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

[Barneyboy]

i think it a personal thing i have eaten from tins with dents in that have been in my cupboard for months and im still here if they are pierced then dont eat

[bigpaul]

this is a very strange conversation! why would you even have a dented tin in your stores? if you dropped it yourself thats one thing, but having one in my stores means i have paid full price for something that is damaged and no way is that happening. if a dented tin is in your stores bring it to the front and use it immediately saving the good tins for later. actually checking for dents in tins(as i said before) is something my mother taught me as a child in the 1950's and this has stuck with me all my adult life and is probably why i take a pride in making sure my food stocks are in pristene condition. all our tinned food is strictly monitored, new stuff to the back, old stuff brought forward and used first, rotate, rotate & rotate.

[Timelord]

I was rooting around in my store for a specific tin item the other day and noticed 2 dented tins. They were not like that when I put them in store originally. There may have been more. It is possible some could be dented inadvertantly in use of the store, with tins & other goods being moved about etc.
I will be having a big stock check/rotation this week and any found like that will be removed to the normal kitchen store. People store foodstuffs in different ways and some will be more prone to accidental minor dings than others. As long as the inventory is checked regularily and the damaged containers flagged up, then it should not cause too much of a problem.

[Bucket]

The three week thing was a study I did at work- dented a tin of peaches enough the break the container (dropped out of a second floor window) and measured bacterial levels until they reached the "poisonous" category. probably still could have been edible, was comparing to a graph.

[Skean Dhude]

TL,

Thats what I do.

Bucket,

Dropping from a second floor makes a much bigger dint that bashing two tins together which is what we are really talking about. That must compromise the seal on the tin. Not simply having it eat a little tin.

[Tonka]

(5 June 2012, 11:27)Bucket Wrote: The three week thing was a study I did at work- dented a tin of peaches enough the break the container (dropped out of a second floor window) and measured bacterial levels until they reached the "poisonous" category. probably still could have been edible, was comparing to a graph.

Yes, if the tin is dented to the point that the can is no longer air tight, then they should go straight in the bin. Eating the contents could easily be fatal. But for a normally tented tin, then it should be fine to stick at the front of your food cupboard to be used soonish. Just don't stick it in your long term storage.

Despite this thread of points and counter points, I think we all actually think pretty much the same thing... about tin dents anyway.

[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.


[/b]

[bigpaul]

i would be very wary of putting my trust in someone who ventures onto Dartmoor without a tent or sleeping bag, and from the sound of it not much food either if you were starving when picked up, Dartmoor is on my doorstep and is not a place to be taken lightly, the fog and the rain can come down without a moments notice and if your not properly outfitted you can come to a lot of harm, no fatalities that i am familiar with but you could always be the first! as for dented tins as i have said before unless its a SHTF situation why take the risk? botulism and food poisoning are not pretty things....and if you were on Dartmoor at the same time then no help would be coming!! you would be in a fine pickle then....your bones may not be found for a long time...if ever, peat bogs on Dartmoor are a fine place to lose yourself in the fog. unless of course you were referring to the unofficial "rave" at Belstone the other weekend!!!

---

wife just reminded me that there have been fatalities on the moor, a 14 year old teenager was drowned in a river on Dartmoor practiceing for"The Ten Tors" cos she didnt know any better and neither did the teacher who told her to cross the river( to retrieve her bag she dropped-in the river)!

[Timelord]

?????

[Tonka]

Where I shop dented tins are usually just left of the shelf at full price.

My dented tins tend to leave the shop fine but become tended when my cats manage to break into the food cupboard. They where left locked in a flat to starve by their previous owners and they are now survivalists themselves with extreme scavenging skills. A child lock on the cupboard and big pile of tins doesn't always keep them away from the treats.
My food cache is well out of the way of cats though.

So bigpaul, are you saying you bin every dented tin you have, or just that you don't see the point in buying dented tins?

And WongFeiFox, that sounds like good advice on checking tins. I used to camp without a tent... but not without a sleeping bag and waterproof cover.... and definitely not without food. Once I propped a bin bag on a stick to keep the rain off my head, and I awoke to find a fox trying to eat me. He thought I was a bin find of the century.
Was your Dartmoor adventure an experiment?