Chicken... 3 years past use by date... tasted great

[WongFeiFox]

Ok, I'm only a noob to this site, but thought I would throw my tuppence in as I have just spent the last 1.5hrs scrolling through almost every Google site on dented cans and digging out every survival reference book I could find on storing food.

Coming as I do from not the wealthiest of families I can state without fear there is no problem with eating tins long past their sell by date, nor from eating from dented tins. We would often find tins in our cupboard that were 2-4 years old - I cannot confirm if they were meat in a white wine sauce - as long as they looked and smelt fine they generally were good to eat, yeah the nutrional value was probably low, but hey they filled a hole and we lived. My brother only a year ago found a jar of mayo in my nan's larder (proper old school larder, marble shelf, flyscreen) that was 2 years past due date he ate it in sandwiches for 4 days before he realised, he lived to carry on being the pain in the backside that he is now.

A lot of the Google pages were just reinterpreted trash, the same old stuff over 5 pages, but just like everything you have to dig deep to find the gold, although most of this I knew from mothers apron strings it was good to find the same 4 rules on every decent food safety site.

rules of can safety

1. If the tops/bottom or the sides can move or make a popping sound. Air is in the can and the seals have gone, may show no signs of denting or rusting, just could have been a poor can.
2. If the can is bulging/bloated. This is due to bateria producing gas within the can, a definate no-no in all survival books
3. Avoid cans that are dented on the top/bottom. This is due to the seams at the sides are the weakest points and may allow air to enter althought the contents may not spill. Cans that have sharp dents should also be avoided as the protective organic or enamel compound layer may have fractured allowing acidic contents to react with the tin layer that surrounds the steel strip that all cans are actually made of. A slight side dent will cause no concern. This fact was found to be the same in all reports from UK, USA and Australia.

p.s.
A group of students bought several tins from different stores (to establish production methods) and also bashed several tins then tested them over a 3 year period. Only 1 tin suffered from oxidization and that was tomatoes which have an acidic content and one of the control cans which had no visible defects actually contained "Chlostridium Sporogenes", which from what I can find means the "trots". However more alarmingly it is from the same family that causes Botulism from poorly canned food, hmmm interesting.

4. Lastly and by far the most important as my mother taught me, never use a tin that sprays or explodes it's contents when opened. A dented tin will open just a normally as any other tin.


The main reason tins find their way onto the discount shelf is cosmetic value only, slight dent,tear in the label, discount shelf it goes, if the customer cant notice the dent back out on the main shop floor - I used to stack shelves in sommerfield as a kid so I know the drill.

My main argument for buying dented tins is that the saving you make will save you something else. The 78p each I saved on buying 4 dented tins this week went towards my 2 packs dettol soap (1.48 for a 2 pack) Thats 4 bars of antiseptic soap that will last a long time and we've already eaten 2 of the tins since Friday's shop.
Although most people on here have the same idea that a dented tin should be bought to the front of the store I'm sure none of us would turn our noses up if the situation offered it. I spent 2 days & nights up on Dartmoor this year with nothing but a bug out bag, no tent, no sleeping bag just me and my wits, when the missus picked me up on Sunday night I would have eaten pretty much anything, dent or no dent and that was after 2 days and having come from a normal diet on Friday lunchtime. Plus you could always barter it or give it away at the next harvest festival if its still there and hopefully EOTWAWKI has yet to occurr.

Have just gone through the larder and found 4 tins with a slight dent beans, rice pudding, ravioli and some mackerel fillets out of all of them the makerel fillets give most cause for concern due to the nature of the small tins and the contents, currently waiting for the toast to finish, whilst the other tins have been put into the camping box for the next trip out.


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