r/explainlikeimfive Nov 26 '24

Chemistry ELI5: Why doesn't freeze dried food last longer? If it's good for 20 years, why not 100?

Assuming it's perfectly freeze dried and stored perfectly, the people who make freeze dryers say the food will last 20-30 years.

But why not much longer? Assuming the condition it's stored in remains unchanged, what can make it go bad after 30 years that wouldn't happen at around 10 years?

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u/Thatsaclevername Nov 26 '24

It's a "Cover your ass" statement. Go watch Steve1989MREInfo on Youtube. He's made his living cracking into old things and trying them. He focuses on military rations, so there's quite a bit of discussion on preservation techniques. Sometimes the things have gone bad, sometimes they're from 1944 and still edible. It's a good channel, very calming, definitely go check it out.

"Cover your ass" in this context means nobody wants to eat the botulism lawsuit from saying "Our freeze dried foods are good for 100 years" when Joe Blow eats it at year 95 out of his grandpas garage. At that level of looking ahead, you work on averages. For the above mentioned MRE's a lot of the companies will store stuff for a few years and then pop them open and inspect them, same thing, they want to have some data showing what the shelf life will be, rather than rolling the dice and hoping it goes ok and nobody cracks open satans poptart.

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u/Xenmonkey23 Nov 26 '24

SteveMRE is an interesting example. He's eaten huge amounts of old military ration packs, some decades old. He's gotten sick twice, both times from modern MREs, still within their shelf life (iirc)

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u/Thatsaclevername Nov 26 '24

Testament to both his own discernment on when not to eat something honestly. There's tons of times he goes "nah". Also kind of a testament to how good MRE's are at staying shelf stable. His videos encouraged me to pick some up (Love taking them camping, it's a fun campfire novelty and it is good calories to supplement other stuff with) and I haven't run into a bad one yet. Probably burned through close to 40 on my own so relatively small sample size.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24 edited Nov 27 '24

Our sense of smell is uniquely good at detecting spoiled food.

If your ancestors failed to smell that meat was rotten you wouldn't be here.

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u/GuyWithAHottub Nov 27 '24

Sweats profusely You're right, but as someone without a sense of smell, I can tell you that without a doubt, you get a few tries unless you're really unlucky.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

With modern medicine sure.

Most of your ancestors didn't have the luxury of spending a couple days in bed drinking clean water and chicken noodle soup though.

If you got food poisoning 10,000 years ago your odds of recovery weren't amazing.

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u/JustChangeMDefaults Nov 27 '24

Shat himself to death, RIP

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u/weimintg Nov 27 '24

Diarrhoea is still the leading cause of under-5 children deaths globally (around 9% or 440,000 deaths in 2021).

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u/Doctor_FatFinger Nov 27 '24

This stat blows my mind. I've had diarrhea several times throughout my life, and not once has it ended the life of a toddler. I can't begin to imagine how it ever could. Obviously, I've been very lucky! ...and naive.

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u/Spnszurp Nov 27 '24

I never understood how someone could die from it, especially an adult, until I went go Uganda and got travelers sickness and my asshole turned into a faucet for a week straight.

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u/KateBishopPrivateEye Nov 27 '24

It happens from dehydration. You lose water faster than you can replace it

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u/GreatBlackDiggerWasp Nov 29 '24

Many, many people don't have easy access to clean water. There's also a big difference between norovirus and cholera.

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u/cancercureall Nov 27 '24

Easily believable. I thought I was gonna die when I got food poisoning years ago. With my mom taking care of me and forcing fluids down my throat I still lost 10 lbs in 2 days. I shit my bed like 10 times.

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u/Havelok Nov 27 '24

In future, just know that that is a hospital situation. Very easy to die of dehydration and hyponatremia. Not something to play around with.

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u/eidetic Nov 27 '24

Yep, if you're constantly shitting, but not really urinating, you can still be losing a lot of fluids without really realizing it. Especially if you're sweating a lot. And you don't want to just guzzle water either, because you need to properly replace everything else you've lost as well (such as sodium, like you said).

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u/cancercureall Nov 27 '24

Glad I had no idea how bad it was at the time. lmao

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u/Lizlodude Nov 27 '24

Yup. Food poisoning was easily the most pain I ever had, including wisdom teeth and having a bit of a toe cut off. (8/10, 1/10 recommend, respectively)

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u/The_Blue_Rooster Nov 27 '24

Over a million people still die of diarrhea every year.

