“do a lot of free radical damage and deplete the body of certain vitamins”
This is basically all you can point to in all your fearmongering. One little extra oxygen atom. That’s the entire danger of the fats in canned meats going rancid. Those oxygenated atoms are of course present all the time in all sorts of foods we normally eat every day, in some quantity, and our bodies repair the damage they do, every day. Big whup. If you are really scared just stockpile some more antioxidants and vitamins.
“Those oxygenated atoms are of course present all the time in all sorts of foods we normally eat every day, in some quantity, and our bodies repair the damage they do, every day.”
The problem is that you aren’t talking about a tiny amount. The longer these fats and oils sit on shelves, the more rancid they will become.
Similar to your description, the foods we eat contain poisons, germs, bacteria, particles of roach carcasses, and roach and rat dropping. In tiny quantities they aren’t going to kill us. In greater quantities they become more and more deadly.
Again, we are discussing survival food. If you have something in your pantry that has passed it’s “best by” date by a few days, weeks, months, and possibly even years, the greatest risk you have from rancid fats in meats (assuming there is nothing else wrong with them) is just like you say. Upset stomach. Some free radicals and vitamin deficiency. All easily treated and cured in most cases.
This scenario is a far cry from a pantry full of expired meat you are depending on to survive, and which is very rancid from being years past it’s shelf life. That scenario is life threatening and entirely preventable. Why store something long term when you know in advance that it is going to degrade and lose it’s nutritional value and threaten your health?
There are shelf-stable meat and egg packages that are designed to last for decades. They have almost no oil or fat because those don’t keep. A better strategy is to store these and other survival foods and rotate any fats and oils to keep them fresh. When these run out in a survival scenario, you can barter, buy, or otherwise obtain fats and oils that are fresh. The good news is that these are probably going to be the cheapest and most accessible food products in a food crisis anyway. There is no need to make a survival situation worse by using food in ways it was not intended to be used, and there is certainly no need to make that your basic game plan in advance.
Bottom line, in the context of what the article is about, “investing” in canned meats by buying up large quantities is only going to be successful if there is a near-term food crisis. A better bet is dry rice and beans with oxygen absorbers. Longterm storage of meat and eggs is expensive. Raising these is the best option if possible.
But if you or anyone on the forum some day awakens in the middle of a food crisis and has to rely on old canned meats, I hope you will remember my suggestion to boil or otherwise cook it to remove the rancid fats. It will be safer, healthier, and tastier.