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People should have an emergency stockpile of food in their homes in case conflicts, extreme weather or cyber-attacks shut down supplies, leading UK experts have told the Guardian.

In an ever more turbulent world, they say it is essential to choose long-life items that can be eaten without cooking – think tinned beans, vegetables and fish, rice crackers, and oats that can be soaked. But it is also important to choose items you actually like to eat, and some treats such as chocolate or crisps to keep your spirits up. You will also need water – lots of it – not just to drink but for washing too.

Perhaps the most surprising advice is to be prepared to share your stockpile with neighbours. With one in seven households with children already suffering food insecurity in the UK, many people cannot afford to build up a stockpile and, without food, civil unrest soon follows.

“Yes, do store food, but be prepared to share to maintain social solidarity,” says Prof Tim Lang. “All resilience theory and experience, in shocks, wars, or sub-war conflicts, shows it is essential to maintain social cohesion if you want to maintain social order.”

One shock could spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK, according to a report from dozens of the country’s top food experts, published in February. They said chronic issues like low incomes and fragile “just-in-time” supply chains have left the food system a “tinderbox”. The Iran war, hitting vital fuel and fertiliser supplies to farmers, has added to the pressure.

Lang warned in early March that the British government should be stockpiling food – unlike Switzerland and many others, it is not. A recently uncovered government report from 2024 also warned that hits to the nation’s food security from the climate crisis and geopolitical instability meant it could be “at strategic risk of catastrophic failure” by 2030. UK glasshouse growers have already warned of shortages of cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers in supermarkets due to soaring gas prices.

Some countries take emergency home stockpiles of food very seriously – they add to the overall resilience of a society in a crisis. Switzerland’s government provides a website where you can put in the details of your family, food allergies, if you are vegetarian and even if you have pets and get a detailed list of the food required. A week’s supply for a family of two adults and two children, for example, includes 20 tins of vegetables, seven packets of instant soup, salami, a kilogram of coffee and 47 1.5-litre bottles of water.

Germany has a similar site, while Latvia and Lithuania both distribute booklets to all citizens on how to survive for 72 hours in a crisis. Sweden also provides detailed advice in a booklet: “You need food that is filling, energy-rich, can be stored safely at room temperature [and] requires very little water or can be eaten immediately. Start building up your emergency storage by simply adding one or two additional items when doing your regular shopping.”

The UK’s food advice on its Prepare website is, in contrast, minimal: one short sentence. Lang is blunt, calling the advice stupid: “The state ought to be protecting us more and be giving us specific advice.”

Lang has a store of food himself. “You’ve got to be thinking, no cooking facilities, plus maybe no water, plus the internet has gone down, so you can’t go and ask the web,” he says. “You must think very carefully about what you wouldn’t mind living off for a week or 10 days if things were really bad.”

“My favourite meal is dal and we store beans in 24-36 big jars and we have lots of dried goods,” he says. “We also have tins of sardines and other fish that would help you get through and we always have a lot of oats in – you can soak them and eat them raw. They’re a great thing to have.”

“If you have a garden, you can keep some things growing,” he says. Lang currently has two long rows of spinach and he says even herbs in a pot would be valuable in brightening up a meal: “If you’ve got some chives growing, you’ll titivate the beans that you’re eating for the fourth, or 10th time in 10 days into tasting a bit different. Those things matter and they’re actually also giving you micronutrients.”

As for water, you need a lot, says Lang: “You need, as a very minimum, 7 to 12 litres per person per day.”

Prof Sarah Bridle, at the University of York, also recommends having an emergency food store: “Yes, definitely. There’s lots of different reasons why we could have a food crisis.”

“I did go a little bit crazy [during Covid lockdowns] getting lots of stuff in and what I learned very quickly there is to make sure you get stuff that you actually like and eat anyway,” she says. “In my case, I love beans, lentils and chickpeas. I cook with them all the time and so have about a week’s worth, one tin per day, and I use them on a regular basis,” she says. “I learned how to incorporate things that are long-life into my everyday diet, so it is now a natural part of what I’ve got in the cupboard.”

She says it is helpful to have official guidance on what people should store, but this should not be too prescriptive. “If they’re not things you like, then it’s going to be wasted when it goes past the use date.” Some treats, such as sweets or chocolate, are good to have, especially for children, though her preferred treat is crisps.

The environmental campaigner and Guardian columnist George Monbiot has frequently warned of the fragility of the food system and revealed the contents of his own stockpile last year: 25kg of rice, 15kg of dried chickpeas, 15kg of bread flour, 7kg of chapati flour, 5kg of oats, six litres of vegetable oil, a slab of tinned tomatoes, some nuts and dried fruit. Along with the vegetables he grows, he says this is about two months’ supply for his family of three.

Addressing the risks of food shortages requires large-scale systematic changes but home stockpiles can buy time for the authorities in emergencies.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the country had a high degree of food security, built on both strong domestic production and imports through stable trade routes. The UK produces about 60% of its food domestically, while the US, France and Australia are all food self-sufficient, and the Netherlands is 80% self-sufficient.

“The government is actively monitoring the developments in the Middle East and the impact for our food and farming sectors,” she said. “There is no reason for consumers to change their buying behaviours and we stand ready to act swiftly and appropriately to support our farming industry and protect food security.”

Lang accused the government of complacency: “Britain is way, way behind on this. The best thing people could do is write to their MP to put pressure on the government to be more realistic about preparing for food shocks and possible turnoffs. That is not catastrophising: it’s actually just being grown up and sensible about it.”