Will canned food last in a warm pantry?

[MrLemonade]

I've turned a room in my house into a large pantry with shelving, and have several years of dry goods, canned foods, and 3 freezers. This is my first summer and it has gotten warm in my climate, some days slightly over 100 but low humidity around 10%. I have air circulation but am concerned that possibly warm weather might shorten the food lifespan. But I'm just not sure. I do not have air conditioning, but I could generate more air circulation in that room. On particularly hot days I could freeze water and put a fan over a bucket of ice to keep that room cooler in the future, or get a dedicated small room air cooler going forward.

Experience, knowledge, thoughts, ideas, feedback? Thanks.

 

[Proud Prepper]

The warmer the food is the shorter the quality.

 

[MNwr786]

Anything over 80°F isn't good long term and anything over 90° it will lose shelf life rapidly. I have the same problem and ended up digging a hole in the woods by the cabin for a cooler of canned goods and I cover it with a plastic sled bottom and a tarp. Its only deep enough to fit the cooler so it doesn't get very cold, but on a 100° day, those cans stay about 72°.

 

[Arcticdude]

We keep a year+ of canned food split between our house pantry and the shop. The temps in our house this time of year are in the mid 70's up to around 80 degs. The shop is cooler. We eat through the food so that nothing is much over a year old.

 

[jimLE]

I Agree warm shortens life span of food.might try a ac window unit.or a ice chest with a pvc pipe going through it.and a fan connected to the pipe,to blow air through the pipe.fill the ice chest with ice.

 

[rainingcatzanddogs]

There is one methodology of food storage that says "store what you eat and eat what you store".

Over the years I have found the most cost efficient way to store in a hot climate (forecast today 92, 98% humidity and 18% chance of rain because a "cold front" came through) is to do exactly that.

Six months of our food stores are in long term freeze dried form. The rest is rotate/replace or actively growing.

Air conditioning here is almost mandatory like heaters are in the north. I second the idea of getting a small A/C window unit for the storage room and start investigating (if you haven't already) how in a grid down situation you might procure enough power to keep that unit running.

Not only will it preserve food, it might also become a medical necessity if you are working outside surviving and don't have another means to bring your body temp back down to the normal range each night. Heat stroke is cumulative.

 

[EastenerWesterner]

My actual concern for @MrLemonade situation is the 3 freezers. A lot of food to lose.

My experience
Had to Evac for wildfire. Power on, gone for 4 days. No Problem.
Home for 3 days, power goes out. At the time running a gas Generator. Got to Evac again for 4 days. Came home to a melted mess. 2 fridges and a small chest freezer. I managed to save 2 steaks that were a still a little frosted for dinner. I figured the loss to be 600-800.
My solution-fortunately I bought a dual fuel generator. Put in a quick connect connector in the propane line. I might lose the small chest freezer in the barn. But if I have enough warning, I can move it with the tractor to an electrical source.

 

[Danil54grl]

I have a dedicated room here, probably much like you have right now. It holds dry goods, both commercially canned and home canned, dehydrated foods and freeze dried. I will admit that my stocks have outgrown that room and it is now hidden under the spare bed and closets.

My question is what kind of canned goods do you have? We have high heat here, but also high humidity and I really think the humidity was what got me at the time. Hunny decided he didn't want to cool that room to save on the energy bill. I do get that. I saw that the tops of my canning jars would start to rust and even found some of the commercial cans that did the same. We now have opened up the A/C ducts for that room. My Dad's Mom would keep her canned goods stored outside in a closet right outside her doors. Over time, they all rusted, but again, high heat and high humidity. The high heat is NOT good! If you can, keep the room as cool as possible even if it is just a ceiling fan, it will last way longer. Here, we have a backup if we lose power. It happens for weeks if we get hit by a hurricane. Don't know where you are or even if you have to worry at this point for long outages?

Will say that we have had a couple freezers go out on us. The 1st was down at another location that I couldn't keep an eye on. . . We lost a whole beef cow that got processed. HEART BREAKING!! The other, right here. We moved what we could to other freezers, but there wasn't much room left so I had to process everything I could at that point into canning jars and the dehydrator (this happened before the freeze dryer). I did get to process what I prioritized first. The only thing that was not a complete success was the 10lb lard bags I had stored to render. The first 20 lbs did just fine, the last was to far gone. . .

 

[TexPrep]

A woman that my Wife works with put her Patriot supply food in her attic.
I was dumbfounded...
Temps in an attic in Houston during the summer can easily reach 140 degrees.
The Wife not wanting Her coworkers to know that we prep just asked her if she thought the heat would make them go bad and left it at that.

 

[mogie 366]

It takes a bit of work , but I put a plastic bag over the tray (12 tins ) if loose tins each tin I put a small plastic bag over & including any glass jars , I am on the coast & hit 100 % humidity, as said before I also use Nitrogen for dry goods in plastic containers

 

[JimCosta]

Let's talk canned goods only.

They are designed to last about 40 years.
You are storing emergency survival food.
As long as the can does not swell it is still good.
The labels may eventually come off (very long term) but they still contain food.

I do not understand the term "Food Quality" in a survival situation. In survival food is food.
I read a book about a shipwreck crew near Antarctica in the late 1800s.
One journal stated that all they had at times were very old seals to eat.
He said the meat was foul smelling, tough and horrible, "but hunger is a marvelous sauce."

