Just wondering but I am creating a list of regular canned goods to store however just dont understand if keeping them inside my house with AC they may last 2 years. If after the 2 years prices have gone up why bother to save such large quantity of canned products. Just asking here, I am also getting some grains, rice and other dry goods that not sure whats the best way to store them? I am getting some dryed #10 mountain house foods but not sure about the rest.
There is a chart on here somewhere for storage life of canned goods. Do a search on it. But as a rule of thumb the two year shelf life is for nutritional value.They lose thier nutritional value after time. They can be eaten for many years after that but it would be to simply to fill your stomach not fuel your body. If the cans are not swollen, and especially with low acidic foods, they can still be consumed for many years. If that situation occured I always thought that I would supplement it with fresh meat or veggies or something that would give some nutritional value. It would be a good way to stretch those freeze dried meals.
I'd bet you can double the expiration date and still be good. Obviously if a can is bulged or smells bad if you open it, toss it out. Beyond the 6-8 yr mark, what you will have is breakdown in the nutrient content. I used to question this, thinking that if you put a bunch of stuff in a can and then waited a few yrs and opened that can, you'd have the same nutrients. The reason is the same reason we humans can't live on dirt. The plants we eat take the nutirents out of the soil and change the form in a symbiotic process. We can eat and use those . We can't just suck on a chunk of iron to get our iron... It has to be processed through the plants first. That's also why most of your Centrum type vitamins are worthless... They are synthetic copies of the raw material and have cut theat plant process out of the equation. A medical guy I know once challenged me on this when talking about how when they give an anemic patient Iron, the iron levels come into spec. That may be true but I doubt that the iron in that patients blood was in a form that was usable by her body. ANyway, over time your canned goods will start to break down but I would still hold on to them. MH is really good for long term and I'd talk to JC about that if you want more.
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We have a simple grease pencil date on each can in our long term pantry. When the can is placed at the back of each column of similar type ingredients, the oldest it consumed to keep a normal rotation going so that there is no dead storage of pantry foods. For Safety Room type storage uses, the cans are rotated semi-annualy. Dried item kept there. Overbore
Your best bet (IMHO) on canned good storage is to figure out how long a given type of canned goods lasts and retains its nutritional value then buy enouph to last you that long. Buy the same stuff you eat now and rotate the stocks. Most of the foods will last at least 2-3 years so now you have a 2-3 year food supply. Use from the stores for your daily meals and replace what you use. The earlier you get it stocked up the less you pay then you just pay the going price to feed yourself as you go and retain the stocks. Even if you just have 2 years of supplies, if you also store some seeds for a garden and if you dont have critters to raise for meat make sure you have trade goods to get some, then thats enouph to get you through at least 2 growing seasons and give you the chance to start harvesting and canning your own and breeding meat so that you cn have an ongoing food source.
+1 On Monkeyman, the book I recommend says pretty much the same thing. We only store food we currently eat and we eat our stores. We just bought extra each shopping trip to speard out the cost and over time built up about a years stockpile. Check out This Food storage guide its a 21 page PDF that you can print out. We also built a canned good rack were the cans are stored on their sides and roll down whenever we remove one. This is suppose to make them last longer. The longest can that we have stored and opened has been about 10 months (we have some that have been stored for 14 months but haven't opened them yet) and it looked and tasted like it just came from the store.
As long as you keep in mind that commercialized canning of food destroys upwards of 70% of the nutritional value, you'll be fine. Most foods can easily go double their posted expiration as long as they're not bulging or seriously dinged, as stated. However, if it contains milk products, you might want to rethink that dating. (It may taste "off".) Boxed goods don't last much beyond their expiration without tasting wonky. Maybe vacuum packing would help extend their shelf-life. Centrum vitamins are some of the least effective on the market, by the way. In fact, a few years ago when I worked at a small independent health food store, we noticed a rash of people getting seriously ill after they started taking Centrum - and got better immediately after they stopped. Test: Take a multi-vitamin and put it in a little spoon or cap full of water. If it dissolves in a half hour or so, it's viable. If it does not, it won't do you any good, and you're wasting your money. For iron deficiency, it's better to take B-12 in most cases. The body cannot metabolize most of what is sold as "iron" supplements.