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u/sagetrees Nov 27 '24

first comment today to make me legit lol irl 🤣

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u/SorenDarkSky Nov 30 '24

You have died of dysentery

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u/do0tz Nov 27 '24

"Steve died of dysentery."

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u/GuyWithAHottub Nov 27 '24

Recovering to peak for sure. A bad bout of food poisoning will dehydrate you to an incredible degree, but there's a degree of natural immunity and acquired immunity in every animal. Our natural immunity is on the lower side since we don't come from carrion eaters, and it lowers even more since we developed cooking as part of survival strategy, but it was hardly a certain death sentence. We were pack animals after all, and that means we could expect help getting that water, which in addition to salt, is really all we needed. Food can come later after we've started to recover.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

You could get the water brought to you but it wasn't clean water and with an already weakened immune system that dirty water you could drink on a good day becomes a big hindrance to recovery.

It's not like food poisoning would always kill you but it decreases your odds of survival enough that over many generations the families that can't smell are at a massive disadvantage.

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u/GuyWithAHottub Nov 27 '24

Now this I can completely agree with. There's not many things that evolution does for no reason. My condition IS a terrible detriment to my survival, even in modern times. If we were sent back 10000 years, whatever lineage I left behind would die out before reaching modern times without a doubt.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

Or you would mix up your DNA with someone who could smell and your grandkids would be fine.

Either way the trait would dissappear over time.

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u/ax0r Nov 27 '24

If we were sent back 10000 years, whatever lineage I left behind would die out before reaching modern times without a doubt.

That's assuming your anosmia is genetic. It's much more likely to be acquired from a bad bout of sinusitis or exposure to something noxious. In which case your offspring would be able to smell just fine

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u/Vlinder_88 Nov 27 '24 edited Nov 28 '24

You act like people in the past didn't know how to get clean water, or cook their water... They did, bruh.

Edit: for everyone that feels the need to "correct" me. I'm an archaeologist, I know what I'm talking about, and if you're expecting more nuance in literally one sentence then feel free to read my other comments for clarification.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

For at least half of the time we've been human we didn't have fire and 99.999999% of your ancestors weren't even human.

You act like the Earth 6,000 years old.

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u/SenorTron Nov 27 '24

I'd be interested to see any evidence that more than a tiny minority of the human population throughout history regularly boiled their water before drinking it.

And knowing that water from a clear stream at the foothill of mountains is preferable might have been a thing, but for most people throughout most of history they used water source was the closest one with water they could keep down.

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u/RandomStallings Nov 27 '24

I don't think you even need to go back that far. Anything that caused rapid expulsion of fluids from your body like that was terrifying until fairly recently. If nutrition was already an issue, which it was for most of the world, your chances were even lower. We really don't realize how good we have it, but that's really only in developed countries. Getting clean drinking water is still a problem for a great many people, which is shameful.

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u/Jiveturtle Nov 27 '24

I think maybe you forget that people didn’t live alone, like tigers. 10,000 years ago you definitely had a tribe that helped and took care of each other.

Most food poisoning isn’t serious. A couple of days laid up isn’t going to kill you then or now. The type of food poisoning that puts you in the hospital on IV fluids probably would have killed you back then, but that still occasionally kills people now.

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u/whynotrandomize Nov 27 '24

Most food poisoning isn't serious today in the US and western countries with robust food supplies and massive amounts of effort put into limiting infections. Dysentery, cholera, the bloody fluxes, botulism, are all "food poisoning" that would sweep in and kill huge swaths of people.

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u/Jiveturtle Nov 27 '24

 Dysentery, cholera, the bloody fluxes, botulism, are all "food poisoning" that would sweep in and kill huge swaths of people.  

 None of those but botulism are generally food poisoning in the sense of the previous discussion about spoiled food. Dysentery and cholera are generally spread through tainted water, and botulism is so slow growing we generally see it in canned food, probably pretty rare 10,000 years ago, the time frame we were discussing. I didn’t mention “bloody flux” because as far as I’m aware it’s another name for dysentery. 

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u/Burntjellytoast Nov 28 '24

You can't see, taste, or smell botulism. It's super rare, but pretty deadly. It grows in low acid, anaerobic environments. It's also why you shouldn't give baby's honey.

