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Depends on what the contents of can / jar is, and the solution they may be stored in.
I've had cans of tuna and sardines that were still OK about 5 years after sell by date. A brine solution would lend itself to lasting longer.
Things that are acidic do not last as long. Things that are dry last longer than those in liquid. Cans / jars are easy to determine by pressure build up. Some cans with vacuum packed will last longer since there is less solution for the contents to 'react'.
As mentioned, simply rotate stock regularly so that nothing gets too far beyond date. I've had glass jars be good for about 3 years after use be date. Some things will settle also, so, you may be able to use top portion and as long as it is heated above a certain temp and be OK. Pasta sauce being an example. Most of these type of items have a high sodium content so when using it helps to rinse strain and add you own seasoning to help for flavor.
And always do the full examination: sniff /sample. When anything smells funky / looks discolored toss it.
If you're starving after 6 months, I'm guessing those "piousness" cans will look plenty appetizing. Or you can get MREs and don't overindulge due to your diabetes. That may be a problem for you and why you have diabetes in the fist place, so you could always can your own food, but good luck getting them to last five years as well.
Just curious, if you're insulin dependent, are you going to be able to stockpile insulin too?
When they told me, they gave me the option of pills or shots and I immediately went for the pills because...
insulin is refrigerator dependent
there is the question of circulatory collapse
......and that was just back in the Trump administration.
As it was, given the Texas snowcolypse and the rolling blackouts, having the pills was another reason over insulin.
I am Type II so it is more a thing of diet. I am wondering if there is something in nature, in natural drugs....but that's a different research question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ciceropolo
.........Pasta sauce being an example. Most of these type of items have a high sodium content so when using it helps to rinse strain and add you own seasoning to help for flavor.
No expiration date but most of it is pasta which is rather off limits to me, so I got to wondering.....
As it was, before I started this thread, I was thinking an order every year or every 6 months, slowly build up at stock pile that would have to be rotated out at the 5-6 year mark or so.
Okay...........I have lots of HEB canned chili and chili has 0% added sugar, so it is heading in the right direction for me. The catch is a lot of it was bought in 2013.
........
Tamara, don't buy food to store that isn't the sort of food you eat. You should not buy a case of chili in 2013 and still have it.
If you like chili, you buy the case, use it as you go along and keep topping the supply off, so you still have a case, but each year it consists of newer cans.
Look at what you normally eat and figure out what in your diet stores well. Then that is what you buy and you continue to use it and rotate through it. Replace what you use with newer cans. That way, you will never be caught without food but the food that you have isn't old food.
Not quite your question, but canned foods that react to the can are generally packaged in lined cans. Or at least the good brands are.
The long green chilies that I use come in a lined can. If I buy the bargain brands in cheap cans, the cans aren't lined and the chilies have a tin can taste to them. Some of the good brands of canned tomatoes come in a lined can.
Don't be too cheap when buying storage food. If TSHTF and you actually need your storage food to survive, you will appreciate some good food. Food will probably be the only highlight of your life if it comes down to that and you don't want your only highlight to be tasteless and uninteresting, or even worse, something that you've never liked to eat.
Tamara, don't buy food to store that isn't the sort of food you eat. You should not buy a case of chili in 2013 and still have it.
If you like chili, you buy the case, use it as you go along and keep topping the supply off, so you still have a case, but each year it consists of newer cans.
Look at what you normally eat and figure out what in your diet stores well. Then that is what you buy and you continue to use it and rotate through it. Replace what you use with newer cans. That way, you will never be caught without food but the food that you have isn't old food.
Well, that's the thing of finding out I am a Type II diabetic. Just a trifle over one year ago, I found out that so much of the stuff I have is now off limits to me. No canned spaghetti, no raw spaghetti, no white rice, no white sugar, no alcohol. Things I had that I was looking at for pioneering, like molasses, a no-no, too!
I have all these packages of raw spaghetti because it was cheap, it was an easy meal, I could be creative, and POOF!, no more. I was slowly rotating out the canned spaghetti but in a heart beat, POOF! The chili is still on the menu, it's there, but old. Had one can a few months ago.....and I'm still here!
My canned pasta goods were, for many years, my out of work supply, that was the theory. When they became POOF! to me, then they became my bug out guest supply or things I could pass to passing travelers (in the romantic sense) because they could eat it even if I could not.....if they are still edible.
My diet, diabetes aside, has shifted mostly to dry goods (beans, brown rice, lentils, split peas, corn meal, corn flour, cocoa powder, sugar substitute, flour, rolled oats, sugars (more on that in the moment)), avocados, lettuce, canned fish and meats, canned tomatoes and corn, and deep freeze meats and fish (though I might get into smoking some day). On the sugars, my doctor says I can have limited Toll House cookie baked stuff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke
Not quite your question, but canned foods that react to the can are generally packaged in lined cans. Or at least the good brands are.
The long green chilies that I use come in a lined can. If I buy the bargain brands in cheap cans, the cans aren't lined and the chilies have a tin can taste to them. Some of the good brands of canned tomatoes come in a lined can.
Don't be too cheap when buying storage food. If TSHTF and you actually need your storage food to survive, you will appreciate some good food. Food will probably be the only highlight of your life if it comes down to that and you don't want your only highlight to be tasteless and uninteresting, or even worse, something that you've never liked to eat.
Well, that is the thing about the spices.....sort of. Not so much from history but a 60's National Geographic article about cod fishermen. Every meal was.....cod...but it was written that with different spices and sauces, the cook could make them all taste different. So when I go buy a Big Lots, I buy up on their spices. When I am the camp out cook, I have a box filled with all the spices one can imagine just in case.
