfat dry milk, converted to calories per pound, the same figures used in Calorie Planning for Your Food Supply: USDA FoodData Central
U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020–2025, Appendix 2, "Estimated Calorie Needs per Day, by Age, Sex, and Physical Activity Level": reproduced table (APA)
MRE Info, MRE per-meal calorie design targets: MRE Info
Augason Farms Freeze Dried Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo Kit, #10 can total calories (5,040 kcal), used as a representative freeze-dried entree figure, same source as Calorie Planning for Your Food Supply: Walmart