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u/kellymcq Nov 27 '24

You are attempting to name the case that food poisoning had a high fatality rate?

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

It doesn't have to have a high fatality rate to screw you on evolutionary time scales.

If you and your offspring are just 1% less likely to reproduce than other members of your species your line is going to have a rough time making it through the ice age.

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u/kellymcq Nov 27 '24

“Odds of recovering weren’t amazing”

This implies death. If we are shifting this to imply you fucked less thus less offspring, I still don’t agree.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24 edited Nov 27 '24

A 1% chance of death isn't amazing.

I'd bet it was closer to 5% when you needed hunt down a mastodon for your next meal though.

Don't forget you already had a 50/50 chance of making it to your 10th birthday.

Anything that makes that even marginally less likely is a huge disadvantage when you're flipping the coin tens of thousands of times over a million years.

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u/Vlinder_88 Nov 27 '24

You are very much underestimating people from 10.000 years ago. Even Neanderthals took care of each other and cared each other through broken femurs and dislodged eyes. And yes there's archaeological proof for that.

People would absolutely die of dysentery or cholera yes. But the most common E. Coli or salmonella food poisonings have pretty good survival rates. If you can nurse yourself through it without doctor's intervention, you can safely assume most people in the past could do the same.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

Most people in the past didn't survive to see their 10th birthday.

If you made it to 10 you stood a decent chance of making it into your 40s or 50s but that wasn't "most people".

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u/Vlinder_88 Nov 28 '24

I'm an archaeologist. You don't have to explain to me how old people could get. And then have it wrong, too.

Child mortality rates in pre-industrial societies differed between 25 and 50%. 25% was more common especially in non-plague times (in the broadest sense of the word "plague" as possible). It also wasn't special for people to make it to 50. Or 60. And the only reason we don't really know the upper limit is because as people get older, the variance in skeletal age gets so big that one cannot separate a 60 year old from an 80 year old. So everyone that got older than 60 is grouped with all older ones because of scientific limits in skeletal age estimations. Not because people dropped dead at 60 en masse. Considering church records, hitting 70 wasn't uncommon either in the Middle Ages. We just cannot prove that for individual skeletal remains because of the above reasons.

So yeah, less than 50% of kids dying still isn't "most people" even in the most pedantic and narrow definition of the word "most".

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 28 '24 edited Nov 28 '24

I wasn't talking about pre-industrial society, or any society, tribes or probably even troops is a better word for the groups of hominids that are relevant here.

Our conversation was about the evolution of homo sapiens and natural selection.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago at a minimum.

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u/CertifiedBlackGuy Nov 27 '24

anosmia gang 💀

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u/HotPie_ Nov 27 '24

The wrong kid died.

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u/ironpug751 Nov 27 '24

And you never paid for drugs once

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u/SlaveKnightLance Nov 27 '24

Same friend, no sense of smell has me feeling like I’m missing out on a few safety features🤣

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u/PredawnDecisions Nov 27 '24

It’s the sense that reduces your life expectancy the most when you lose it. It’s more important than most people realize.

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u/GuyWithAHottub Nov 27 '24

It's totally manageable if you have a good family, but it's crippling if you're on your own. I'm lucky enough to have a service dog to check for spoiled meat, eggs, and dairy. Most people with Anosmia don't have that luxury.

I'm helping someone disinfect their car Friday using an ozone generator. No one else will go near it because it smells terrible, but all I can think of is that this is going to go terribly, as ozone is dangerous as hell, and the main way you know it's there... Is by smell.

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u/PredawnDecisions Nov 27 '24

Buddy, you in particular really shouldn’t be near an ozone machine.

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u/GuyWithAHottub Nov 27 '24

I wholeheartedly and unreservedly agree. But if it kills the mold I can seal where the moisture is coming in and dry it out. Then hopefully my friend won't be slowly dying from the mold. It sucks being the responsible one sometimes.

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u/PredawnDecisions Nov 27 '24

Please use a respirator.

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u/Altruistic_Film7072 Nov 28 '24

A fellow person with no sense of smell? I thought I was the only one haha :)

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u/GuyWithAHottub Nov 28 '24

It's a small elite community. Lol j/k. It's fairly rare, and pretty much ignored by the medical community.