An interesting side note about the snowcoplypse. With its rolling black outs, I would take a quarter lbs of beef out of the frozen goods when power was up and let it defrost during the day. Then, for meal times, I would cook it up on the gas stove and have it with tortillas.
As it is, what is my most heavy purchase of canned goods? Cat food....and we go through that quick enough.
For example, I have lots of HEB canned chili and chili has 0% added sugar, so it is heading in the right direction for me. The catch is a lot of it was bought in 2013.
I am under the impression that the Best By date is not an expiration date and as long as the can is not compromised, it is still viable......assuming it doesn't explode or hiss upon opening.
So what's the scoop?
In the 80's, I ate a fair amount of C rations that were canned in WWII, so were 40 years old. They were fine. Storage conditions make a difference.
My brother told me the other day that standard canned food isn't good past 6 months because the lining of the can leeches into the food and poisons it. Is that true? That would really suck across the board!
Of course, there are MREs here and there but if you are a diabetic, are those just as bad for you as in being a poison?
So what are the storable foods?
You go KETO. You have a few animals grazing on your land. When you get hungry, you "process" one at a time. It's best to have refrigeration, so the meat doesn't spoil so quickly, though.
And, it's great to help keep your "sugar" lower.
Start with something easy, like chickens. They've been known to lay eggs. Eggs are golden for a diabetic.
You go KETO. You have a few animals grazing on your land. When you get hungry, you "process" one at a time. It's best to have refrigeration, so the meat doesn't spoil so quickly, though.
And, it's great to help keep your "sugar" lower.
Start with something easy, like chickens. They've been known to lay eggs. Eggs are golden for a diabetic.
Every even numbered year, we do 50 meat birds. After a couple of years we were introduced to a chicken-plucking machine, right after that we bought our own chicken-plucking machine. Now we host an annual poultry processing weekend. Friends bring all of the poultry they want to send to freezer camp, and we setup an assembly line. My Dw says that 50 birds every second year is just enough chicken in the freezer to last us two years. We grow 'Freedom Ranger' chickens. We buy mail-order day-old chicks, we raise them for 12 weeks, and we schedule a processing weekend. Twelve weeks of dealing with them, once every two years, feels like a small amount of labor.
Sheep and goats, we were never able to find a recipe that made the meat edible.
Rabbits we have done well raising meat rabbits. Mostly when our children were living at home. It was their 4H project.
Our primary source of meat has been pigs. I have one boar, raised him from a piglet and fed him milk from a bottle. He grew up with a chest harness and I took him for daily walks. As a full size adult boar [800 pounds] he thinks he is my pet, I scratch behind his ears and rub his belly.
Three sows [350 pounds], also think they are my pets. But it is not so critical with sows. I talk lovingly to them and rub their bellies, but really I toss them treats so that buys me their love.
They are fenced in four acres of woodlot, they love to eat the weeds and brush growing under the forest canopy.
As a herd, they can go for a year with about 2 cups of grain per head each day as a daily 'treat'. But on that diet they will lose weight and at the end of a year, the boar will be down to around 200 pounds and the girls will be down to 300 pounds.
On the other hand, when I give them 2 cups of grain plus 400-pounds of grocery store produce waste twice a week [a wide array of veggies and fruits the store workers cull off the line each day and I get for free to save it from going to a landfill].
As a herd each girl provides two litters a year, of up to fourteen piglets each litter. [3 sows X twice a year X 14 piglets = 84 piglets a year that I sell for $80 to $100 each]. But honestly I have never achieved that maximum theoretical quantity of piglets in a year. I don't think I have ever produced more than 50 piglets a year.
JMO, but MREs are gross, and old MREs are even more gross. I bought some when they were on sale but after I quit hiking and camping I stopped consuming them and now I regret that I have any. I keep it for emergency dog food.
As it relates to food safety, the "expiration/best buy/sell by" dates on canned food are meaningless. Some brands like Keystone meats don't even include them (at least, they didn't last I checked).
The date on cans that have dates are arbitrary (some have manufacturing dates and not expiration dates, don't get them confused), and are based on when the manufacturer believes the quality (taste and texture) may start to decline. This happens faster in warm storage than in cool storage.
The real limiting factor to canned food is how long the can lasts. They rust quicker in humid climates, and once the can is breached it becomes a food safety issue.
Some things like canned milk turn brown and smell and taste nasty pretty quickly after the expiration date. Canned tomatoes don't last long either.
There is a youtube channel where a guy opens and sometimes samples canned food that is decades old.
The best food for long-term storage is freeze dried. The best food security solution is knowing how to raise, grow, forage, hunt, and preserve it yourself. But anybody who is a bona fide expert able to produce 100x more food than they consume needs a stockpile, or a community source... what if you break a leg or something and can't leave the footprint of your house for 90 days? By the time you start limping around it's going to take another 90 days to get your food production going again. 6 months of stored food may barely be enough to scrape by.
We keep some canned food on hand, but it's stuff that we use and rotate. But since we don't eat much canned food there isn't a lot of it. We used to can food ourselves, but because we have four growing seasons there is always more food coming up, so there was no reason to eat the canned food. We keep our pressure canners, jars, lids, etc on hand in case the situation changes, and the knowledge we learned by canning food is priceless. Should we suddenly lose freezers or refrigeration, we have the means to preserve important items.
If you have any doubts about food safety from old, canned food, so long as it smells and looks edible you can simmer it on low boil for 20 minutes, which is long enough to break down any potential botulism or other toxins. The toxins are a bigger concern than any potential microorganisms that are killed quickly by heating.
I don't buy MREs. I have a fair amount of canned goods, as well as dehydrated products.
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