Beans & LegumesSealing the Deal- The Importance of a Good Seal
Canned food is only as good as it’s seal. When seams are not made appropriately air and moisture can enter into the container and shorten the life of the food. Having a good seal ensures that your freeze dried food lasts 30 years or more, with a faulty seal one can expect to see a 30-60% decrease in shelf life depending on storage environment. Food storage manufacturers, like The Ready Store purchase #10 cans that are sealed by the factory on one end and open on the other. The food storage manufacturers then fills the can with food (Mountain House is the only manufacturer that freeze-dries their own food). After the can is filled, a metal lid is sealed to the open end of the can in a two stage process that ensures the can is air-tight and will yield the maximum shelf-life for your food storage.
At The Ready Store we only sell Saratoga Farms and Mountain House because they have both consistently performed this sealing operation to industry standards and provide the highest quality can seam and food quality available.
Recently we ordered a handful of food storage cans from a couple of our competitors to see how their can seam compared…and in the process we came across a pretty shocking revelation, on several of the #10 cans their seams had very poor seals. The issue that we saw with the competitors #10 cans was that the second stage was not being performed adequately, or perhaps not at all. Their cans had the 1st stage completed (as seen in the middle of the image) but the 2nd stage (as seen on the far right) was not being performed at all or was done poorly. Even just looking at the competitors cans you could tell the difference between the factory seam and the manufacturer seam.
[Click on image to better see the difference]
For ALL the competitors that we checked the vast majority of the cans were improperly sealed. So before you purchase canned food from another emergency preparedness company, take a look at the seals on the can to make sure both the bottom and the top seals look the same. If one seam on the can protrudes significantly more than the other seam (as seen in the picture above) you can be sure that you will not be getting the maximum shelf-life out of that can because it was probably not sealed correctly.
You won’t find improperly sealed cans with product purchased from The Ready Store, we take great pride in providing the best quality available so you know you can count on every can to be properly sealed when you need it the most.
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Why would the bottom possibly be different from the top of the can if they didnt seal it right?
December 1st, 2010 at 9:34 pmGood question Richard. I would also ask, should we now inspect all of our previously purchased #10 cans from The Ready Store? How do we determine if they are defective? If defective, can we return for free replacement? Your article is incomplete and does a good job of damaging your credibility.
December 6th, 2010 at 5:42 amRichard, my assumption is that the bottom of the cans is sealed by the original manufacturer and the top is sealed by the food company after the product has been added.
December 6th, 2010 at 6:21 amI wish you had named the competitor products. I believe The Ready Store is simply selling a product that is actually canned by another company, I don’t believe you can the freeze dried foods yourself. So, all this article does is raise questions on my stock of goods. I purchased several hundred dollars of Mountain House freeze dried foods that are packed in #10 cans and I bought them from The Ready Store. Does Mountain House seal their cans “properly” or is this something they recently started doing? It’s disappointing that you don’t even mention YOUR products that have this “proper seal”!! Guess it’s time to go check my supplies to see if I’ve got another 25 years or only 5 years of shelf life remaining…
December 6th, 2010 at 6:22 amWell he mentioned that it was their competitor’s cans, so I’m assuming that it wasn’t mountain house or Saratoga Farms. It is my understanding that the ready store doesn’t own either of these companies, so a little more detail in this article could have been helpful, and if there are other companies out there who are not doing all that they can to insure a long-term viable product, we need to know who they are.
I understand that the ready store is a business and this article is supposed to support their product line, but the reality is that we purchase goods like these from multiple sources, and it would further enhance the credibility of this newsletter if it were more of a vehicle for information and less of a sales pitch. If other companies aren’t sealing their cans right, then call them out on it – if it’s true you can’t get in trouble for it, and we will appreciate you passing that info along to us.
December 6th, 2010 at 8:43 amI agree with the comments that it would be helpful to know if Mountain House and Saratoga are properly sealed, and the names of the companies that have weaker sealing process. I also do appreciate all the care and customer service that the Ready Store has given me in the past.
December 6th, 2010 at 9:13 amThe Ready Store has some good products, some good prices, and some good customer service. However, I don’t like this tactic of saying, “those guy’s cans aren’t sealed”.