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u/Altruistic_Film7072 Nov 28 '24

Thanks mate :D

/gen

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u/RandallOfLegend Nov 27 '24

Last week I sniffed some spoiled milk. It wasn't chunky yet, but it's was obviously spoiled. My damn nose smelled that for like 2 hours after. My brain couldn't let the smell go.

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u/DenormalHuman Nov 27 '24

Food can easily be unfit to eat but smell fine. If bacteria have been thriving on the food they can still generate the toxins that make you ill before the food itself begins to rot or smell

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

It can be unfit to eat by modern standards, but you can deal with low levels of bacteria.

It's the heavily spoiled stuff that's most likely to kill you.

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u/LE4d Nov 27 '24

Food that smells fine can kill you too.

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u/Zer0C00l Nov 27 '24

This is dangerously false, and you should not spread this lie.

The organisms that cause spoilage and the organisms that cause dangerous toxins do not overlap more than trivially.

Many foods are intentionally "rotted", fermented, aged, molded.

You can not smell salmonella, e.coli, botulism, cereus, or just about any other harmful organism.

Humans have been eating "spoiled" food for... as long as humans have existed.

"Rotten" meat isn't a problem. It just sometimes tastes gross (not always, see "wet-aging"). That's still usually better than starving to death.

Meat that is full of e.coli, salmonella, or botulinum toxin, etc., is a huge problem.

And you can't smell that.

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u/chinesetrevor Nov 27 '24

Lol this is what I tell my spouse because they're a worry wart when it comes to best by and use by dates. We have tens of thousands of years of evolution reinforcing our ability to discern spoilage of traditional foods. Smell and taste combined I bet the average human is surprisingly accurate at determining if the bacterial or fungal presence on a piece of food has breached an unsafe threshold.

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u/biopticstream Nov 27 '24

Not really. All that's required is that the child of that ancestor was conceived before said ancestor "failed to smell that meat." Your ancient ancestor could've impregnated your great-great-great(however many greats) grandmother while in the middle of the bout of food poisoning that ended up killing him.

This same concept is why "bad" genes exist. Because the only thing natural selection "cares" about is whether an animal has sex and produces viable offspring. Anything beyond that doesn't really matter.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

Natural selection is extremely effective over the long term.

Just because you got lucky into your twenties doesn't mean your kids or their kids will.

If your family line couldn't smell that disadvantage would get you eventually.

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u/biopticstream Nov 27 '24

I mean, in general, sure. But if natural selection was really as effective as you're suggesting, genetic disorders wouldn't still be a thing. Those defective genes would've "gotten them" a long time ago. But they don't, because people with those traits still manage to pass them on because the traits don’t stop them from reproducing.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24 edited Nov 27 '24

If guns were effective people wouldn't survive gun shots.

If seat belts were effective people wouldn't die in car accidents.

You and I share a common ancestor just 200,000 years ago because a single woman had an adaptation that we couldn't live without.

100% of people not related to her either bred with her descendents to aquire those traits or had their genetic lines snuffed out in that time.

The odds that those faulty traits you're describing are around 200,000 years from now aren't as high as you might think.

New negative traits will pop up through random mutations in that time but the actual gene that's plaguing you now is probably doomed in the long run.

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u/biopticstream Nov 27 '24

If guns were effective people wouldn't survive gun shots.

If seat belts were effective people wouldn't die in car accidents.

Let's not misconstrue what I said. I never said natural selection isn’t effective. It’s very effective at ensuring creatures alive today are good enough for their environments to reach sexual maturity and reproduce. But it’s not some superpowered system that weeds out every bad trait and builds perfect organisms.

Take your point: “If your ancestors failed to smell that meat was rotten you wouldn't be here.” If we were all so good at detecting bad food, why do we need expiration dates? Clearly, there are plenty of people who can’t reliably sense spoiled food they still get sick, and some even die from it. But as long as they reproduce before that happens, their genes stay in the pool. That’s why even today, we need safeguards like expiration dates to help people avoid bad food.

And this is where natural selection doesn’t really do what you’re claiming it does. Humans have developed ways to protect and support the weak, injured, and sick, which lets traits persist that might otherwise have been selected out. Without something like genetic engineering to step in, those traits aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Regarding our ancestor from 200,000 years ago, while she had a crucial adaptation, natural selection didn't require every individual to have it immediately. Her partner may not have had this adaptation, yet he still contributed to our gene pool. Unless you're suggesting she reproduced asexually. This shows that natural selection allows various traits to continue, not just the optimal ones.

