Post-Apo : Expired Medication & Food ?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I recall reading a few years ago about the US military having some long forgotten medications in storage tested (I assume to see whether such stockpiles could still be of any value in a desperate emergency). As long as the seal was intact and the temperature hadn't gotten too extreme, they were safe and mostly effective decades after expiration.

Expiration dates on organic things are always nonsense.
The main kind of decay is "something eats it", which obviously depends on how long it takes for said something to get to it. If it's sealed well enough nothing can eat it, then it depends on how fast stuff in the package reacts with itself, which can be [extremely] sensitive to perfectly ordinary temperature changes - stuff that might be fine for a century at 50 degrees (sitting in a cave for example) might be ruined by a single day at 90 (sitting just outside that cave on the summer day the day it was first delivered waiting for somebody to store it).

The best test for food is the same one that has [always] held - does it smell/taste funny? If yes, don't eat it. This is way, way more reliable than depending on a date.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Things like brandy and vodka in a sealed bottle stored in a dark place would last a thousand years and still be the same.

I doubt it'll taste the same, at least for the brandy I expect it to go sour. Most fruity flavors are esters, and esters cleave into alcohols and organic acids. Normally in a lab you'd do that with an acidic catalyst, but brandies are acidic enough to start with that I expect it to happen in well under a thousand years.

[Pursuivant]

Canned goods, especially canned meats, might become dangerous soon after their "best before" dates because of the risk of botulin contamination. This is particularly true for home-made canned goods or commercial goods produced in less than perfectly sanitary conditions. Any canned food with sufficient acidity (e.g., tomato sauce, cranberry sauce) is unlikely to develop such contamination, however, so is probably safe. In all but the cases of botulin contamination, any rot or fermentation will be instantly detectable by sight or smell. Fermentation or rotting might also cause obvious swelling of the can or even rupture it.

Bottled juices and sodas are likely to remain drinkable, if less flavorful, for centuries. Lack of oxygen and additives such as sorbates inhibit bacterial growth. Bottled water is immortal.

Beer and wine will become distinctly oxidized within a few months, obviously "aged" or "stale" within a year or so. Most beer will be far gone, but still drinkable and alcoholic, within five years, longer if it is commercially canned. I've personally tasted drinkable, but not great, beer that's over 20 years old. Bigger, darker, malt-driven beers age better than lighter, paler, hop- or ester-focused brews.

Wine will develop like beer if properly stored, and potentially develops in character over a far longer period, although most vintages go way down hill after about 20 years. Any serious oxidation can turn wine to vinegar, however.

Distilled spirits are pretty much immortal, but becomes increasingly flavorless over time. Initially, aging helps distilled spirits by making them more complex as minor chemical products break down in random ways, but after a while the reactions go to completion and the result is less interesting. How fast this happens depends on the basic brew. 20-50 year-old whisky is premium stuff, 200-500 year-old whisky will still have a kick, but will probably seem less flavorful and more vodka-like. OTOH, complete rotgut that's undrinkable when new might ultimately age into something you could drink, although it will still probably be hangover fuel.

For vitamin supplements and OTC drugs, anything that is chemically stable is probably immortal. For example, antacid tablets (calcium carbonate, plus other stuff) might last for millions of years. The same goes for other stable chemical salts, like some minerals in vitamins.

For more complex organic molecules in solid form, it depends on storage temperature and oxygen and moisture exclusion. If kept frozen in an anaerobic environment, they might remain virtually unchanged for centuries. Heat, moisture and oxygen exposures will quickly degrade many products. Assuming they're not ruined, assume that drugs stored in less than perfect conditions lose 1d x 10% of their effectiveness every decade or perhaps just 1d x 1% per decade in good but not perfect conditions.

The same applies to dried foods. While they might remain technically edible for centuries, they will become increasingly oxidized. That means obvious staleness or rancidity and fewer nutrients. Simple carbohydrates and proteins will remain stable, however. If properly stored in a dry, cool location there's no reason why sucrose wouldn't remain just as nutritious, in terms of caloric value, indefinitely.

Oils and fats will be more prone to rancidity, however, although they might hold up for long periods of time if kept cold in an airtight container. A frozen, sealed can of lard might taste just fine centuries later. Olive oil or similar oils stored in normal glass or plastic jars might have noticeable staleness or even rancidity after a few years. Note that even if unsuitable for fuel, these products still work as lubricants or lamp oil.

