Food - Minimal
First look at the water minimums and take care of those. Water is even more important than food.
Have three days of food for each person in a safe place that you can easily transport if you need to leave your home in a hurry.
That means simply having enough bags of some sort close to your food. You can even use just grocery bags. Or get some canvas bags. Plan to put only enough in each bag to make it easy to carry. Remember that canned food is heavy.
You do not know when the next emergency will happen. None of us do. My suggestion is not to delay, but get at least this minimal amount stocked as soon as possible. There are few things that cause more regret than having had a chance to do something, but waiting until it is too late to do it.
A couple of different ways of creating minimal food stores:
1. Get food from the grocery store that you usually buy and like. Just stock an extra three days of it.
Your selections should be able to be eaten safely from the container without heating or cooking it, because your stove will probably not work in an emergency situation.
Pros: Easy and quick. You know you will like the food.
Cons: You must constantly remember to rotate the food before the expiration date and restock. It is tempting to use up the emergency supplies rather than go to the store when you have things on hand. Can not count on having a warm meal. Can be heavy to carry.
2. Look at the links on this site or search for ready-made packs of emergency food. If you go this route do not delay, because there is shipping time. You might want to check out Nitro-Pak
Pros: No restocking for a long period of time. Security that you have the right things at the right time. Light and compact. Sometimes comes with its own cooking heat for a warm meal. There are MRE heating packs available at Nitro-Pak
Cons: More expensive. Not quite the food you usually eat. Some emergency stores are more tasty than others.
3. A mix of the two.
How to figure what 'three days per person' really means:
Guess what... you need a balanced diet even more in an emergency. There will be extraordinary stresses on your body, and you need to support it wisely.
You will need protein, good fats and carbohydrates. Most of the emergency food tends to be heavy on carbohydrates, but actually probably have more real protein than most people get normally.
A good rule of thumb is 30% protein, 30% fats, 40% carbohydrates. That is measured in calories, not grams, of each. Because fats have nearly twice the calories of either carbs or protein (7 to 4, exactly).
In an emergency situation, an average 150 pound male could use 3,000 calories a day, a female slightly less, and children proportionate to their body weight. We use more energy when we have to do extraordinary things than we do sitting on the couch. So overestimate your calorie needs, rather than underestimate them.
But since we are talking about bare minimums, you should plan on at least 1,800 calories per day per person. If you are into subsistence diets, 900 calories a day can sustain life for months. But frankly, who wants to do that?
Emergency Food Packs
How does this translate into real food? The emergency food packs do it all for you. So if you are not into long calculations, this might be a good answer for you. A very good choice is Mountain House Freeze-Dried Food
Food from the Grocery Store
If you go the grocery store food route, read the labels on the packages carefully. Do the math. Remember to rotate each product before its expiration date, so you can safely eat it and it does not go to waste. Replace the product in your stores before you eat it.
Fats and Salt
Be sure there are no trans fats whatsoever in any of your emergency stores. A tiny amount can sap health and strength far more than it seems they should be able to.
If you like them, do include some fatty fish like salmon or sardines or herring (kippered herring is better than it sounds like) to get the best fats. They are easy to find in cans, and usually have no preservatives except sometimes salt.
Nuts are excellent also. Buy bags or cans or whatever you can find that has a long expiration date. Almonds are perhaps the top choice, but almost any nut is a good nut... as long as you are NOT allergic to them. Peanut butter or any nut butter is a truly fine, long-lasting, delicious source of both fats and protein.
A side note on salt. A person needs some salt to live. If you listen to doctors, you may be told not to eat salt. That is up to you. It is true that many of today's products use a substance they call 'salt', but is actually far from being real salt. I agree that this kind of 'salt' is dangerous. I buy nuts with sea salt, or get unsalted and add sea salt. There's a lot to say about salt, but that's enough for here.
