Emergency Food Supply Guide

A practical 7-day stockpile per adult is roughly 14,000 kcal total (2,000 kcal x 7 days). Translated into a UK supermarket basket: 14 tins of hearty soup or stew (Heinz Big Soup, Stagg Chilli, Tesco baked beans with sausages — about 400 kcal each), 4 tins of tuna or salmon, 4 tins of fruit in juice, 2 jars of peanut butter, 1 kg of porridge oats, 500 g of crackers or crispbreads, 6 cereal bars and a bag of mixed nuts. Add long-life UHT milk for tea and cereal. For a family of four, multiply by four (roughly 56 tins plus dry goods) — a single trolley at Aldi or Lidl. Storm Eowyn in January 2025 left rural NI and Scottish households without power for 7 to 10 days, so a full week of no-fuss tins is no longer overkill.

Often yes, but follow Food Standards Agency rules carefully. A full freezer keeps food safe for around 48 hours if the door stays closed (24 hours if it is half-full). After Storm Eowyn left some Northern Irish households off-grid for over a week in January 2025, the FSA advice was clear: 1) Keep the freezer door shut until you really need to check. 2) If food still has ice crystals or is at 8 °C or below, it can be cooked and eaten or refrozen, though quality may suffer. 3) Throw out any raw meat, fish, dairy, or cooked dishes that have warmed above 8 °C for more than 4 hours — the risk of salmonella, campylobacter and listeria is not worth it. 4) Pack the freezer with bottles of frozen water in advance; they extend safe time and double as drinking water once thawed. 5) Move sausages, mince and ready meals to the top, where you can grab and cook them first on a camping stove.

If your power has failed but your gas hob is still working, you can boil pasta and rice on a match. If electricity is off and you have an induction or electric hob — common in newer UK builds — you need true no-cook options. A practical no-cook UK menu: Breakfast: overnight oats with UHT milk, malt loaf, bananas, cereal bars, oatcakes with peanut butter. Lunch: tinned tuna or sardines on Ryvita, hummus and oatcakes, cheese (lasts 2 to 3 days unrefrigerated in winter) with crackers, tinned baked beans straight from the tin. Dinner: tinned chilli, ravioli or all-day breakfast eaten cold or warmed on a camping stove, tinned mixed bean salad with olive oil, jacket potatoes wrapped in foil in dying barbecue embers. Snacks: nuts, dried fruit, energy bars, biscuits, chocolate. Keep a butane camping stove and two gas cartridges in the cupboard — they cost about £25 and unlock hot drinks, which keep morale up.

The Cabinet Office's gov.uk/prepare campaign, launched in 2023 alongside the UK Emergency Alerts system, asks households to keep enough non-perishable food and bottled water for at least 72 hours. Specifically it suggests: tinned meat and fish, tinned vegetables and fruit, baked beans, tinned soup, long-life UHT milk, crackers and biscuits, instant porridge, dried pasta and rice, peanut butter, energy or cereal bars, pet food, baby formula and food if needed, plus a manual tin opener. The page also flags special needs — coeliac, halal, kosher, diabetic, baby and pet — and recommends rotating stock and using a "first in, first out" cupboard. The British Red Cross adds a torch, battery radio, paracetamol, prescription medicines and a power bank to round out a 72-hour kit. Build the basics first, then extend to 7 days, then add specialist items.

You have several legal, safe UK options. 1) Butane camping stove (Coleman, Campingaz, Highlander) — single-burner stoves cost £20 to £40 from Go Outdoors, Decathlon or Amazon; a Cadac-style cartridge boils a kettle in 4 to 5 minutes. 2) Gas hob — if you have a piped gas cooker, it usually works in a power cut because the pilot or click-ignition needs no mains; light with a match if the spark fails. 3) Wood-burning stove or barbecue (outdoors only) — never bring a barbecue or generator indoors, the carbon monoxide can kill silently. The HSE records dozens of UK CO deaths a year linked to indoor camping stoves and disposable barbecues. 4) Methylated spirits or Trangia stove — favoured by Duke of Edinburgh and Scout leaders; slow but very stable. Always cook outside or in a well-ventilated space, keep a working CO alarm running, and store no more than the safe limit of butane cartridges indoors.