The Ultimate Prepper Food Storage Guide for Long-Term Survival

Preppers know the importance of an emergency food storage plan to prepare for any possible disaster or personal doomsday. If you want to build up your prepper skills, our guide can help you create a safe and reliable food storage plan to keep you fed in every situation.

Food storage is one of the most important aspects of prepping and the most expensive. However, it is possible to save money on your food storage by learning the best survival foods for you to store.

Whether we are talking about prepping food or food we eat daily, a large portion of our monthly budget goes to eating and feeding our family. When people first become interested in preparedness, they sometimes get sticker shock when they figure out how much it will cost to build up their long-term food storage.

The truth is when done correctly, putting together your survival food storage stockpile doesn’t cost anything extra. If you focus on food with a longer expiration date, you will save some money in the long run.

In this article about building and maintaining your food storage pantry, we talked about buying in bulk, organizing and reducing waste, and running your kitchen like a restaurant runs theirs.

Why Food Storage is Important for Preppers

Food storage is essential for preppers because it is the only way to ensure survival in the long term. Not having an emergency food supply puts your family at risk in case of a disaster or emergency situation.

With a complete plan, you can be sure that your pantry is always stocked with items that won’t go bad over time and will help sustain you during difficult times. These days even people who don’t consider themselves preppers are beginning to understand the importance of self-reliance & preparedness.

Prepping Food Storage Best Practices

Whether you’re just starting or already have an existing prepper food storage plan, there are some basic best practices you should be aware of. Taking the steps below will save you time and money and maximize the benefits of your survival food storage.

Focus on the simple things. Check expiration dates on all items you place in your food storage and rotate it frequently. You should also include various food types to ensure you’ll have enough to last for at least one month, and ideally, up to and beyond a full year. Below are some considerations to include in your prepper food storage plan.

Long Shelf Life Pantry & Survival Food

While having a 25-year shelf life long-term survival food is great, it isn’t absolutely necessary. As long as we eat what we store, pantry foods with a best-by date of 1 to 3 years will do. I recently wrote an article that goes over some of the best pantry food you can add to your food storage that is available at the grocery store.

These pantry foods are also usually better than prepackaged long-term prepping foods because they taste better, cost less, and have more nutritional value. However, if you are looking to quickly bulk up your food storage or storage space is limited, prepackaged long-term food is a great addition to a prepper’s food storage plan.

I’ll explain more below, but I do suggest you have a wide range of survival foods in your food storage, including canned foods, pantry foods, and long-term survival food.

Food that Get’s Eaten Regularly

One of the biggest money savers in your long-term food storage plan is storing food your family will eat.

This is less important with the 25-year shelf life of food, but your pantry shouldn’t be filled with canned food and other products your family doesn’t eat.

The reason it’s less important or the longer-term survival food because they last so long. Also, in a survival situation, people will be hungry, and everything tastes better when you’re hungry.

High Calorie Foods 

When people go shopping, they tend to look at serving size rather than calorie count. When it comes to your prepper food storage, it’s important to count your calories rather than look at serving size.

There isn’t a standard for what a serving size is. Therefore, a company can change its serving size to make you think you are getting more for your money.

While this varies depending on a number of factors, a good rule of thumb for your survival food storage is 2,000 calories per day per person. Caloric intake needs can vary depending on a person’s age, metabolism, physical activity, and size.

Protein Rich Survival Foods

Along with counting calories, we should also pay attention to protein, carbohydrates, and fats. In a disaster scenario, we won’t be worrying about eating too much of these, we’ll be worried about getting enough.

Have a look at this article that does a good job of explaining why prepping foods that are high in calories, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats is important.

I will say, however, that in a shorter-term disaster scenario like a natural disaster or personal doomsday, the nutritional value takes a back seat to calories.

Easy to Cook Meals

It’s important that we keep in mind in a survival situation, natural disaster, or grid down event, our daily routines will change. Our modern conveniences may be gone, and we should plan accordingly.

The stove and refrigerator may not be available, and water may be in short supply. It’s important that our food storage includes meals that are easy to prepare and don’t require a lot of resources.

Pro Tip: Figure out your options for cooking in a disaster scenario and build your prepping food storage plan around that as much as possible.

Versatile Prepping Foods

When I say versatile prepping foods, I mean foods that can be used to create different types of meals; canned veggies, flour, beans, and rice are all foods that can be used for different meals.

These foods are great for diversifying our survival food storage and mixing things up. While in a disaster scenario, any food is good food, having a little variety will help with morale.

Normalcy Survival Foods (Comfort Food)

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the survival aspect of our food storage that we forget about the foods that we love, and the “Necessary Conveniences”. These are foods that will not “save our life” but will save our sanity.

Make sure your long-term food storage plan includes items like coffee, sweets, drink mixes, and anything that can be stored long-term that the family enjoys.

Non Refrigerated Prepping Foods

While not all disaster scenarios involve not having electricity, it’s important that we plan for the worst and hope for the best. Foods that require refrigeration shouldn’t be included in your prepping food storage plan.

If you do happen to have electricity is a disaster situation, the refrigerated foods will be a bonus. But if the grid goes down, foods like milk, meat and cheese won’t last very long.

There are ways to keep your refrigerator cool in short-term disasters such as a power inverter connected to your car and generators, but these are not feasible in long-term disasters.

Long-Term Food Storage Considerations

When prepping for a long-term survival situation, it’s important to keep in mind that food storage needs will require periodic replenishment. To guarantee you have enough food, create a menu and shopping list before purchasing items. Also, take into account the nutritional value of your meals – think about the vitamins, minerals, and calories you’ll need to stay healthy while living off stored supplies.

