How much cooking oil per month per person?

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 guide covers oil by age and family size, US teaspoon amounts, and how long big tins keep.

To get a number for your own family, use the free estimator.

Read this first. Every Indian oil figure here is a recommended amount from ICMR-NIN's Dietary Guidelines for Indians 2024, and the guideline frames it as a limit. Many kitchens use more. Oil means all cooking oils and ghee together, by weight.

How much oil per person, by age

Recommended fats and oils a day (ICMR-NIN Dietary Guidelines for Indians 2024, Table 1.6). Monthly figures are for 30 days. Liters count 1 liter of oil as 920 g, the conversion the app uses.

What the guideline text says about limits

The same guidelines (Guideline 7) set the range and the ceiling in plain words.

• Visible fat, meaning cooking oil, "must be limited to 20⁠–⁠50g (4⁠–⁠10 teaspoon full) per person/day", depending on energy needs.
• On a 2,000 kcal diet, not more than 27⁠–⁠30 g. The food pyramid for 2,000 kcal shows fats and oils at 27 g (Figure 1.1).
• Sedentary women and men should limit visible fat to 20 g and 30 g a day. Men with moderate or heavy work may go up to 40 g and 50 g, women up to 30 g and 40 g.
• Ghee or butter should be limited to 1⁠–⁠2 teaspoons a day, or avoided.

Table 1.6 gives a sedentary woman 25 g, while the Guideline 7 text says 20 g. We show the table figure in our tables and note the difference here.

How much oil a family needs, and how long a can lasts

The families, in adult shares:

All adults are sedentary.

"Guideline amounts added up" sums each person's row from Table 1.6. "App's first guess" is what the estimator and the app start from (30 g per adult share, scaled by energy needs), and the "lasts" columns use it. A top end of 90 days means 90 days or more, where the countdown stops.

US families

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025⁠–⁠2030 count healthy fats in teaspoons, where 1 teaspoon of olive oil or butter is one serving. These are recommended amounts.

Take a family of 4. A sedentary man of 35 needs 2,400 kcal and a sedentary woman of 33 needs 1,800. A boy of 8 needs 1,400 kcal and a girl of 5 needs 1,200. Their calorie needs come from Table A2-2 of the 2020⁠–⁠2025 guidelines. That gives 5 + 4 + 2½ + 2½ = 14 teaspoons a day. At 4.93 ml per US teaspoon, that is about 69 ml a day, or about 2.1 liters a month if all of it is oil. Butter counts toward the same total.

The method

The "lasts" columns use the same steps as the estimator and the app.

1. Oil per adult share per day. 30 g, the ICMR-NIN 2024 amount for a sedentary man (Table 1.6), who counts as 1.00 adult share. 30 g ÷ 920 g per liter = 0.0326 liters.
2. Adult shares. By energy need (ICMR-NIN 2020). Woman 0.79, child of 8 0.81, child of 5 0.64, woman over 60 0.73, man over 60 0.82.
3. Daily use. Family of 4: 0.0326 × 3.24 = 0.106 liters a day, about 3.2 liters a month.
4. Range. A full can counts as ± 10% and the guideline-based daily use as ± 23% (the app's settings). For 5 liters: low = 4.5 ÷ (0.106 × 1.23) = 34.6 days, high = 5.5 ÷ (0.106 × 0.77) = 67.7 days. Rounded, about 35⁠–⁠68 days.

India's survey report does not publish oil quantities. MoSPI's Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24 records edible oil over the last 7 days, but the printed report shows only what households spent on it, in rupees. Until liters are published or computed from the survey's raw data, the guideline is the only official starting figure we have.

Inside the app, the 30 g is shared among the oils and ghee your kitchen keeps, such as sunflower oil, sesame oil and ghee. That split is the app's own estimate, not a published figure.

How to store cooking oil

FoodKeeper has no entry for mustard oil or groundnut oil. For those, follow the use-by date on the pack, which FSSAI's labelling rules make mandatory in India.

Big tins need care. At the app's first guess, a family of 4 takes about 142 days, nearly 5 months, to finish a 15 liter tin. FoodKeeper gives opened vegetable oil 3⁠–⁠5 months. If your tin lasts longer than that, a 5 liter can is the safer buy.

Signs you are running low

• You tilt the can further each time to pour.
• The small kitchen bottle gets refilled from the last can in the store cupboard.
• Frying for guests or a festival is planned, and the can is under a quarter full.

A simple rule: buy more when about 5 days of use are left. For a family of 4 at the app's first guess (0.106 liters a day) that is about half a liter.

Let the app learn your family's oil use

The guideline is a limit and no survey publishes liters used, so the first guess for oil is weak and its range is wide. Now and then MyKitchenRadar asks "How much sunflower oil is left?". One tap on Full, Half, Low or Out, and the countdown moves to your kitchen's real rate. When the can gets low, oil goes on the shared buy list, with order links for the shop apps in your country.

Try the estimator, see how the countdown works, or go to the MyKitchenRadar home page.

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