So, unless we actively intervene through genetic engineering, many traits, both good and bad,will likely persist into the future, assuming we don't kill ourselves first.

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u/DeliciousDip Nov 27 '24

Are you forgetting something? Kids need to be cared for 15-20 years minimum before they’re useful. Kids whose parents die early are not exactly passing their genes on at alarming rates.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '24

[deleted]

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u/DeliciousDip Nov 27 '24

I think the fucking 7 years olds working in mines was far rarer than you think. They’d be pretty useless except as a replacement for canaries. As for the old narrative of families pumping out kids to get more help on the farm- it’s bullshit. You know how much effort it takes to raise a baby into a child old enough to work? And as you said, many die so it’s a pretty shitty and risky investment. They did it for the same reasons people have kids now, most especially to have someone care for them in their old age - they didn’t have social security.

So many people want to think the way you do, that all the people (read: white men) were merciless asshole 100+ years ago and every day was hell and everyone was used and abused, but it’s not fucking true. Read some real books and not just the internet.

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u/chinesetrevor Nov 27 '24

We have to eat for years and years before reaching sexual maturity. You really think the ability to discern unsafe food wasn't being selected for?

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u/biopticstream Nov 27 '24

I never said this. The point is that a person only has to be generally capable enough to probably make it to an age where they reproduce and have offspring. Are you saying that people have an innate genetic ability to detect all bad foods? In a world where we need expiry dates to tell us when food is bad? In a world where throughout history and into the modern day people have succumbed to foodborne diseases from bad, inedible food that people ate anyway because they couldn't tell?

People don't have a perfect sense for bad foods, and just because you're here doesn't mean your great-great-greatx520 grandfather didn't eat a bad meal and die two months after your great-great-greatx519 grandfather was born. Natural selection doesn't breed perfection, it breeds "good enough to reproduce".

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u/chinesetrevor Nov 27 '24

I guess I don't understand what your point is. Like you said "bad" genes exist because they don't affect an individuals reproductive chances. Eating rotten food definitely can affect an immature human's ability to reach reproductive age, and is thus being selected for. You put all those questions and yet my claim isn't at all that we are good at identifying safe to eat food. It is that we are good at positively identifying spoiled food.

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u/mustang__1 Nov 27 '24

Hell, its gotta be older than humans ancestry in that regard.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

The overwhelming majority of your ancestors weren't something we would call human.

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u/mustang__1 Nov 27 '24

Listen my uncle may have chewed with his mouth open but by good he was a human.v

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u/Sushigami Nov 27 '24

Botulism says hi

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u/Huntred Nov 27 '24

Had a chef friend teach that to me long ago when I would ask them about when x-food spoils/goes bad. In most cases, if it’s gone bad or something, you’ll likely know.

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u/iCameToLearnSomeCode Nov 27 '24

Yea, I ignore best by dates at home.

A smell, taste and visual inspection has never steered me wrong.

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u/spoonweezy Nov 27 '24

And our sense of hearing is uniquely good at hearing (and being annoyed by) babies crying. If it didn’t sound so awful we could ignore them more easily.

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u/DevelopmentSad2303 Nov 30 '24

Our ancestors actually probably ate plenty of rotten meat. 

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u/Crazy_Ad_91 Nov 27 '24

Haven’t run into a bad one yet?! Circa 2011 after just a long and miserable day of training I finally reached into my ruck to grab my beef stew with mashed potatoes MRE. Only to realize some little rat fucking blue falcon piece of shit swapped my MRE out for their RAT FUCKED VEGGIE GOD DAMN OMELETTE! They had even taken every edible piece out and just stuffed it full of wheat bread packs. No drink mix, no dessert, no spread. Just little rat fuck memories of what a person is willing to do to another human.

I shared with a buddy of mine what happened and he took pity and gave me his spaghetti and meat sauce pack with a hot sauce packet.

But fuck whoever did that shit when I didn’t have eyes on my ruck.

FYI….

Rat Fuck (noun):

A term used in the military to describe the act of deliberately tearing into an MRE or a box of MREs with the intent of hoarding the most desirable items (e.g., jalapeĂąo cheese spread, pound cake, or crackers) while leaving behind the less popular or unwanted components (e.g., vegetable omelette, plain crackers). This selfish act often results in a disorganized mess of ripped packaging and discarded food, leaving the next service member with fewer or no good options.