And don’t forget preparation methods – learn how to cook over an open fire or with alternative methods since there may be times when electricity is either limited or unavailable. Knowing these points now will help save time and stress later!

Not only is it important to have the right foods and ways to cook them included in your long-term preparedness food storage plan, but there are also a few other things we need to keep in mind as well.

Food Storage Space

How much preparedness food you decide to store depends on a few factors, but the available storage space is usually the main consideration.

Most preppers like to have around a year’s worth (some even more) of survival food stored just in case the big one hits. However, that’s not feasible for some people.

In my opinion, any food storage is good food storage. If all you can store is a month’s worth of long-term food, that will get you through most situations.

Your Prepping Budget

Another big one is how much money you can spend on your food preps without breaking the bank. Being prepared for any disaster means buying supplies and learning new preparedness skills.

With all the areas of preparedness, food storage will inevitably be where most of your preparedness budget goes. This doesn’t mean you need to spend more on food than you normally would, it just means you spend more money upfront.

If money is a large factor when if comes to your prepping food storage, my suggestion is to start small and work your way up. Over time you will begin to stockpile quite a bit in your emergency food storage.

Include Cooking Accessories

This may seem a bit obvious, but if you are going to store canned foods, you better have a manual can opener. These days we have all these electronic devices that make life easier, but in a grid-down event, they will be useless.

Cooking accessories also include what you will be cooking with. Without using your kitchen stove, you may need to cook on a propane grill or an open fire. Do you have the utensils to accommodate this?

Our main off-grid cooking options are our All American Sun Oven, the propane grill, and the fireplace. We have pots and pans without plastic handles for the sun oven and a cast iron dutch oven for an open fire.

Your Family Size

This may go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway because it’s something people tend to overlook when calculating how long their long-term food storage will last.

The larger your family is the more opportunity there is for waste and over usage…especially if you have teenagers. Unexpected guests will also reduce the time frame your food storage will last.

Our survival food storage plan includes a 25% (an extra person) buffer. This helps offset spoilage, waste and over-usage.

Types of Prepping Food Storage

When it comes to food storage, preppers have several options available, it’s always good to mix things up and not put all your eggs in one basket. Each of these different types of long-term food storage has its pluses and minuses.

The most common are freeze-dried and dehydrated foods. This preserves food for long periods of time and protects it from spoilage. Other methods include home canning, dehydrating, and storing items in airtight containers such as Mylar bags. No matter the chosen method, it’s important to create a system that works for your situation.

Prepackaged Long Term Foods

Prepackaged long-term survival foods like Legacy or Wise foods offer a wide variety of foods you can store for a very long time. Because these survival food buckets are basically “set it and forget it” they are very convenient when storage space is limited.

The downside of these long-term food storage products is they are pretty expensive. With these prepackaged foods, it all comes down to one thing…

What do you have more of, time? or money?

While we do have some of this prepackaged long-term survival food, it’s only one part of our overall prepping food storage plan.

Pantry Foods

A great way to build up your prepping food storage is by stocking up your pantry over time. Spending a little extra at the grocery store each week can build up your food storage in no time.

Another great thing about pantry foods like boxed meals, spaghetti, pancake mix, etc… is that this is what the family likes to eat.

My kids call the prepackaged long-term foods “prepper food”. Little do they know, they are eating “prepper food” on a daily basis.

Canned Foods

Canned foods are a staple in any long-term survival food storage plan. Canned fruits, canned vegetables, canned meats, canned soups, and anything else you can think of probably come in a can.

The downside of canned foods is that they can sometimes get pushed to the back of the shelf and not be found for years. This leads you to think you have more edible food storage than you actually have.

When it comes to canned foods and pantry foods, inventory, rotation, and organization are critical. There is a lot of room for error when it comes to the long-term survival foods, but you only have a few years with these canned food storage products.

DIY Food Long-Term Storage

A good alternative for long-term prepackaged meals is doing it yourself. Putting together your own 5-gallon food storage buckets can save you around 30% off prepackaged meals.

As I said earlier, this is the way to go if you have more time than money. These take a little more work to put together but will last just as long if done correctly.

Over at the Survivalist Prepper Academy, I put together the free Prepping Crash Course that goes over how to put together these 5-gallon buckets for your prepping food storage.

Have a Well-Rounded Survival Food Storage Plan

Having a complete food storage plan is essential for any prepper’s long-term survival. This means a variety of items that cover all the necessary nutritional requirements—protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals.

It should also include comfort food items to boost morale during stressful periods. Non-perishable items don’t spoil over time and can be stored indefinitely. This includes canned meats, canned vegetables, grains and flour, sugar and honey, coffee, tea, hearty soups, and stews.

If you follow all the steps listed above, you will end up with a well-rounded long-term food storage plan, and have food your family will like to eat.

While the low-cost Ramen noodles have their place in your prepping food storage, make sure you have the meat, protein, fruits and veggies needed for nutritional value.

It’s also important not to forget about spices and condiments. While these are not absolutely necessary for your survival in a disaster, they will make that “prepper food” much more palatable as my kids call it.

Closing Thoughts…

One thing I want to add before I get out of here is if your family won’t eat it, or if you don’t know how to use it, don’t store it. While beans and grains are great survival foods, they are just taking up space if you don’t know how to make a meal with them.

This is not to say forget about them altogether. Learn how to use them and add them to your prepping food storage. Learning to cook from scratch will increase what you can store.