Jeff Kaufman's Writing

Storing Food

2026-02-22 · 13:00 UTC ·4 min read

Brief

Storing Food recommends building a rotating stock of familiar non-perishables to reduce tail risks and gain daily convenience. Kaufman gives concrete numbers: pasta+beans ≈ $2/person-day ($60/month); a three-month stash ≈ $180 with a $9/year opportunity cost at 5% return. He presents EV thresholds (0.002–0.004% annual famine risk) and shelf-life tips (rice indefinite if dry; canned beans ≈10 years).

Why it matters

Buy extra of the non-perishables you already eat and rotate them: a pound of pasta + a can of beans supplies roughly one person-day for about $2, or ~$60 for a month's worth.

Key details

  • Expected-value example: a three-month food supply (~$180) has an annual opportunity cost of $9 at a 5% real return; valuing life at $10M and a 5% fatality risk in a 3-month famine yields a conditional benefit of $500,000, so stocking is worth it if annual odds ≥0.002% (rice/beans durable variant raises threshold to 0.004%).
  • Practical notes: white rice lasts effectively indefinitely if kept dry and rodent-proofed; canned beans remain edible ~10 years; benefits include fewer grocery trips and cheaper bulk buys, while storage is limited by space (apartments vs. a house).
Source evidence

title: Storing Food
contenttype: article
publication: Jeff Kaufman's Writing
published: 2026-02-22T13:00:00+00:00
sourceurl: https://www.jefftk.com/p/storing-food

word_count: 847

I think more people should be storing a substantial amount of food.
It's not likely you'll need it, but as with reusable
masks the cost is low enough I think it's usually worth it. It's hard for me to really imagine living through a famine . The world as
I have experienced it has been one of abundant calories, where people
are generally more worried about getting too many than too few.
Essentially no one dies in the US from food unavailability. Globally,
however, it's different: each year millions die from hunger. If you look at the circumstances of modern famines, they're downstream
from systems failing. Society was functioning well enough that most
people got enough calories, then something went seriously wrong, most
likely war. This is one of the reasons that it's hard to use
donations to reduce hunger deaths: getting food to people stuck in war
zones is very hard. This means from an altruistic perspective I feel torn: the current
situation is horrible, but it's also not where I think my donations
would go farthest and so it's not where I donate . This is
the painful reality of living in a world that is far worse than it
could be, doing what we
can and knowing it's not enough. I also look at famine from a selfish perspective, however, thinking
about how this risk might impact me and the people I most love. [1] As
someone whose day job involves
trying to reduce rare-but-catastrophic risks, I do think global famine
is plausible. Our systems are robust to localized problems, but much
less so to widespread
disasters . Storing food to reduce the worst outcomes seems worth
doing. [2] The approach we take is buying extra of the non-perishables we usually
eat, and rotating through them. Our main cost is in buying some food
earlier than we normally would. We eat a lot of pasta and beans, and
a pound of pasta and can of beans give about a person-day of calories
and protein for $2, or $60 for a month's worth. The $60 cost isn't the real number, though, because you're investing:
you can always eat this food later if you need the money. If the
market would give you a 5% real return and the value of food roughly
tracks inflation, the annual cost of keeping $60 as food is $3 ($60 *
5%). I think this is worth doing for most people until you bump into
the limit of what you have space to store or what you'll rotate
through before it spoils, and may be worth it beyond that depending on
how likely you think the risks are. Aside from the tail-risk reduction, there are also day-to-day benefits
of having more food on hand. We can go to the grocery store less
often, buy a larger proportion of our food when it's on sale, go to
the farther store that charges less, and cook more things without
going to the store. [3] Like many preparedness questions, a lot of this comes down to how much
space you have. When we were living
in apartments , moving ~yearly and where each sqft counted, we only
did a little of this (buying extra pasta). But now that we're in a
house (where I strongly hope to never move again) and generally have
more space it's worth it for us to do a bunch more. Something to
consider next time you're at the store? [1] Having kids made me feel much
more strongly here. I already did this
some before having kids because it seemed reasonable, but the idea
of them not having enough to eat is viscerally horrifying in a way
that's hard to think or write about. [2] A rough EV estimate: storing three months of food costs $180 up
front and so $9 in lost returns annually, not having enough food in a
3-month famine might give a 5% chance of death, and perhaps you value your life at
$10M . This gives a conditional benefit of $500,000, and means
it's worth it as long as you think your annual odds of experiencing a
3-month famine are at least 0.002%. Alternatively, if you're not the
kind of person who would actually rotate through food let's imagine
you buy rice and beans. White rice lasts ~indefinitely if you keep it
dry and keep out the rodents; canned beans are edible and nutritious
well past their sell-by, perhaps 10y. Rice is a bit cheaper than
pasta, but buying a rodent-proof tub to keep the bag in adds some
cost, so let's say it's still $180 for a three-months
better-than-starvation option that lasts you 10 years. Then it's worth
doing as long as you think annual risk is at least 0.004%. [3] For example, this evening Lily decided she wanted to cook dinner,
making a vegetarian curry she'd learned from a friend. It turned out
we already had everything in her recipe on hand, with a few
substitutions (ex: canned tomatoes instead of fresh). Comment via: facebook , lesswrong , bluesky , substack