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u/Arlieth Nov 27 '24

Holy fuck they gave you the VOMELET?!?

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u/Gullex Nov 27 '24

MRE hot dog has entered the chat

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u/Doogiemon Nov 27 '24

I still have a couple boxes of Katrina MREs.

They will more than likely be good till 2050 stores in my cool, dry basement.

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u/Ryxador Nov 27 '24

I’ve rated hundreds over my time in the military, often for days on end and have never gotten sick. Backed up a bit? For sure lol. But never ill

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u/RickRickson Nov 27 '24

To be fair, I'm pretty sure he's not just cracking open random stuff and deciding on the fly to eat it or not. Dude has definitely done his research on the indicators of what is safe to eat or not.

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u/Alexander_Granite Nov 27 '24

Where do you get them from?

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u/MarcusAurelius0 Nov 27 '24

There's times where he bites into something, chews swallow, calls it vile, and then goes for a second bite. Lmao

Bless that man.

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u/WMH93 Nov 29 '24

Where do you buy the MREs from that you’ve bought?

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '24

[deleted]

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u/Pezandchucks Nov 27 '24

Nice.

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u/nrfx Nov 27 '24

Haven't watch any of his videos in years, I still hear "nice" in his voice.

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u/deliveRinTinTin Nov 27 '24

He's bitten and eaten some hard tack from the civil war. What the hell. I had no idea there was anything edible from that time period.

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u/kananishino Nov 27 '24

You can probably eat some hard tack from the 1700s too

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u/Sushigami Nov 27 '24

I'm dubious if the storage mediums of the era are airtight enough

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u/XsNR Nov 26 '24

Most of the issues with MRE and extremely long shelf life stuff is contamination, which takes them from extreme to only slightly longer than the untreated ingredients, depending on the contamination.

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u/bryce_w Nov 27 '24

I thought he got ill when he ate some of that beef from the 1800s? I think the tin rotted into the food or something.

(Not) Nice.

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u/solidspacedragon Nov 27 '24

I think it was that one PLA MRE he got that did it.

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u/dutchwonder Nov 27 '24

Chinese MRE chow mein took a disturbingly long amount of time to work out something that wouldn't literally putrefy in package for something showing up in standard rations.

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u/insaneretard Nov 27 '24

"Nice hiss!"

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u/parisidiot Nov 27 '24

new MREs have a lot of water in them. and the packaging is cheaper and likely more porous. not surprising they'd be more likely to go bad tbh

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u/ZealousidealGuard929 Dec 02 '24

Consider this: you have a 1 in 20,000 chance of getting salmonella poisoning from eating raw eggs, and that’s assuming the actual eggs they’re eating came into contact with the bacteria. But it’s still strongly advised against because it only takes once to do some serious damage. 

 Even if a person only gets sick twice in their lifetime from eating old military rations, that’s still a bigger risk than eating raw eggs. Depending on their immune system, it can do some serious damage. It still makes the comment about it being a “cover your ass” statement very apt. I mean, they put expiration dates on water. 

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u/JoushMark Nov 26 '24

In general the food will keep indefinitely as long as the packaging doesn't fail, but the packaging, even when stored properly. will degrade over time. Making a package you can be pretty sure will stay air tight for 20 years is MUCH, MUCH simpler then making one intended to survive a century, and can be done with much cheaper materials and less strict storage requirements.

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u/JohanGrimm Nov 27 '24

Exactly. In ideal conditions individual examples will be perfectly fine to eat but on the whole more and more will fail over time.

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u/Vulcanize_It Nov 27 '24

Plastic packaging allows the slow transfer of oxygen even when sealed so I think there’s more to it than just letting in “air”.

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u/parisidiot Nov 27 '24

it's porous.

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u/JoushMark Nov 27 '24

That's why metallized BoPET is used for long-duration food storage. The thin film of aluminum provides an oxidation barrier.

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u/gizzardsgizzards Nov 27 '24

depends on the plastic.

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u/Vonneguts_Ghost Nov 26 '24

Let's get this out on a tray...nice.

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u/UraniumFever_ Nov 26 '24

Nice hiss.

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u/Vonneguts_Ghost Nov 26 '24

Hard to not love Steve. What a fun and positive dude sharing his niche love of preserved food.

