Guide to keeping food after best before date?

[nightowl]

I know you can keep things for quite a while after best before expires but is there a guide online to how long?

[KalPrep]

Basically stable temperature, away from sunlight and pests such as rats. Taste will degrade over time but cans have been opened many many years past BBE and been fine to eat. Longest I have gone is 2 years on some tinned tomatoes for a stew and they were fine.

Will dig through my links at home and see if I can find a link to something.

[redskies]

Many years ago, when I was an air cadet (stop sniggering!), we would get issued what we called 'Rat Packs' - British Army 24hr ration packs, in the form of boxes containing everything we would eat over the next day. Most of the stuff in there had been packed at least twenty years previously, and a lot of the tinned stuff had dates in the 60's on it. Tasted just fine, and had all the nutrition required. The bog roll left something to be desired, mostly everything - it was, pretty much, tracing paper, and the first thing we learned was to bring our own when camping. But the food was ok.

Don't know if that works with modern tinned stuff; I keep getting the phrase 'built in obsolescence' in my head!

[nightowl]

I remember the tracing paper bog roll from british rail days. Very easy for your fingers to go straight through it when wiping. Ugh!

[madmedic]

Ive eaten things, army rat packs, over 10 years out of date. as long as the can is not damaged or deformed and it smells ok you should be fine..

what i will say though is...

if you use stock rotation you should be able to prevent the problem of out of date items, meaning that when SHTF you will have the best life on all of your goods.. most of what you stock will be what you already use.. for these things just take the oldest ones and put the longest shelf life at the back..

when SHTF food is food..

[Cocotte]

Thought this might be of interest.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manc ... 693520.stm