| Salvage places are nortorious for past use-by dates. It's good of you to remind us to look before making a purchase. I avoid canned goods from salvage places because you are never sure how the food has been warehoused. If commercial canned goods are stored in hot temperatures, they will have textural changes in the food, as well as what little nutrition is left in them after high-heat canning, will also quickly degrade - so you are essentially eating dead food - empty calories. BUT WAIT, it's CHEAP!!! Last I knew, only foods high in nutrition will feed a body, not empty calories of dead food! That's why I avoid already-prepared foods for storage, and focus on whole-food ingredients with which to MAKE food. Example: all those free apples I dehydrated in slices last fall are now being made into applesauce, cobblers, added to granola and cooked cereal, as well as an out-of-hand snack food - from one food in storage, many uses. Example #2: Wheat has a storage life that far exceeds commercial bleached/unbleached flour. I can make more things out of wheat than you can ever make from flour alone - cooked whole kernels, cracked wheat, sprouted, meat-substitute, bulgur, flakes, farina, seed to grow more wheat, AND flour. PLUS, the whole grain is full of 25 vitamins, minerals and proteins, and all the fiber while commercial bleached/unbleached flour is essentially a "dead" food. Example #3: I store powdered tomatoes. It takes up less space than all the cans of tomato sauce, tomato paste, pizza sauce, and other tomato-based foods, but by reconstituting it with water and adding some herbs/spices and possibly a few other ingredients, it has LOTS of uses. The use-by date is if the food is stored at room temperature (70°F) or cooler. The cooler the storage temperature, the longer the food will keep even past use-by dates. Store canned goods in hot temperatures and the use-by dates are useless information because of the effects of the heat. -Grainlady |
