Beans & Legumes“Location is key” to your food storage
How and where you store your food can have a huge impact on the life of your food storage.
Cool temperatures
Make sure that your food is in a consistently cool place. Many times your garage is cool during the winter but without air conditioning in the summer it can get pretty hot in there. Make sure that the location of your food storage is consistently cooler. According to Country Survival, “canned goods store 2 to 3 times longer at 70 F than they do at 90 F. Most dry goods store indefinitely below 70 F but for less time at higher temperatures.” (Read the Country Survival article.) Remember that being in the shade doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cool.
Also be sure to not place your food next to a heat source. Pipes and walls can be cool during certain times of the year and hot at others. Be sure to think about the effects of changing seasons. Make sure that other utilities like freezers, refrigerators, furnaces and water heaters are not in the same room.
Dark places
Speaking of shade – it’s important to make sure that your food isn’t stored in clear or see-through containers. Now, if you buy food at The Ready Store, you don’t need to worry about that because all of our stuff comes in #10 cans, boxes, pouches or barrels. However, if you can your own foods and have them in glass jars, make sure that you store them in a dark place. Consistent light can fade colors, zap your food of vitamins and make fat go rancid.
Make sure it’s dry
One of the reasons that freeze-dried and dehydrated foods last so long is because water is taken out of them. Water and moisture leads to deterioration and corruption. Freeze-dried foods typically have a shelf life of 20-30 years. Dehydrated foods typically can stay on the shelf for 10-20 years.
Airtight canning
While you can’t have an airtight room, you can have airtight cans of food. This will prevent odors and smells getting out of the container. In fact, many people use Mylar bags inside of their plastic barrels and containers. This keeps rats and other vermin away because they can’t smell the food. They also place oxygen absorbers inside the Mylar bags to ensure that insects don’t grow a colony inside the bag.
Are You Prepared mentions that “Oxygen will rob food of its nutritive value. All living food contains enzymes that, when exposed to oxygen, start to break down the food by a process known as oxidation. Nutritive value is lost little by little as food breaks down. That is why it is important to remove the oxygen from the containers before you seal them. It’s also good to store grains a whole rather than cracked grain. Once the kernel is ground, it starts to lose it nutritive value and the rancidity process begins.”
Signs of oxidation include discoloration, mold growth, and swelling in the package. If you want to know more about oxygen absorbers visit FreshUs.
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So is there a “mean effect” to food storage? In other words, if my storage area ranges from 55 in the winter and up to 85 in the summer does that equate to a 70 degree year round temp? And should food be ordered during the summer, when it may be delivered and exposed to 100 temps while sitting on the porch waiting several hours for me to get home?
January 26th, 2012 at 6:52 amWhat about storage in the luggage compartment of a class A RV? It’s dark, but otherwise not climate controlled; that is, it will get below freezing in winter, and heat up in summer. Like the writer above, what effect will these temperature changes have on duration of of storage? I want my RV to be outfitted as our “bug-out” rig, stocked with extra food and water.
January 26th, 2012 at 9:30 amHey Mike and S Albin,
January 26th, 2012 at 10:15 amThe overall thing that you want to avoid is high temperatures and large changes in temperature. Try to keep the temperature as constant as you can. The more the temperature changes, the shelf life will decrease. Also a rule of thumb that we’ve seen is to make sure that your food is stored below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. We posted this video a while back that talks about open cans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaSAyGrejGw&feature=plcp&context=C3fc6dc2UAOEgsToPDskJa40jg7GrGz3uadR3pg6An
What if I have 2 out of the three factors? I have somewhere cool (54 degrees all the time) and dark, but it’s humid (50% humidity). Is that ok?
January 27th, 2012 at 8:26 amKelly,
January 27th, 2012 at 10:25 amHaving all of those attributes in a storage location is the most ideal but we understand that many times it’s hard to find that in your home.
We can’t speak for other companies but if you use The Ready Store food storage, we make sure that our cans are sealed tightly to ensure that humidity doesn’t get in the can. (Check out our previous post on our seals – http://www.thereadystore.com/food-storage/2322/part-ii-why-some-food-storage-wont-last-can-seams/)
If you’ve already opened the can, we’ve found that using the can lid will keep out the majority of the moisture. We’ve also had many people tell us that they’ll pour all of the can into a plastic bag, squeeze all the air out and put it back in the can. This tends to help keep the air and moisture out of the food.
I have solved this temperature change problem by being sure my storage is contained in a cardboard box and all of it is stored tightly – covered with a mattress pad sheet. I have looked at my storage on a 100 degree day and it was cool to the touch. So the temperature does not vary since it is tightly packed. I also store smaller items between the #10 cans- like plastic ware and paper cups and the small glass bottles of spices. SO even in my vehicle, I have no worries of my dried items. I move my water when needed in the cold months. Summertime there’s always a few bottles in the vehicle.
January 29th, 2012 at 11:33 am