More complex dried foods go stale or rancid based on the fats and oils within them.

Old herbs and spices lose much of their goodness due to loss of volatile essential oils. They'll lose most of their culinary punch after 2 years and be indistinguishable from ordinary dried leaves within a decade. The exception is that intensely-flavored spices, like capsicum pepper or cloves, might retain some goodness for longer periods.

Grains and flours will start to become stale after a couple of years, but remain edible, if less nutritious, indefinitely. The exception is that whole grains and whole grain flours can go rancid fast, becoming noticeably stale within just 6-12 months and unpleasantly rancid within a few years.

I think there have been previous threads on this forum on the same topic which cover other areas, like ammunition, plastic goods, etc.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Wine will develop like beer if properly stored, and potentially develops in character over a far longer period, although most vintages go way down hill after about 20 years. Any serious oxidation can turn wine to vinegar, however.

Sealed amphorae of wine a couple of thousand years old have been recovered from Mediterranean shipwrecks. They aren't poisonous, but they aren't nice either.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Sealed amphorae of wine a couple of thousand years old have been recovered from Mediterranean shipwrecks. They aren't poisonous, but they aren't nice either.

I'd imagine that even with a well-made, pitch-lined amphora and a really good seal, some sea water will inevitably get in. The same might be true for cork-stoppered bottles. Steel crown caps will also quickly corrode away. Other than that, sealed containers of liquid at depth are naturally kept in dark, cold, anaerobic conditions which aids storage. Divers have safely consumed relatively old (~5 years) cans of soda and beer taken from extreme depths.

As for aging, few years ago, the British Guild of Beer Writers got to taste a few bottles of "Arctic Ale" brewed for the Franklin Expedition, which had been lost deep in the cellars of some ancient British brewery. This beer was designed to be incredibly calorific and highly alcoholic, both so it would stay liquid at cold temperatures and so it provided sufficient calories in an Arctic environment. It also had "warming" effects, which we now know to be undesirable in cold weather survival situations.

The writers, all trained beer tasters and beer historians, reported that the beer was still drinkable but extremely oxidized, making it seem sherry-like.

For wine, about 20 years back, there was an elaborate fraud where a vintage wine broker was relabeling old-but-not-ancient bottles of vintage wine as extremely old, highly-prized vintages and peddling them to credulous and wealthy wine snobs. A book covering the scandal was appropriately titled, "Billionaire's Vinegar." (He was ultimately rumbled by the fact that he foolishly relabeled some post-1945 vintages. Pro Tip: 18th century wine doesn't contain strontium isotopes.)

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Sealed amphorae of wine a couple of thousand years old have been recovered from Mediterranean shipwrecks. They aren't poisonous, but they aren't nice either.

As the amphorae aren't completely water-tight (over that sort of time period), that's not surprising as you'd expect salt contamination, etc.

[dcarson]

Botulism toxin also breaks down at temperature. So as long as you cook it to an internal temperature of at least 85 C for 5 minutes it will be safe.Poisoning from it is cold foods or food allowed to cool and sit and not reheated.

[RGTraynor]

One thing that no one has mentioned yet in their extensive advice is that (at least in the United States) food items all have expiration dates because the FDA requires that they all do, whether or not those dates make any sense. A lot of those dates are, perforce, fiat dates, and those fiat dates tend to be pitched a couple of years at most into the future to keep from freaking consumers out. Honey from ancient tombs has been eaten with relish, but you won't find a jar of honey with an expiration date a century hence.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Honey from ancient tombs has been eaten with relish

How old was the relish?

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

One thing that no one has mentioned yet in their extensive advice is that (at least in the United States) food items all have expiration dates because the FDA requires that they all do, whether or not those dates make any sense. A lot of those dates are, perforce, fiat dates, and those fiat dates tend to be pitched a couple of years at most into the future to keep from freaking consumers out. Honey from ancient tombs has been eaten with relish, but you won't find a jar of honey with an expiration date a century hence.

The UK legally requires "use by" dates for dairy and eggs. Everything else conventionally has a "best before" date; there is some pressure from retailers to do away with these. And while there is a valid point that the "sniff test" should be used, it ignores the fact that many people have sensory disabilities and rely on these printed dates because their own senses won't necessarily detect off food (there is a window in which food will cause illness but isn't obviously dangerous; for those with sensory disabilities, this window can be quite wide). Personally, I'd prefer these dates be kept, as it lets me know which order I should use up products (and I still use the "sniff test" even so).