If this has not been posted before.
http://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm

Well, that's a simple way to figure it, isn't it?

Sue

Seems kinda light on the water. For a family of five it shows only 70 gallons.

Some of those numbers look way off. I punched in four people and we very rarely eat out and pack lunches everyday. Almost all other meals are made from scratch. We also keep very close inventory of what we use and have stored away,


For instance 4 people for one year: 8 gallons of veg oil
We are still working on the same gallon jug that is well over 1-1/2 years old.

160 lbs of white sugar
We use 1/4 of that per year. I opened a 10 lb bag of sugar about 2 months ago and checking it and weighing it now = 7 lbs. Most of this sugar is used for homemade bread, muffins and some cereal. Two of us do not use sugar at all in cereal, coffee or tea.

12 lbs brown sugar
Our last purchase of 2 lbs months ago is barely touched and is dried up and hard as an old piece of timber

12 lbs Corn syrup
??? We have never bought that much in 20 years.

12 lbs jam
We have used 4 small jars in a year. This would equal to 2-3 lbs.

Many other calculations are way off, specially the water. 56 gallons for 4 people for a year.....I don't think so.

Numbers are always going to be off because each person is different and depending on your activity you could use a lot more calories and require a lot more too. Sure you can average but that's never really that accurate.

I suggest keeping track of what you eat exactly for a month or two 6 would be better and then figuring out what you need yourself.

I know when I am chopping, stacking wood and shoveling snow all in one day I eat a LOT more calories than a normal day.

Recently I had. Hot cereal w/bread for breakfast, tuna/egg sandwich for lunch with cheetohs, 4 pop-starts spaced apart during the day as snacks, an apple, then a bean burrito (large) and 2 tacos for dinner, and a snack later on. I've found pop-tarts to be one of if not the only readily available energy source for fast refill and fast acting that don't make me tired after an hour or two that sometimes occurs with a candy bar. I weight approx 150lbs and am under 6' tall. I'd imagine this type of meal is not standard on a food calculator but in a survival situation I could see myself doing a LOT more manual labor than if I had gas and machinery to help.

Measuring what you actually use and then stocking your pantry based on what you now know is a very good idea.

I also see that the numbers given for water rations are a long way off.
I wonder if they are counting water for cooking or for washing.
If you are using dried foods you are going to need water just to hydrate them.

The water is supposed to be two weeks' worth, not a year

We keep very close track of our food usage....we have been doing this for years as part our food prep inventory which now sits at 8 months worth.

On a couple of other forums, the calculations from the linked web page were also called into question as to how inaccurate they appear to be.

Like anything else, take what you read on the internet with a grain of salt....or a bucket of salt depending on how much you have stored.

That makes sense.
Too bad they didn't note it anywhere.

That isn't even much water for two weeks. It only allows for one gallon per person, per day. That isn't much if reconstituting dehydrated foods. Much less cleaning, hygiene, etc.