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Canned food shelf life.

Lets not forget than canned food is designed to be stored in cool dry conditions. If you take canned food and then store it in freezing dry conditions you can expect it to last pretty much forever.
 
I found a can of Ye olde oak ham.at the back of the bottom shels of the food cupboard just as we were leaving our last house, It was pushing 20 years old. before it went intothe bin I opened it , seemed fine, smelled ok but didn't give it the taste test.... it was probably fine
 
Many of the old and bold who were serving in the late 50,s and early , had the pleasure of eating vintage 1940,s reconstituted dried
whalemeat ,minced and served in rissoles ,pies , hotpots and cottage pie. Another favourite was A10 size tins of meat and grey potatoes
dated pre 1940,
heated and mashed together formed into patties , made a great burger of sorts, cold made a great icehockey puck, many of the
rests and remains of WW2 rations were still being served up in ST Omer in 1961

My bold - used to be mistakenly named meat and veg.
 
That was the Franklin Expedition of 1845 - very early canning technology. You would know a can from that period if you saw it and it would be brave indeed to sample the contents.

Franklin's lost expedition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paradoxically, some of Franklin's crew are better preserved than his tinned food was. The link to how the autopsies were eventually performed is worth a click.

JOHN TORRINGTON MUMMY 1846 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

There were also some supplies from Scotts Antartic expedition of 1912 found later , see here "The tins of food (Heinz tins!) which Captain Scott abandoned in the Antarctic were opened 47 years after his death, and the contents were not only edible, but pleasant."
Arn't the govt looking at reviewing the "best before" dates as apparently each family with children throws away about £680 worth of food each year which equates to about 8.3 million tonnes of food, much of it edible, is thrown away by households in the UK every year. Food waste is also harmful to the environment: when food waste goes to landfill it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Not to mention the waste of energy from producing, storing and transporting the food and dealing with the subsequent waste.
 
As a rule of thumb, if the tin is undamaged, ie no dents, rust, etc, they are likely to be fine.

Dried goods like pasta can last for years. Bacteria need moisture, suitable PH and temperatures to breed. A tin of sterilised canned food if undamaged should last for years beyond the sell by date. Dented tins may have the internal laquered surface damaged, the contents may then react with the steel the can is made from.

In Italy post war, when food was tight, a ship's cargo of tinned milk (I think) was salvaged after lying on the harbour bottom for a couple of years. It was still good.

Modern warfare from WWI onwards would be almost impossible to conduct without canned food, the logistics of supplying millions of troops in the field with fresh rations would be nigh on impossible.

I have always liked the fact that the tin-opener was patented over a decade after the invention of tinned food, up until then a hammer and chisel was used.
 

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