It’s no different then me going to Big Box Mart, coming out to discover a ding in my door, and then point the blame at one of 126 shopping carts in the lot.
If you’ve got the proof, post some pictures, not some junky Visio drawings. Name some names.
December 6th, 2010 at 9:44 amYes. I agree with previous post. Names some names with PICTURES! I don’t want to hear about some “competitor” products. If what you say are true than we will purchase products from the Ready Store, if not we will purchase products from whoever can provide the product at a reasonable price. Is that too much to ask?
December 6th, 2010 at 10:24 amFrom The Ready Store:
We uploaded some images of good seals and bad seals that we just took, look for it above. We plan to retake these pictures with a macro lens soon as these came out a little blurry with our basic camera we have here with us today.
Also look in the next couple days for a video of an experiment where we put compressed air into the cans and you can see the air coming out of the seals on the competitor cans but not on our cans. We conducted the experiment this morning but the camera we used to shoot the video had difficulty locking on focus due to the erratic air bubbles so we are planning on re-shooting it tomorrow afternoon and should have it edited and online in a couple days.
For those that read the blog post this morning we have since added a paragraph of information giving more context and background information as the original blog post was lacking in that department.
December 6th, 2010 at 11:25 amThanks for the pointers. I have purchased from the ready store and am very happy. If they were selling “junk” they surely wouldn’t point it out. I am thankful that someone is still honest enough to tell me what to look out for. May God bless you.More info would be helpful.
December 6th, 2010 at 12:00 pmPlease be specific as to what brands you have found to be suspect. We purchase from multiple sources because of the need to get the best possible deals. (times are tough for the self employed-no government handouts coming for us!) I have cases of other brands besides mountain house and do influence others in their buying choices so please let me know.
December 7th, 2010 at 7:42 amWhere are the videos of air bubbles promised by admin on Dec 6th? Also, please name the “competitors” for us.
January 11th, 2011 at 2:05 pmThanks.
I also would like to know who are the competitors, please provide this information.
January 12th, 2011 at 4:50 amFrom The Ready Store,
Corey and everyone else here is the update I failed to get around to posting until now:
The reason we have not posted the video is because unfortunately it “died”. We had our professional crew come out on the 8th, they are the same guys that have helped us film our YouTube Channel videos located at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=thereadystore#g/u and when the editor went back to his office to clean it up and add the graphics and intro music the tape was corrupted and all of it was lost. We are absolutely planning on filming it again, I went through a lot of effort on the 7th as I spent all day buying things like a large aquarium, better fittings for the air compressor, as well as applying the silicone to where the fittings met the can’s lid to ensure an airtight seal in the holes that I had drilled earlier that day.
While those things are still laying around our warehouse I need to repurchase competitor’s product, drill holes, seal them up with the silicon, coordinate the film crew’s arrival, and get the CEO and Jonathan in to shoot it all over again and needless to say with the extremely high (never seen in our 10 year history) demand since then we just have not got around to conducting the tests again as we are more concerned with getting everyone their orders as FAST as possible.
I think when we try the test again many people will be pretty surprised by the results. Two of the three competitor’s products did not pass the test at just 5 psi., bubbles came out quickly. We tested Auguson Farms (found at local retailers), Provident Pantry (Emergency Essential’s product), and Thrive (Shelf Reliance’s in house brand). Mountain House and Saratoga Farms not only withstood the 5 psi pressure but we took them all the way up to 30 psi where the cans started to billow and we released the pressure as we started to get scared as the cans looked like they were going to blow up. If we had the resources like the TV series Myth Busters I am sure we would have made it a safer experiement and pushed the can’s to their limits (who doesn’t like to watch an explosion from the comfort of their chairs?) just for fun but we didn’t want anyone to get hurt so we released pressure at 30 lbs.
Again the video is coming but how soon I can’t say, we are focusing ALL of our efforts on getting people their orders right now during this very hectic time for our business. Thanks for your patience everyone.
- Gene K., Marketing Communications at The Ready Store
January 21st, 2011 at 11:47 am