How long will your rice, atta, dal, oil or milk last?

MyKitchenRadar is a family kitchen app that tells you how many days each food at home will last, like "rice: about 6⁠–⁠11 days", and reminds everyone before it runs out. This free estimator runs its first guess for one item, here in your browser.

How the estimate is made

The estimator uses the same countdown method as the MyKitchenRadar app. It takes the daily use per adult share for your food culture, multiplies it by your family's adult shares, and turns the amount you have into a range of days.

Step 1. Count your family in adult shares

Each person counts as a share of one sedentary adult man, based on daily energy needs from ICMR-NIN's Nutrient Requirements for Indians 2020. A sedentary man needs 2,110 kcal a day, so he is 1.00. A sedentary woman needs 1,660 kcal, so she is 0.79.

Sources: ICMR-NIN 2020 brief note, energy tables (ages up to 59). ICMR-NIN Dietary Guidelines for Indians 2024, Table 1.6 (over 60, which the 2020 note does not cover). Babies under 1 use the age 1⁠–⁠3 value.

Step 2. Daily use per adult share

Rice and atta (observed). MoSPI's survey gives kilograms per person per 30 days, averaged over everyone in the household, children included. To turn that into one adult share, the estimator divides by the average adult share per person in India: 0.906 in towns and cities, 0.928 in villages. Both come from MoSPI's 2025 nutrition note. Urban India had 2,240 kcal per person and 2,472 kcal per consumer unit (2,240 ÷ 2,472 = 0.906). Rural India had 2,212 and 2,383 (0.928).

Example, urban Tamil Nadu rice: 6.467 kg ÷ 30 days ÷ 0.906 = 0.2379 kg a day per adult share.

Rice and atta: kg per adult share per day (MoSPI HCES 2023-24, Statements 5R and 5U, observed)

Each value is the survey's kg per person per 30 days ÷ 30 ÷ 0.906 (town or city) or 0.928 (village), rounded to 4 decimals. The survey's per-person figures are in the rice and atta guides.

Dal, oil and milk (recommended). India's survey report does not publish how much dal, oil or milk households use, only what they spend on them. The estimator starts instead from the ICMR-NIN 2024 amount for a sedentary adult man (Table 1.6), which equals one adult share.

Step 3. Daily use for your family

Daily use = daily use per adult share × your family's adult shares.

Example: a city family in Tamil Nadu with a man (1.00), a woman (0.79), a child of 8 (0.81) and a grandmother of 70 (0.73) counts as 3.32 adult shares. 0.2379 × 3.32 = 0.79 kg of rice a day, about 24 kg a month.

Step 4. Turn the amount into a range of days

The middle estimate is amount ÷ daily use. For the example, 10 kg ÷ 0.79 kg = 12.7 days. The app never shows that as a single date, because no family eats the same every day. It widens two things, using the app's own rules.

• The amount. A full pack is counted as its label weight ± 10%, so 10 kg becomes 9⁠–⁠11 kg.
• The daily use. The starting figure is counted as ± 0.4 ÷ √(days of evidence behind it), at most ± 35%. A survey figure starts as worth 7 days of evidence, which gives ± 15%. A guideline figure starts as worth 3 days, which gives ± 23%. These margins are the app's settings, not published figures.

Low end = (amount − 10%) ÷ (daily use + 15%). High end = (amount + 10%) ÷ (daily use − 15%). For dal, oil and milk, use 23% instead of 15%. Both ends are rounded to whole days.

Worked example: low = 9 ÷ (0.79 × 1.15) = 9.9 days. High = 11 ÷ (0.79 × 0.85) = 16.4 days. Result: "Rice: about 10⁠–⁠16 days", green, because even the low end is more than a week.

The countdown stops at 90 days and then reads "about 3+ months".

Storage times shown beside the result

FoodKeeper has no entry for atta, Indian dals by name, curd or Indian milk pouches. For those, follow the use-by date printed on the pack. FSSAI's labelling rules make that date mandatory in India.

What this estimate cannot know

• Your family is not the average. The rice and atta figures are state averages from 2023-24. Meals at school, work or a restaurant, fasting days and guests all change your real use.
• Ration rice and wheat count. The survey includes free and subsidized grain from the ration shop. If you also have a ration bag at home, add it to the amount.
• Dal, oil and milk are recommendations. They describe what ICMR-NIN suggests, not what families eat. For oil, the guideline is a limit, so many kitchens use more.
• The adult-share scale is approximate. MoSPI's 0.906 and 0.928 come from its own consumer-unit scale, not the ICMR-NIN 2020 scale above. The gap is a few percent.
• Not everyone is sedentary. The scale assumes sedentary adults. It does not add for pregnancy, breastfeeding or heavy work.
• No official figures outside India yet. For rice and atta we use the All-India average for everyone. We have not yet loaded US or other national survey data.
• Cooking oil is weighed as 920 g per liter. That is the conversion the app uses for oil sold by volume.

From one guess to a countdown that learns

This estimator stops at the first guess. MyKitchenRadar starts there and narrows the range each time someone at home answers "How much rice is left?" with one tap on Full, Half, Low or Out. It keeps a countdown for every item in the kitchen. An 8:00 digest lists what is running low, and the shared buy list is ready the evening before shopping day.

See how the countdown works, read the guides for rice, atta, dal, cooking oil and milk, or go to the MyKitchenRadar home page.

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