Posted on 01/14/2011 8:59:56 AM PST by Doctor Prepper
If you’ve been keeping up with being prepared, then most likely you have made careful decisions on what to stockpile. The regular use and replenishment (‘Cycling’) of these supplies is an important part of this process.
You will want to establish replacement time lines guided by use-by dates, grouping together supplies with a similar shelf life. Keep in mind that longer periods mean higher probabilities that they will be unusable in times of emergency.
These are just a few examples of use-by dates from our own supplies. As with everything else, you will need to check though your supplies and come up with your own data. (Your mileage may vary)
Canned Ham 48 months
Canned Chicken 30 months
Canned Corn 23 months
Canned Beans 15 months
Pasta 23 months
Boxed Cereal (Dry) 12 months
Fruit juice (Plastic container) 11 months
Dry Pet food 12 months
Bottled water only seems to have a shelf Life of a few months. You can make of that what you will, but replacing it on a regular basis would seem to be a prudent move.
For simplicity’s sake, replacing supplies at half their typical shelf life is a good compromise between having to cycle through your supplies too much and risking spoilage by waiting too long.
For example, In the case of some canned meat products, this would be 15 – 20 months given average shelf lives of 40 – 30 months.
The bottom line is that using up and replacing your emergency supplies is just as important as getting the process started in the first place.
Links to the other parts of the series:
Sequential Food Storage Part I
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2640812/posts
Sequential food storage – Part 2 Assessing your family’s needs.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2644216/posts
Sequential food storage – Part 3 Buying out the store
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2649528/posts
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I have food storage. However, we normally eat only fresh foods so I have been trying to figure out the best way to handle food storage in this circumstance.
Any others out there with this problem?
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Cycling through one’s supplies is fine, except for those people that eat mostly fresh foods. It forces those people to eat foods, that would not normally eat, ie emergency rations.
“regular use and replenishment (‘Cycling’)”
My family has been doing this for years. Without fail we find that eventually we’ve
almost eaten all the `food’, so we go to a `supermarket’ and buy more food.
“I have food storage. However, we normally eat only fresh foods so I have been trying to figure out the best way to handle food storage in this circumstance.”
If you don’t want to eat it and it is still within the experation date then how about donating it to a food pantry? For OPSEC reasons I wouldn’t metion why I was donating it and I would rotate to whom I donated it.
Many GOYA fruit juice cans have very long codes - I have GOYA cans in my pantry that go to 2015 that I bought last year.
I don’t know of another ‘regular grocery’ item like these that stamp code out to 5 years.
Check out the Spanish sections in your grocery stores.
Yes, of course you do, our point is that you need to have ‘Buffer’ of stored food for when supermarket food is unavailable.
I seem to recall from the 50’s that adding bleach to stored water kept it indefinitely. I suppose you could not store it in plastic...need a tank of some kind. Has this been debunked?
I seem to recall from the 50’s that adding bleach to stored water kept it indefinitely. I suppose you could not store it in plastic...need a tank of some kind. Has this been debunked?
Fresh foods are always better – the foods that generally ring the inside wall of a supermarket.
But there may be times when it is unavailable and your only choice may be what you have stockpiled. You may need to eat the canned or dried versions of your normal fresh foods.
Having a “Fresh” supply of food that you have already tried will better than the alternative.
I use a permanent marker to mark the last 2 digits of the ‘best by’ year on the labels of canned goods. That makes it easy to recognize which ones should be cycled for more immediate use.
Yes, when the fresh food is unavailable, one has to eat what they have saved. Fortunately that day has not come. I give my stored food to the food bank when it nears expiration and buy new.
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