I recently had an interesting exchange with a reader who was worried that most of her canned food emergency stash had "expired". When asked what this meant, she said that the "best by" dates stamped on each can had all passed. She had tried to donate those cans to a food bank, intending to replace them with newer, unexpired ones, but the food bank had told her it could not accept them because of the danger of disease from spoiled food. She was almost panic-stricken. Would she endanger her family if she used them in an emergency?
I was able to set her straight about that. I routinely use cans that are up to ten years after their expiration date, and have never yet had a single problem with them. Provided the can shows no signs of internal pressure or damage, it should be fine. Obviously, some foods will keep longer than others, but the process of heat- and pressure-canning eliminates most food-borne poisons and diseases, and provided the can is airtight, will continue to do so until it's opened.
Here are a few articles covering the subject. There are dozens more out there, as a quick Internet search will reveal.
Fellow blogger and "prepper" Commander Zero has taste-tested several older cans, and reports very few problems. During years of trekking around Africa, in the most primitive environments, I had no problem (even in equatorial or desert heat and humidity, not the greatest of storage environments) eating canned foods up to a decade old or even older, provided there were no obvious signs of swelling, damage, etc. Approaching old age, I'm still here to talk about it. An expedition in Greenland in the 1960's left canned food behind, which was discovered (and eaten) by another expedition about 60 years later. So much for expiration dates! (For that matter, a 150-year-old (!!!) jar of pickles from the steamboat Arabia was taste-tested by one of the archaeologists on that project, and found to be perfectly edible. My wife and I have visited the Arabia Steamboat Museum, and seen the recovered foodstuffs. It's well worth a visit if you're in or near Kansas City.)
So, if your emergency preparations include "time-expired" tins of food, don't assume you have to throw them away. Inspect them carefully for any signs of damage or spoilage. If none are visible, go ahead and use them (although I'd taste-test older cans first, and possibly try some of their contents on animals to see if they have any odd reactions).
Peter
23 comments:
"Let's see if this ancient glass jar of olives is still good."
"Send in the grad student. He'll try anything once!"
TXRed
Food 100 years old was safe to eat, although the taste may have diminished.
In Germany in 1965, the US Army had a program "Operation Eat them Up" which served 'C' rations packed in 1945 at an evening meal at least monthly. Nobody got sick.
True. I am eating a jar of Jif creamy peanut butter now that "expired" 7 years ago. There is no difference in taste, texture, or smell from a brand new jar. It isn't causing any stomach issues at all.
My Father worked at the Defense Personnel Support Center for 20 years. For most of that time he was the guy arranging contracts for canned food stuffs for the US military. He had told me that the 'Best By' dates on cans have to do mainly with taste and sometimes appearance.
Products with a high acid content, such as tomatoes (tomato sauce) or pineapple, will erode the can liner and take on a metallic taste. And with items such as Chicken Noodle Soup the noodles will breakdown and become mush at the bottom of the can. But as you said as long as the can shows no signs of internal pressure or damage it should be safe to eat.
If air hisses into the can when the seal is breached, it is probably OK. If air (and other things) hiss out, it's probably a 'pass'.
I live in the KC area and second that comment regarding the Steamboat Arabia museum!
Check out Steve1989 on youtube, he does MRE reviews and has videos of him eating food made during the civil war.
There is a website - StillTasty.com - that tells you how long things will last based on now they are stored. I use it all the time.
I have had issues with canned peaches. But not to worry, they will not make you sick. Because the cans leaked, so inedible obviously.
Regardless of the suggestion, many feel the expiration date is cast in stone. Arguing with them about the misconception is as productive as arguing with an oak tree.
I have noted that canned peas get mushy a couple of years past the expiration date. I have no idea if this is common to just one brand or common to all canned peas.
The brand that I have seen this is in is "Le Sueur Very Young Small Sweet Peas, 15 oz., 8 ct." that I buy at Sams Club.
https://www.samsclub.com/p/lesueur-peas-8-15-oz-cans/prod15160200?itemNumber=811667
That's a weird thing from the food bank; I volunteered at one a few years ago, and their rule was that they could accept anything that had an expired date less than five years beforehand.
I've a stash of canned food that is pre-2012. When I've tried some of it, it has a distinctly metallic taste that it has picked up from the can. Other than that, the food still seems edible.
I hesitate to throw it out because if SHTF and the globalists win their war on our food security and we get engineered famines, I suspect it can still provide calories without poisoning me.
