“The people have spoken…and they must be punished.” Ed Koch, on losing the mayoral election. Say what you will, the man was awesomely quotable.
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I was digging around in the canned food storage and found this:
A can of soup whose ‘Best By’ date was ten years ago. Whaddya think? Sure…why not.
And then, upon opening the can and pouring the contents into a saucepan I discovered ‘why not’.
Once heated and served, even a canned chicken soup should have a certain yellow or golden color to parts of it. And it should smell good. This was…not. Everything was uniformly gray and exuded no smell whatsoever. I have a hyperacute sense of smell, so when I tell you something did not smell like it should have, you can take that to the bank m’friend. Nope, I didn’t taste it. Can wasn’t bulged, nothing looked amiss other than the color, but between the newsprint-gray color and lack of smell I decided that I’m not taking a bullet for food storage data gathering.
So, if youre keeping track, 10+ years on canned soup might be a bit excessive. You have been warned.
Need to be very, very careful about bulges in cans or any sign of loss of integrity in the can. Botulinum toxin is so toxic that if you open a can with bot growth and then see something is wrong and so dispose of the can uneaten, it will still probably be too late for you – the toxin is so powerful that even just taking a whiff of a bot -infected cans contents can be enough to kill you! If the can has not lost integrity though then canned food is safe to eat not just for a decade later, but for multiple decades later.
There are stories of military personnel finding 50 or 60 year old WWII-era K-rations and consuming the canned meat in them with no ill effects. Its not just stories of found k-rations which support the safety of old, even expired, canned food. Mormons, of course, are consummate preppers and researchers at Brigham Young U have conducted studies where they stored store-bought canned foods for decades and then opened the cans and analyzed the contents. The conclusions were that even after multiple decades (I forget the longest duration they studies, t was something like 25 or 30 years) all the food was safe to eat. The nutritional content was compromised with the duration of exposure correlating with the magnitude of loss of nutrition. Vitamins, proteins, sugars, etc, all degrade over time with the rate of decay for vitamins being much more rapid than the rates of decay for other molecules.
So eating 30 year old canned food is plenty safe assuming the can has not been compromised, and you’ll get some proteins, carbs, fat, and minerals from the can contents, but if you’re subsisting on only old canned food and nothing else then after time you will likely develop illness related to deficiencies of essential vitamins. On a related side note – every prepper should familiarize themselves with the signs and symptoms of nutritional deficiencies such as (examples only, not an exhaustive list); vitamin C (scurvy), B-12 (pernicious anemia), and night blindness (vitamin A).
Also, the color change in the soup you describe was most likely related to sugar (carbohydrate) degradation. Its the sugars that give that golden color and after vitamin degradation, sugars have the next fastest rate of degradation so it would not be surprising if after 10+ years much of the carbs had degraded. The soup would more than likely have been safe to eat, if not especially appetizing.
Can’t blame you not taking the chance with that old can you describe. As you know though, in a SHTF situation you may not have the option and it is often necessary to take more risks.
If you want some assurance that decades old canned food is safe to consume, or just want to learn more about this topic, BYU (as mentioned in previous post) does a lot of canned food research: https://ndfs.byu.edu/research-on-food-storage.
Flavor and appearance are the most affected by age according to what I’ve read. It was probably still ok to eat, and likely nutritious too, but yeah, it’s not Mad Max yet.
Given my poor storage conditions, I have resigned myself to a higher than normal rate of spoilage and loss. Better than not having it.
n
Curious if the can was one with a “pop top” lid. I’ve seen more failures in those than in traditional cans. I also see the newer US cans being thinner and lighter than older cans, and cans imported from elsewhere.
n
Quick question, was the can interior liner white or bare metal?
Metal.
heavy or light
Just seemed like regular gauge metal used on your typical #303 can.
Just as an FYI i use to work for a can company, the inside of all cans have a protective varnish/coating sprayed inside of every can. The reason why this is done, is to protect the inside of the can from the acid that is present in many different types of canned foods. If that varnish was not sprayed inside the can, that acid would attack the inside of the can causing it to fail/leak in just a few months.
I’m also blessed/cursed with a hyperacute sense of smell–especially when it comes to food spoilage. If you want to know if that deli meat crossed the expiration threshold, there’s no need to consult the date on the weight/price sticker. That’s really just an approximation. Just pass the baggie here, my friend, and I’ll tell you how long ago the sun-dried tomato turkey passed its prime within a five minute margin of error.
I know guys who say that their wives will not touch the contents of canned food if the food is past its “Best If Used By” date. It is my understanding that the US Government does not require a “Best If Used By” date on anything but baby food, and that the date is simply the date that the manufacturer represents that the contents of the can are as good as they were when they left the factory.
If the can has no blemishes (swelling, significant dents, heavy rust) in it, if the contents look and smell as they should, then the contents should be consumable. Any likely nutritional deficiencies can be cured with a multi-vitamin. In a post-SHTF world, it is far more likely that “calories will be king.”