Exceptions:
Pop top cans need to be segregated as they will easily pop open. (consider cooler location for them)
If they leak they may cause problems on any regular cans they leak on.
Therefore, check on them periodically.

Plastic cans/containers need to be watched as well. Perhaps kept in a cooler environment.

Keep an eye on all tomato cans or any kind of bent or damaged cans as well. I doubt they last 40 years.

The bottom line is if cans have no swelling they are good to eat.

P.S. We have a large group retreat with tons of stored food. It is stored in metal barns, some in 4 foot cube ICB food storage containers under pole barns, wooden sheds and some in air conditioned environments. But the majority of the food is from 8 years old to 5 years old.

We have lost a few cans to the horrible Florida heat and humidity but not anything to be worried about.

 

[rainingcatzanddogs]

I do not understand the term "Food Quality" in a survival situation. In survival food is food.

The issue isn't really taste or texture, the issue is nutritional decline.

There is a difference between eating stored food in a short lived situation (6-12 mo) and a long term situation (1 year plus).

It also matters who is eating it. Is it a pregnant woman or young growing child both of whom must have adequate nutrition for the best chance of avoiding future health issues?

"Food quality", specifically, nutrient retention matters.

Heat destroys nutrients. Raw vegetables and fruits have a much higher benefit when consumed raw. Once they are heated for canning or by cooking, they lose some of their value. Long term exposure to heat causes a further decline.

If you go to the HOME page at this link...there is everything you ever wanted to know about food

https://habib-ahmad.wixsite.com/foodscience/post/food-deterioration-and-its-control
"Substantial losses in carbohydrates may be encountered as a result of respiratory activity in extended storage at relatively high temperatures. Protein content is rarely affected, but protein availability is readily reduced even in low moisture foods unless they are protected from oxygen and stored at low temperatures."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-4557.1977.tb00998.x

**you may think you are eating 1500 calories a day but, if the food has been declining, you may not be getting the full calorie count listed on the back. This comes into play when rationing is needed.
Also, your body may not be able to extract proteins that were initially present in foods, due to food degradation.

Again, this is more of a concern where long term consumption of improperly stored food, or food consumed by pregnant women or growing children.

 

[JimCosta]

Cardboard Boxes.

We packed spaghetti, boxes, envelopes etc. in plastic storage containers sealed with duct tape.
Rat poison and roach pills are periodically put down.

In regards to the ICB totes, we cut doors on them and placed wood door jams around the cut out flap.
The flap was then screwed back in pace with duct tape over the seams.
Hopefully rats and bugs cannot get in.

Rice:
We have about three tons of 50 lb bags. We stacked the bags on pallets as they were. Remember they are sealed in plastic bags.
Most were placed in ICB totes but not all.

Before we got the totes we had about 1,500 pounds on pallets in a steel barn for about 5 years.
That was about 30 bags. We lost 2 bags to the humidity (holes in bags).
One bag was a nail tear from the pallet. No idea as to what happened to the second bag.

Yes, there may be bugs packed in the rice. We will use a fine kitchen skimmer to remove them if so.
Note: Never rinse the rice as it has sprayed on nutrients that will be lost.

 

[Mountain Dragon]

Fact:
No Food - you'll die.
Unhealthy food - You'll die later

 

[JimCosta]

There are very few of us that can go through a survival situation perfectly.

Store too soon, have some food loss and quality loss.
Store too late and you cannot afford it.
Try to store at the last minute and you die.

Then factor in "rabbit poisoning" from eating the same diet for a prolonged situation.
Then factor in loss of appetite due to stress, diet boredom, etc.

Our survival goal is for everybody to get out of the lifeboat alive and without being cannibals in the process.

 

[rainingcatzanddogs]

There are very few of us that can go through a survival situation perfectly.

Our survival goal is for everybody to get out of the lifeboat alive and without being cannibals in the process.

After 30 years of doing this, I am already there as far as the factors like food storage that are under my control. Now I am moving on to quality of life.

 

[MrLemonade]

Excellent and helpful feedback to everyone. Thanks for your input.

I've decided that I'm going to re-organize and move more longer-term items into the cooler basement and repurpose the pantry into storage for items previously in the basement. That should alleviate "long term" storage concerns.

I'm also going to implement better food rotation so food isn't subjected to excess storage duration. I've seen some good can storage designs that roll forward and you feed from the back so the oldest is always fronted.

 

[rainingcatzanddogs]

Excellent and helpful feedback to everyone. Thanks for your input.

I've decided that I'm going to re-organize and move more longer-term items into the cooler basement and repurpose the pantry into storage for items previously in the basement. That should alleviate "long term" storage concerns.

I'm also going to implement better food rotation so food isn't subjected to excess storage duration. I've seen some good can storage designs that roll forward and you feed from the back so the oldest is always fronted.

Years ago, I made my own rotator for standard cans out of shoe boxes. I will look to see if I can find a video somewhere and post it here. You can do the same with larger boxes and #10 cans

Not exactly the same but similar

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This one is prettier and also more involved

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[Crabapple]

I agree can goods for long term & dry good not in airtight container for short term, but growing your own food is best in every way.
Plus history proves it can be done.

 

[DrHenley]

We had that conversation at the BOL. My nephew asked how much food I had and I said "not enough because it will run out." I told him the only long term solution for self suffiency is to grow food and find natural source of food.
Fortunately, the soil and climate at the BOL will make it easy to grow things. And there are natural foods in abundance until the crops come in.