I home can a lot of food for my preps and have done so for many years. I have often eaten stuff 10+ years old and found it to be just fine. As long as the seal is intact and the jar has been stored out of the light, there are no issues with the food.
The only problems I have had with spoilage of canned food that was meant for long term storage was powdered eggs, powdered milk, and tomato powder.
While expiration dates are mostly a suggestion, don't forget that food DOES still go bad.
I tried an MRE recently that went bad - it had been stored in a hot garage for 3 years.
Jonathan
I’ve used soups, vegetables, olives, pickles, way past their date stamp. Never had a problem. The only food that went bad or off was tomato sauce. As noted the acid damaged the cans.
I’ve used old pasta and rice, also with no problem. Some flour based items, and mixes, smell off so those get tossed when I open them.
Southern NH
My wife and I canned a lot of ground beef and chicken in 2010 and 2011. We still are eating it with no noticeable change in taste, color or texture.
LongBoy from down the Bayou
We have a lot of canned food 5 to 14 years past expiration..
whats good or bad is very easy to determine, inline with earlier comments.
Can bulged = BAD!
Can rusted and leaking = BAD!
Can rusted lightly.. no effect go to next tier of tests.
Smell = if the smell is off and it smells bad treat it as bad.
Appearance... this is an iffy sort of test as a lot of old cans of food will not smell horrible but will be very dark in color.
I treat them as bad as no one wants food poisoning, the dark color at the least indicates oxidization which is a very strong chemical process so likely lots of stuff in the food is compromised..
3/4 or more of all old cans of food seem perfectly fine past those tests. At that point I taste.. a lot of cans have an aforementioned metallic taste. This doesn't mean it is unsafe but it is at least to me not appetizing. Dog gets people food if I open one of those or chickens get special rations.
I have found meats for some reason maintain flavor over time pretty well. I would not have thought that but we have eaten a lot of old tuna and cans of chicken and beef or sardines. Maybe they taste better because of making chili with them or other things that have strong seasonings such as mustard for tuna salad sandwiches.
Soups are really a mixed bag but again as mentioned before tomato based stuff after 3 or 4 years past best by date seem to pick up that metallic taste quickly... Mini raviolis are a good example. Dog loves those. If one or two in that age range have that characteristic I move all the rest to the dog food shelf and we use it as gap food when we run out of his dog food and haven't gotten replacement food already.
past about 6 years even inside the house can's are starting to rust in SC's humid coastal environment, heavy rust tends to get stuff sent to the dog or chicken pile if it passes other tests as its hard to clean exterior so that opening it doesn't get rust particles in the food . we fight mice here.. mice in the cupboards will pee and defecate on cans.. this causes heavy rusting if not quickly found and dealt with. pull can out and wash and dry and put back.. washing cans also accelerates rusting :)
I think we have lost about 50 dollars worth of canned products over the last 15 years to them going bad or in most cases simply failing my look, sniff or taste tests. Probably out of 1000 dollars worth purchased in that time period.
So overall I'm a fan of canned goods. I'm not purchasing a lot nowadays though as the cost has doubled to tripled from 4 years ago.
I keep threatening to pull the canning equipment out and can a bunch of cheap meat when I find it on sale.
The dotMil was routinely issuing cans from MCIs (still nicknamed C-rats) put up just after the Korean War and well earlier than Vietnam into the mid-to-late 1980s, 30 years after they were canned with no ill effects (other than that C-rats tasted crappy to begin with.
The whole point of commercial canning, invented because of Napoleon, was to find a way to preserve food for long periods of time.
The taste and nutritional value may decline somewhat, but an intact can that's 30 years old is just as good as a can that's 1 year old.
"Best By" dates are a gimmick thought up to get stupid people to throw out perfectly good food, and beg off complaints about changes in taste or color, which affect safety and nutrition not a whit.
The easily suggestible fall for that, but like most medicine "expiration" dates, they are wholly fantasy, because neither food nor medicine can tell time, and within certain narrow caveats and only a couple of specific exceptions, such items have a shelf life when properly stored that runs into decades.
Jar-"canned" items, not so much.
Also, FWIW, most of the people who scrupulously follow "Best By" dates as if they came down from Mt. Sinai graven on stone tablets, also have all the tags on their upholstery products, because they think the FBI will descend upon them if they pull them off.
YMMV.
Hardtack can last over a century. If you're interested in such things, you should check out Steve1989MREinfo on youtube.
He eats all sorts of old preserved food.
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