Any prepper worth his or her salt knows what foods last and what ones don't. We do most of our shopping buying food that is marked down 20% or more because it is approaching the "sell by" date. That's an instant 20% savings on our bill for perfectly good food.
I go straight to the discount bins while my daughter rounds up the free bread, meat and cheese samples.
...but nobody can quite figure out what it is...
From the article, “Pulses and rice can sit happily in the cupboard for long after the ‘Best Before’ date.”. What in the world are “pulses”?
Read about the S.S. Bertrand
When you talk about canned goods, for most, shelf life is a decade, minimum.
bmfl
Bfl
These pickles are 2 weeks old!
Finally, some common sense.
Maybe past the sell by date, but not infinite. My mom stocked up for Y2K (I told her it wasn’t going to be a big deal, but what did I know?). The jarred spaghetti sauce eventually got white furries a few years in. She ate a lot of peanut butter and tuna for a while.
In Vietnam I at C’s made in the mid 40’s, over 20 years old. I learned if canned food is kept dry, out of the sun in a relatively cool place it will last decades.
I also recall someone bringing to the surface canned peaches from some 1800’s era river boat, open them up, and they were good.
The biggest joke is expiration dates on water. I recall a missile alert crew (the button pushers that live underground) had canned water from the 50’s and wanted it tested for safety. It was just as good as the day it was canned.
Repeating myself; Couple months ago I found a can of Margaret Holmes field peas that had been pushed way back in my cupboard. The expiration date was 2001.
I simmered them for about 20 minutes (as I always do for this variety/brand) with a pork neck bone I had smoked and they were delicious.
FWIW, I saw a Verizon ad the other day, touting their technology to monitor the freshness of seafood as it advances through the food stream to market.
https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-to-launch-ad-campaign-touting-its-iot-efforts
Management at work decided it would be a good idea to have our group spend the day helping out at a food pantry as a way to “give back” to the community. I didnt put up too much of a struggle because over the years I learned (1) resistance is futile, and (2) some of these outings can be amusing. We get to the food pantry and were given the job of sorting expired from non expired food out of 6’ square boxes. Dozens of them filled with mostly junk food. When I asked why a bunch of people with Ph.D.s and Masters degrees were doing this instead of the people who actually used the food bank? After all why shouldn’t the people who receive free food be expected to “give back” to the community? I was met with a mixture of nervous laughs and dirty looks. I was used to it. In any case the vast majority of the food was only slightly past the expiration date and the packaging was perfectly intact. Our instructions were that anything that was expired was considered to be garbage and thrown out. I opened some packages of cupcakes and tasted them. They were fine as were the things others had tasted. I asked why if “so many people were going hungry” were we throwing away perfectly edible food? More dirty looks. Turns out that State regulations reguired it. In the end it was a fun day. Not only did we get to stuff our faces with free snacks, we also got to track down and kill mice (we were instructed to kill any mice we saw). I was glad I went.
Speaking of prepping, a ship we’re working on asked us to properly dispose of some of their expired medications. I was asked how to properly dispose of them. After looking at the ton of 500mg amoxicillin tabs, IV bags, and lots of assorted of other stuff (including some medications I won’t name) I told them I knew exactly how to dispose of them. They also had a ton of tetracycline but I am going to dispose of those. I felt like I hit the jackpot. I think in the future I’m going to start asking the ship’s crew if they have anything that has expired and needs to be discarded.
I was surprised when I heard a lot of people just throw things away.