In the 1970s, while in the National Guard, my brother was issued C-rations (K-rations?) with a 1944 date stamped on the can.
Because I told others this same things, I felt compelled to try various old cans of food from my food storage through the years. (Gotta walk the walk, not just talk the talk.) In the past couple of years, I have eaten food with a “Best By” date of 2011. I’m still alive and kickin’.
Maybe four years ago, I was cleaning out my garage and came across a No. 10 can of food. Due to age, the glue on the label had failed, and the label had peeled away and was missing. Since I didn’t know what was in it, I tossed the can in the garbage. I then decided that I should, at least, open it and check out the contents. I remember that I had purchased the can from a survival food manufacturer in the ’80s. The contents were a mixture of air-dehydrated fruit of various types. All good, even though a garage is hardly ideal for storing food, given the heat fluctuations. (Note that I live in a temperate climate without huge fluctuations of heat and cold.)
In the past couple of years, I opened a No. 10 can of whole eggs. Right or wrong, I considered them to be more risky. I noticed no particular bad odor, and I didn’t know what the contents should look like in the first place. Still, I didn’t have the courage to cook and eat the eggs, given the trip to the Emergency Room that might follow. Were I living in a Mad Max world, I might have chosen differently.
One noteworthy class of food that does not store well in cans is tomato products. The high acidic content will cause the can to begin to fail in five or six years. After several failures, I buy tomato products in glass jars only now. Gotta have something to use with all of that stored pasta.
I also had a similar failure with a can of sliced pineapple.
“Any likely nutritional deficiencies can be cured with a multi-vitamin.”
Indeed. The potency of multi-vitamins decreases with time, which is another way of saying that the vitamin degrades, just like the vitamin does when it found naturally in food.
Good idea for a prepper to stock some multivitamins, but pay attention to the % daily value (DV) on the label (DV = reccomended daily allowance). Select pills with DV%’s much higher than 100% for as many vitamins as you can.
If the %DV of a vitamin says 500%, then half of it can degrade over time and the pill will still have 250% the recommended daily allowance – plenty to avoid a deficiency.
Some vitamins it will be difficult to find multis with a very high % DV. For those look for the vitamin as a stand-alone pill or capsule, one which contains only that vitamin. The stand alone will often have higher %DV.
I just ate a can of ravioli with a best by date of March 2017 last night for dinner. Tasted fine. Last few years, I’ve been using the anything past 5 years goes out of it’s canned goods. We got sick from a can of tuna fish that was 7 years old a few years ago.
TUNA LASTS FOREVER…I have 6 pound cans I paid a dollar each for 15 years ago and already out of date from a bent and dent store.
Open it eat and freeze excess till gone then start all over, 4 cans to go.
Wish we would have bought them all now!!!!
no way I’m eating old shitty food. That’s for poor people. I’m turning cannibal so there will be a lot of tasty, tasty pork-like product available.
An out-of-the-box solution to the problem! Of perhaps in-the-box, a literal Jack in the Box meal!! For those non-West Coasters, Jack in the Box is a burger chain out west. That doesn’t make the lame-ass joke any funnier, but it is an interesting tidbit.
Jack-in-the-Box also got caught using kangaroo meat in American burgers
Jimbo, that ‘roo meat will get you hopping! Seriously though, any macropod meat is fine, if rather lean. Just be sure to always cook it well done, like other wild meats.
They have Jack-In-The-Box in NYC.
Just make sure you stay away from clowns and comedians because they taste funny. I’m here all week… tip your…Well not really,I’m bugging out. C’ya!
Ahh, long pork…. as some people called it….
More like wrong pork
“Mad Human” is a thing.
(Fictionalized Hollywood version) “Book Of Eli” shows the onset, shaky hands.
That by itself isn’t a total indicator, but it was a good visual clue.
Some things to remember, kids:
1) Acidic foods (think tomatoes, citrus, etc.) have shorter lives. Acid: it’s a physics thing.
2) The way they pack foods now isn’t how they packed foods in 1970, or 1945.
They use plastic membrane liners, which is why you can’t heat the food in the can, unless you want to be poisoned by the melted plastics.
3) That laundry list of artificial colors, sweeteners, and preservatives gets a vote too. All that crap breaks down over time. Without meaning too, I left half a can of (let’s face it, water+a dozen chemicals) soda out, and i thought a mouse had died, until I got a whiff of the can, barely 6 months old. I thought it had a dead rhino inside, but it was just the eleventy chemicals the local Cocoa-Cola bottling plant had concocted into what is, fresh, a can of my flavor of soda poison.
Multiply that times everything you have on the canned goods shelf.
A can of corned beef in 1942 was just corned beef, in a metal can.
A can of corned beef yesterday is a chemical stew of you-have-no-idea-what, and when it goes, it goes, even when it doesn’t bulge.
