Didn't they teach you about stock rotation in Europe? Once a year the emergency food and batteries are replaced with fresh stock, and the old stock is put into the regular stock.
BTW, some canned goods were found in 'Old West' ghost towns that were about 100 years old. Other than loss of flavor, they were supposed to still be safe to eat.
That's exactly what I was explaining, to include batteries in the rotating scheme.
We had some stuff like that in the army. As for flavor, that was rather debatable even when "fresh" :-)
As a kid, I spent a few months living on C-rations (research). It's hard to imagine doing that for a prolonged period. Even the "chocolate" was abysmal!
I am surprised, though, that things *can* stay preserved, canned, for such a long period of time. I imagine it depends on the foodstuffs involved, the materials from which the cans are made, any *coatings* applied to the insides of the cans and the mechanical integrity of those cans.
I would imagine vacuum packing something like beans in glass (or metal) would also have a very long shelf life -- but I'm not a big fan of legumes! :-(
I had a similiar experience. Visiting a friend, I noticed a bunch of boxes of C-rations sitting in the garage. Asked about them, and found they were expired rations from a fallout shelter. I asked if I could have some, and soon found myself in possession of about six cases of them. Over the next few months, tried them out, and found which were tolerable, and which were really, really bad! A couple of years later, at ROTC summer camp, when we were issued C-rations, I knew which ones to get, and which ones to trade... ;-)
Charlie
Some of the ones I got while in the Army were over 20 years old. When its -20 to -30 degrees and the only food for 15 miles, you don't complain, if you want your next meal.
It wasn't intened to be 'good', it was meant to keep you alive.
Glass is excellent for canning, till the rubber seal rots.
Say Michael,
Where were you stationed, if you don't mind my asking?
---Joel
[...]
Well, we sometimes had helpful friends around to kill the stale taste. What were their names .... oh yeah, now I remember. Jack Daniels, Jim Beam ...
Ah, I wasn't as lucky. That's *all* I had to eat! :-/ (though I could have "as much as I wanted" -- small consolation that! :> )
I think the franks and beans were tolerable (and I *hate* beans -- so that tells you how bad I considered most of it!). The pasta (?) defied description. :< The little "fruit cakes" doubled as hockey pucks :-/
Ones to trade: ALL Ones to get: see above
;-)
But, remember to save the TP packet! (and the P38, of course!!)
Fort Greely, Alaska
Alcohol is a painful way to die, in sub zero temperatures.
were
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Most often the things that matter are cleanliness of the containers and=20 the sterility after closing. After the previous coatings and pH of the=20 preserved food play.
Do you really mean that or do you mean it actually tasted of *real* chocolate instead of Hershey bars brown sugary rancid fat product.
ISTR chocolate and boiled sweets tins were about the best surviving of the timed out rations. And even though UK rations are nothing to write home about the tinned stuff was OK long after its official junk by day.
Keep the air out and make sure they are sterile to begin with and they will last without bacterial decay until the seal is broken. US army reckons nearly 50 years. The contents may degrade somewhat though in terms of texture and taste. The infamous tinned meat Spam seemed to last pretty well without changing at all long after the expiry date.
Some goods tinned for early Antarctic expeditions still exist and are nominally edible.
Regards, Martin Brown
Well, we didn't empty the whole bottle :-)
Isn't there supposed to be a time limit (28 days?, can't remember) on how long they can be used before you have to feed the poor grunts some real food?
Helps seal you up so you don't need to go outside so often ;-)
All it takes is one big gulp to kill you. It can freeze the contents of your stomach and cause a painful death.
That was one of the things they stressed during our survival training. One moron interrupted the training right after it started with the statement, "I don't have to worry about freezing, cause I'll be full of antifreeze". They he threw a hissy fit when the instructor stated that people with black skin would freeze faster that someone with white skin and called him a racist. The moron wouldn't believe it had to do with black body radiation, and the fact that the instructor had almost black skin. The worst thing was that I had to work with that drunken idiot for a year. He was SUPPOSED to be a broadcast engineer, but couldn't make the simplest repairs. He couldn't run the boards, do camera work or anything else in the studio or control room, so they stuck him in the film library, and he couldn't even do that right.
have you ever tried to dig a latrine in frozen tundra? We had to put a ground rod through it, which required an oxyacetylene torch to hit the tip, so the rod didn't bend. Heat it red hot, drive it a few inches, pull it out and repeat. It took all day and used most of the full tanks of Oxygen and Acetylene.
At least, if you fall in, it'll go BUMP! rather than SPLAT! ;-)
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