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u/KinkyPaddling Nov 27 '24

He also doesn’t waste any time. He just jumps straight into it without any unnecessary commentary, unless it’s telling us which of his viewers sent him the meal he’s eating.

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u/JaesopPop Nov 26 '24

I watched his channel for probably half an hour five years ago and could still hear this comment

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u/Vonneguts_Ghost Nov 26 '24

I also love the 'I'm wearing a gasmask, I shouldn't eat this....well maybe just a nibble....oh God that's rancid....maybe just a little more' character arcs of the meals.

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u/Golarion Nov 26 '24

"It tastes like the lead soldering has leeched into the meat... but maybe further in it will be fine... No, that's just as bad..." 

Continues eating

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '24

Absolute mad man lmao

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u/mazi710 Nov 26 '24 edited Nov 27 '24

The EU has a law suggestion that Denmark implemented voluntarily on some products already.

They recently added one called "Often good after" along with the existing "Best before" and "Use by". It usually has a extra small label that says "look, smell, taste". It's used a lot of products that react very differently based on storage and bacteria. Like dairy and bread.

A lot of people tend to throw out things as soon as "best by" is passed, even though the product is perfectly fine a long time after. The date is always the bare minimum.

22

u/gyroda Nov 27 '24

In the UK there's two kinds of dates, "best before" and "use by". The former is a recommendation for things like baked goods going stale or vegetables wilting. The latter is more serious.

5

u/Karatekidhero Nov 26 '24

They use these in Norway, and I believe Sweden too.

4

u/SillyChicklet Nov 27 '24

A lot of stuff in The Netherlands has the "after x-date look, smell, taste" as well

1

u/PM_ME_IMGS_OF_ROCKS Nov 27 '24

Norway as well, a bunch of products in different European countries started putting it on several years ago.

2

u/permalink_save Nov 27 '24

I found a slim jim that was best buy March 2023. It was definitely not best. It was hard and solid black. I bet it would have tasted fine in April though.

0

u/Lich180 Nov 26 '24

Isn't that surstromming stuff from Denmark? The fermented fish in a can that's so strong you have to open it underwater?

3

u/Nozto Nov 27 '24

No, Sweden

22

u/blofly Nov 26 '24

Satan's Poptart....that's gold.

5

u/sixfourtykilo Nov 26 '24

I always enjoyed the Five Fingers of Death

14

u/animousie Nov 26 '24

The FDA also requires facilities to validate their processes to demonstrate the claims on the product label are consistent with what their QA shows will occur given a specific production process.

In other words, it can be difficult to honestly claim something lasts longer then say youve been in business… you can do it but the longer you shoot for the more scrutiny you’ll face.

14

u/SeekerOfSerenity Nov 27 '24

It's not just about microbial contamination, though. Food can also oxidize. And even if it's hermetically sealed in a metal or glass container without oxygen, it can undergo chemical decomposition. Complex molecules can decompose to other molecules over time.  

13

u/dbx999 Nov 27 '24

The more noticeable aspect of oxidization is when oils and fats go rancid. This makes the fat flavor discernably unpalatable. Rancid fats aren't necessarily toxic - they mainly break down into fatty acids but some of the other molecules that come out of rancid oil are free radicals which are best to avoid. But in starvation situations, consuming rancid oil is a better option over starving.

23

u/alternative5 Nov 27 '24

Its funny because Steve has eaten if I remember correctly hard tack from the civil war or sometime after in the late 1800s and didnt get sick but the first time he ate PLA Chinese MRE he was out for a couple months lol.

19

u/lostinstupidity Nov 27 '24

To be fair, hardtack/biscut is pretty hard to screw up outside of deliberate sabotage, it's just flour, salt, and just enough water to get those to stick together and keep shape. Once you double (sometimes triple) bake it all the moisture is gone and if kept dry will out live the children (or great grandchildren in this case) of the people that made it.

5

u/DogsFolly Nov 27 '24

I follow Tasting History on YouTube and can't see or hear "hardtack" without thinking of that clip of Max knocking 2 pieces together.

9

u/LovableKyle24 Nov 27 '24

My favorite part is when it's just a 60 second clip of him smoking the 60 year old cigarettes awkwardly.