4) Most use-by dates are a scam, exactly like “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.” They put that on the label because “Buy more of our stuff” is a bit too on-point.
But like broken clocks being right twice a day, there’s a point on the downrange trajectory where the trajectories of PR and Truth intersect, and you ignore the warning at your peril.
5)And it’s different for every brand and product you store or encounter, and as varied as the thousand different wys and means you’re using to store your Stuff.
Zero just did everyone a favor.
Lesson learned, and thanks, are appropriate.
If you insist on jumping on each mine yourself to see if it’s inert, or just ert, kindly post the YouTube links in each instance, for community information.
And/or entertainment.
CZ: Thanks, and thanks for the post topic.
By end of the day, I’ll post a medical brief on care and treatment for food poisoning on my blog.
Bon appétit, fellow prepping chowhounds.
My experience has been the best treatment for food poisoning is puke and crap everything out of your body until you’re empty, rehydrate like a mofo, go to sleep.
That’ll work, but there are workarounds to shorten the process, and make it less serious.
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2021/01/first-aid-food-storage-and-food.html
Your cure for food poisoning matches my experience perfectly. Had it in college after borrowing mayonnaise in a dorm. Big mistake. I didn’t do drugs, so this is the only time I can honestly say I hallucinated and it was a very bad trip. NOTE: After puking until your stomach hurts, you will not be inclined to rehydrate. If lucky, your roommates will insist and pour something into you.
During Something-Or-Other Exercise, the US Navy thoughtfully allowed me to either go hungry or eat 30-year-old canned spaghetti. It was edible. Barely. And older than me at the time. The rest of the meal wasn’t worth eating. The cigs crumbled into dust. Yay, gov provisions!
My mother moved from her home to a retirement facility about four years ago. She wasn’t an official prepper, but she had a “deep pantry” that extended to China. Lots of out of date canned food. The one that really stands out was a can of condensed milk that was maybe 8-10 years out of date. It came out kind of like Jell-O, and I damned sure didn’t sample it.
Thanks CZ. I’m just back from reading Aesop’s latest rant referenced above, and I highly recommend it too. I’ve long recognized that after TEOTWAWKI, the major cause of morbidity and mortality for the marshmallow people will be the GE that Aesop so colorfullly describes. When they get hungry and thirsty, they’ll eat and drink things they shouldn’t. Not to mention not having a clue about hygiene when the taps won’t run.
One important prepper principle not explicitly mentioned above is that if you’re not eating from stored preps, you’re not doing it right. Yes, those couple cases of MRE’s in the back of the garage may keep near forever, but if your gut flora isn’t used to dealing with a steady diet of beans n rice, the stress of crisis times isn’t when you begin making the adaptions. First in, first out, rotate your stocks, and stock what you eat routinely.
Yes, I’ve thrown out a fair bit of long outdated stores that aren’t even fit for the food charities. Like CZ, I try to resupply with fresh, in-date stores whenever possible.
Way back around 1968-70, my brother and I acquired a dozen or so cases of C-rations, old stores from either WWII or Korea, we never determined which. We spent months eating them, and had great fun with it all. The only things that made us at all queasy were the little four-cigarette packs of smokes in each meal box. Also need to give a salute to the greatest invention the US Army ever made–the P-38 can opener!
When I first went into the Marines in 1980, I got my first P-38 because c-rats – it’s what’s for breakfast!
I still have it.
” Yes, those couple cases of MRE’s in the back of the garage may keep near forever,…”
I sort of inherited several cases of MRE’s, dated ’01and ’04. Found them in a garage, maybe ten years ago, and no idea of their storage history. They ended up sitting in my garage until fall, when I thought maybe I should check them out. You can look up the contents on the web by production date. IIRC, during that time, they went from 12 variations to 24. 12 per carton. If you can’t handle lactose, kiss off at least 1/3 of the contents, depending on meal #. Seafood, again you lose some. Potatoes in a fair number of packages. Peas are weird. One package that listed them had ONE. Another identical package, half the contents were peas.
The heaters in the old carton were toast. The newer ones varied somewhat. A few wouldn’t heat much, some were borderline, some worked great. They looked like a different design than the older ones.
The older one had original M&M candy, and it was in the original packaging. They got fuzzy and burst the bag. The newer ones had peanut M&M, and they looked ok, but no one would try them.
One of the main course meals tasted funny, and another identical meal also, so those got tossed. Some sort of stew, iirc. Mostly, the biggest complaint I had was the blandness of the meals and side dishes that I could handle.
All in all, they were a bust for me, with so much of the contents having ingredients that I can’t handle, such as lactose and other items I am allergic to. That is the biggest complaint I have about pre-packaged long term storage foods. They tend to go heavy on milk products, with most of those having lactose included in them naturally, let alone added in some of it. I have zero ability to digest the stuff, following a sojourn in a hospital for near a week, while the docs scratched their heads over my illness.