Dark chocolate (not milk chocolate) is also an incredibly excellent choice, especially if it contains 60% or more cocoa. Lots of antioxidants and other good things in dark chocolate. And it's fun.
Protein
Protein sources that keep well include beef or turkey jerky, canned tuna (low levels of good fats, but lots of good protein), and some of the better food bars. Check the label carefully on those food bars. Many are not as good as a Snickers® bar, which is, kind of surprisingly, not a terrible choice, because of the high amount of peanuts in it. If I were really hungry, I'd eat one. If you find a good, balanced food bar, this can be the answer for a good portion of your three day minimum. But frankly, the chances of your finding one is not high. I buy a special organic bar that is not especially tasty to many people, is far from inexpensive, and very difficult to find. One more thing: avoid anything with maltitol in it. That is a man-made fat that can cause considerable digestive problems, including diarrhea in some people.
If you are curious, this company has put together assortments of the different flavors from top makers of protein food bars: Not sure what type of Protein Bar you like? Before you waste your money try a Variety Pack! Exclusively at Bodybuilding.com.
Soy protein is good for women. It is not particularly good for men, because it promotes estrogen over testosterone. Best for both men and women is a mix of proteins, especially those mixes with casein and whey proteins. Egg and other milk proteins are also good in the mix. If soy is listed after the other proteins, meaning there is less in proportion to the others, it's just fine for men.
Which brings up eggs. Do not eat them unless properly cooked! There is considerable danger from diarrhea-causing and other even more pernicious bacteria in today's eggs. According to the USDA, eggs must be refrigerated at all times. In Europe, they don't refrigerate eggs. Bacteria are killed when you heat food to 160 degrees F. Use your own good judgement. Eggs are a just about perfect protein source. The only problem is... how will you cook them without a heat source? You could get a Coleman® type stove and gas canisters that can be used with it, but that is not really a minimal food scenario. And Sterno® type heating may not cook foods to the minimum required temperatures, although they may 'look done'.
The same with meat. Do NOT eat meat raw. Same danger as eggs.
Do not consider canned meat products other than the fish mentioned above. While those products do provide protein and calories, they are full of real nutritional nightmares. They are last thing you need when you're under stress. The meat and other protein products in emergency food packs are usually freeze dried or otherwise preserved without the horrors that are in canned meats. If a pack contained a 'potted meat product', I would not buy it.
Carbohydrates
For carbs, whole rye crackers can't be beat. They last a long time, and taste good. When I'm eating up our expiring stores, I'm always pleasantly surprised that I like them. I wonder why I don't eat them more often. Other kinds of crackers are also good choices. This is one time where the oils in them are beneficial, as long as they are not trans fats. Just remember to check the expiration date and be sure to rotate them. Stale crackers are edible, but not as nutritious. Out of date crackers will almost certainly be rancid, which indicates the oils have broken down into carcinogens. Keep your stocks rotated.
The obvious choices for carbs is pasta, like spaghetti or macaroni. Don't. They have to be cooked in boiling water for a relatively long time. If you are doing a minimal stores, you will probably not have enough fuel to cook them. And maybe not enough water. Choose carb sources that are ready to eat out of the package.
How about junk food for survival? For three days... yeah, you'll probably not starve. A bag of Fritos® for each meal would keep body and soul together for three days. You can also fast for three days, if you're into low energy and are not diabetic or anything like that. But are you sure you will be able get food at the end of that time? If it's a disaster, how can you reasonably count on that? My thought is to prepare so that you will be strong at the end of the three days, in case it goes on longer. And quite frankly, looking at even the minor recent disaster of Katrina ... yes, in comparison with what may be coming, that is very minor... we see that aid can be many days, or weeks in coming. Or longer.
Which is why my final suggestion is to not stop at a minimal food supply. In my thinking, Basic levels are the least anyone should do. Because once things go bad, they can easily go to worse. Not meant to frighten. Just the way it is.
But it's still a good idea to get that 3-day supply now, to start.