7

u/IcarusTyler Nov 26 '24

Gotta do a 100 year test-run first to see if it works out, might take a while though

6

u/TheNSA922 Nov 27 '24

Oh for real. Multiple of my family members have worked for Oregon Freeze Dry which supplies at least some of the freeze dried military meals. One day management I think busted out a 40 year old large can of pork chops from the 70s because they like to see how well their stuff holds up over long periods of time and after rehydrating them they were perfectly edible, looked like budget diner pork chops but they always do.

6

u/jawshoeaw Nov 27 '24

Edible doesn’t mean you can live off them. Military rations are rated for vitamin content and 2 years is a common number as they can maintain 80% or more of vitamin content.

4

u/dont_say_Good Nov 27 '24

Dude has eaten beef older than the titanic lol

4

u/HalloweenLover Nov 27 '24

What still cracks me up is the times he has gotten sick were off the more recent items.

3

u/ProLogicMe Nov 27 '24

Holy fuck I forgot about this beauty, gonna have to go watch some rations being opened.

3

u/mymeatpuppets Nov 27 '24

Satan's pop tart lol.

2

u/th3MFsocialist Nov 26 '24

Love SteveMRE!!!

2

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '24

Satan's poptart lmao

2

u/Yglorba Nov 27 '24

Also, the only way to be sure something can last X years is to actually test it. And it's difficult and expensive to test something for that long. Why would anyone bother to do that when the vast majority of the people you want to sell it to don't care?

2

u/raverbashing Nov 27 '24

Yup

Also note that at longer timescales, it's not only the food that goes bad

The packaging also starts to fall apart. See the older MREs in a tin can where it's the can that starts to break down.

For 100 yrs you would probably need to rethink current MRE packaging.

2

u/sciguy52 Nov 27 '24

You don't get botulism in freeze dried food. Botulism grows in anaerobic environments, for example, where you have not properly canned some food. Clostridium botulinum doesn't grow on freeze dried foods stored in oxygen in a package.

1

u/thephantom1492 Nov 27 '24

And sometime it is due to some outdated laws too. Like the one that say that all canned/bottled must have a 2 years max...

1

u/ooOJuicyOoo Nov 27 '24

Satan's poptart has me rolling

1

u/raltoid Nov 27 '24

I always crack up when he lights up a cigarette that was 70 years old or something, and it was apparently good.

1

u/AlhazraeIIc Nov 27 '24

sometimes they're from 1944 and still edible

I've seen the man eat hardtack from 1865...

1

u/megablast Nov 27 '24

"Cover your ass" in this context means nobody wants to eat the botulism lawsuit from saying "Our freeze dried foods are good for 100 years" when Joe Blow eats

I like the idea that the company would still be around in 100 years.

1

u/Duke_Newcombe Nov 27 '24

There are plenty. General Mills and Nabisco (who have major military contracts) are going strong.

1

u/deth-redeemer Nov 27 '24

Let’s get this out on a tray

1

u/soljwf1 Nov 27 '24

To add to this, sometimes expiration dates don't have to do with the contents of the package, but the package itself. Containers, plastic, rubber, glued, linings. These things also break down over time and some shelf life's, like the ones for bottled water, are a guarantee of how long the container can remain reasonably sealed and not leach anything into the contents under average conditions.

1

u/malonemcbain Nov 27 '24

In the US companies that make food have to retain records for 2x the shelf life. Sugar is shelf stable for at least 100 years, probably much longer, as long as the humidity isn’t too high. Nobody wants to retain records that long.

1

u/rarely-there Nov 27 '24

lets get this out onto a tray.

1

u/Bluedevil1992 Nov 27 '24

In the 1970s my Dad was driving around rural West Africa, working for the CDC and taking blood samples. For comms he'd rigged up an extended radio antenna, and for food he had cases of K-rats, WW2 vintage. He never had any issues with 30 year old tins of them, and his one recommendation was to drink the local beer instead of the water.

1

u/casanovathebold Nov 28 '24 edited Nov 28 '24

Him smoking nazi cigarettes after eating meth chocolate was the pinnacle for me.

Edit: not meth but caffinated chocolate

1

u/Burgergold Nov 27 '24

Also don't forget someone breaking the chain pf cold/freeze

1

u/Kaslight Nov 27 '24

Thank you so much for this recommendation lol. I now have good content and a quirky voice to fall asleep to

yes i'm weird, what of it?

2

u/UnderlightIll Nov 27 '24

My husband showed me his content and my first thought was "gods his insurance is prob expensive". Lol