What to Look For in a Survival Food Kit: 5 Checks

Five checks sort survival food kits: price per 1,000 calories, calories per day as stated, shelf life stated and under what condition, returns stated, and what is needed to prepare it. A kit that fails to state one of them is not worse for it, but you cannot compare it until you find the missing figure.

Disclosure: Buying from a My Patriot Supply or Ready Hour link here pays this site a commission, and the price you pay does not change. 4Patriots is not linked. How we are paid.

Why five checks

Kit pages are built to sell a name and a headline number: "3-Month", "72-Hour", "25 years", "feeds a family". Each of those hides a figure you need. The five checks below turn a sales page into a table you can fill in. They are the same checks used across the best survival food kits comparison, and they use only what a seller prints on its own pages.

Each check can come back as one of four values: STATED (the page says it), NOT STATED (the page was read and does not say it), MIXED (it says it in one place and something different in another) or CAN'T BE CHECKED (the page could not be read or the claim depends on something outside it).

Check 1: price per 1,000 calories

Divide the price by the calories on the package, then multiply by 1,000. A price alone tells you nothing about a kit, because kits of the same name hold different amounts of food.

Worked example, read 2026-10-14. My Patriot Supply's 3-month kit is $797.95 for 181,960 calories: $797.95 divided by 181.96 is $4.39 per 1,000 calories. The 4Patriots 3-month kit is $799 for 139,600 calories: $799 divided by 139.6 is $5.72 per 1,000 calories. The sticker prices are $1.05 apart, but the cost per 1,000 calories is well apart, because the kit with the lower price holds more food. That is the whole point of the check.

Ready Hour lists the same $797.95, 181,960-calorie kit as My Patriot Supply, so the figure is $4.39 there too. See the Ready Hour review for the 1-year listing where the two sellers differ.

Check 2: calories per day as stated

Kits are sized per person per day, and the daily figure is often the least visible number on the page. My Patriot Supply and Ready Hour label their kits "2,000+ calories per day". 4Patriots lists its 3-month kit at about 1,551 calories per day and its 4-week kit at about 1,302.

Why it matters: divide total calories by 2,000 to find how long a kit lasts at the reference intake FDA uses for general nutrition guidance. The My Patriot Supply 3-month kit lasts 91.0 days. The 4Patriots 3-month kit lasts 69.8 days. Priced per day, that is $8.77 against $11.45. A "3-Month" label is a name; the daily calories decide the days.

A needs-based note: 2,000 is a general guide. The Dietary Guidelines estimates run from about 1,200 for a young child to 3,200 for an active teenage boy, so a kit sized for 2,000 may be too much for one person and too little for another.

Check 3: shelf life stated, and under what condition

Look for who says it and what it depends on. My Patriot Supply says up to 25 years when stored properly and unopened. Ready Hour makes the same statement. 4Patriots says its kits are designed to last 25 years under proper storage, and its page notes that heat or damage may decrease shelf life. All three are STATED, and all three are the seller's own statement with a condition attached.

A shelf-life figure without a stated condition is MIXED at best. The reasoning behind the conditions is in how long survival food lasts.

Check 4: returns stated

Look for the window, what must be unopened, and who pays to ship it back. My Patriot Supply and Ready Hour: 30 days, unopened and unused in original packaging, buyer pays return shipping, original shipping not refunded. 4Patriots: a 90-day satisfaction guarantee with return at the customer's expense, proof of purchase and a return authorization, final-sale items excluded, plus a 365-day limited warranty for defects.

A longer window is not automatically better to you; a kit you cannot open and try is a kit you cannot return under any of these policies. Read the exclusions.

Check 5: what is needed to prepare it

Dried food needs water and often heat. The My Patriot Supply pages give 9.14 gallons for the 4-week kit and 36.12 gallons for the 3-month kit. 4Patriots describes boil, simmer and serve, about 15 minutes, and does not give a water total on the pages read, so that cell is NOT STATED.

Add this to your own water plan. Ready.gov's baseline is at least one gallon per person per day for drinking and sanitation, and the kit's water comes on top.

The scorecard, filled in

The My Patriot Supply and Ready Hour figures match because the sellers list the same kit; the Ready Hour preparation cell reads NOT STATED only because no water total for its 3-month listing was in the data read.

How marketing hides sizing and low daily calories

• "Feeds a family of four." Always ask for how many days. A kit that feeds four for a week is a 4-week one-person kit. The family sizing guide shows the division.
• Servings. A serving can be small. Divide the calories by the servings: 181,960 over 846 servings is about 215 calories each.
• "Up to" and "designed to". A ceiling and an intention, not a measured result.
• A banner price without a list price. If the page shows a crossed-out price, read it as the seller's own list price, not a market figure.
• Bonus items. A buy-one-get-one offer, as 4Patriots shows on its 4-week kit, changes the cost per calorie, but only if you want two.

Red flags

1. No calories printed anywhere on the page.
2. A day count with no per-day calories.
3. A shelf life with no storage condition.
4. A return policy that excludes "opened" items without saying what counts as opened.
5. A review rating shown with no review count or date.
6. Medical claims for food. A kit is food; no page should promise a medical outcome.

One-page checklist

• [ ] Total calories on the package: ____
• [ ] Price divided by calories, times 1,000: ____
• [ ] Calories per day as stated: ____ (days at 2,000: calories divided by 2,000)
• [ ] Shelf life statement and its storage condition: ____
• [ ] Return window, what must be unopened, who pays: ____
• [ ] Water to prepare, and heat needed: ____
• [ ] Space: buckets or pounds, and where they will live
• [ ] Every household member's special diet or allergen checked against the labels

Run the sheet against two kits with the comparisons: My Patriot Supply vs 4Patriots for the 3-month kits and the three-seller table for all three. Single-company reviews are the My Patriot Supply review and the 4Patriots review.

FAQ

Which of the five checks matters most?

None outranks the others in the data, but cost per 1,000 calories and calories per day belong together: one is meaningless without the other.

How do I find calories per day if a page only lists servings?

Divide total calories by the number of days the seller says the kit covers. If the page prints neither, the check is NOT STATED.

Is a longer return window a sign of a better kit?

It is a sign of a longer window. Check what must stay unopened and who pays shipping before reading more into it.

Do I need to count water for preparation?

Yes. Preparation water is separate from drinking water, and Ready.gov's baseline for drinking is at least one gallon per person per day.

Does this guide give a medical or dietary recommendation?

No. Special diets and conditions are a question for a clinician and for the label on each item.

Sources

• My Patriot Supply 3-month kit page, https://www.mypatriotsupply.com/products/3-month-emergency-food-supply-2-000-calories-day (read 2026-10-14)
• My Patriot Supply refund policy, https://www.mypatriotsupply.com/policies/refund-policy (read 2026-10-14)
• 4Patriots 3-month kit page, https://4patriots.com/products/3-month-emergency-survival-food-kit (read 2026-10-14)
• 4Patriots refund policy, https://4patriots.com/policies/refund-policy (read 2026-10-14)
• FDA, calories on the Nutrition Facts label, https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-facts-label/calories-nutrition-facts-label (read 2026-10-14)
• Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025, Appendix 2, https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/Dietary_Guidelines_for_Americans-2020-2025.pdf (read 2026-10-14)
• Ready.gov water, https://www.ready.gov/water (read 2026-10-14)

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