Post-Apo : Expired Medication & Food ?

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by Farmer

If they haven't popped, they're still airtight. That's the point of them.

That doesn't mean they're sanitary. I can hold a cup on my mouth with suction, it's not a sterile seal.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

With tougher lids and beeswax or paraffin to get a secure seal like they did with old school canning equipment, canning jars and their seals can be reused indefinitely.

It's possible that along with ammunition and refined fuels, canning supplies are highly barterable items in an ATE campaign, if less glamorous.

.

The paraffin is a petroleum byproduct. If you're really going low tech it's probably going to have be beeswax for which candles will be a competing application. You can make candles out of tallow but you'll have other uses for your tallow too.

It's all rather like Blake's Connections show in reverse.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

That doesn't mean they're sanitary. I can hold a cup on my mouth with suction, it's not a sterile seal.

The whole process sterilises it. I thought you were concerned by the pop lids and their ability to seal. The jarring/canning processes uses heat to sterilise. Unless it's some dodgy backyard operation, it's sterile - regardless of the type of lid.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by Farmer

The whole process sterilises it. I thought you were concerned by the pop lids and their ability to seal. The jarring/canning processes uses heat to sterilise. Unless it's some dodgy backyard operation, it's sterile - regardless of the type of lid.

It looks like a pretty thin layer of wax or whatever it is, to me.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

It looks like a pretty thin layer of wax or whatever it is, to me.

As long as it's intact, it doesn't matter how thin it is. If you kill all the bacteria in the jar, and close off all routes by which they could enter the jar, then the food inside will stay sterile indefinitely (as we've discussed, the molecules in the food will break down on their own over very long timescales, but that's going to be a matter of becoming less nutritious rather than becoming dangerous to consume). Of course, the material in the seal might potentially degrade over time and eventually break down enough to let bacteria in, so one should still be careful.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

As long as it's intact, it doesn't matter how thin it is. If you kill all the bacteria in the jar, and close off all routes by which they could enter the jar, then the food inside will stay sterile indefinitely (as we've discussed, the molecules in the food will break down on their own over very long timescales, but that's going to be a matter of becoming less nutritious rather than becoming dangerous to consume). Of course, the material in the seal might potentially degrade over time and eventually break down enough to let bacteria in, so one should still be careful.

Isn't that rather begging the question? Even if the lid doesn't pop, in twenty years I am skeptical it is truly intact.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

Isn't that rather begging the question? Even if the lid doesn't pop, in twenty years I am skeptical it is truly intact.

If it hasn't been compromised enough to let [air] in, which would cause it to pop, it's still keeping bacteria out too.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

That doesn't mean they're sanitary. I can hold a cup on my mouth with suction, it's not a sterile seal.

If you were able to do so for months or years without requiring additional air, it would be.

The other effect of the test for the lid popping is that many bacterial contaminants (e.g. botulism) produce gas as a side effect, so if the lid hasn't popped, you know that nothing trapped inside the jar has been producing gas.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by malloyd

If it hasn't been compromised enough to let [air] in, which would cause it to pop, it's still keeping bacteria out too.

The lids on canning jars are designed to be "tamper evident". If you've canned something right, especially if you're hot canning with a pressure cooker with the lids placed on the jars as they cook, the vacuum seal on the lid can be quite strong. That creates an obvious depression in the middle of the lid and forcing you to carefully pry the lid loose with a knife or bottle opener. The moment the seal cracks, you sometimes get a "hiss" or "pop" and the lid pops up slightly making it obvious that the jar has been opened.

In an AtE scenario, an IQ roll or Housekeeping or Cooking skill roll at +2 to +4 lets you know if a jar of canned food has a good seal. Maybe roll vs. Per or Per-based skill if you don't have time to closely inspect all the jars in a batch. Per-based rolls are needed to determine which lids can probably be safely reused and which need to be discarded or refurbished.

FWIW, you can also carefully conserve wax used to seal cans, wash the worst of the food gunk off of it and purify it by melting it in hot water and then skimming the wax off the top. Repeat the process a couple of times if the first round didn't clean it up enough.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

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).

Agreed. This thread provoked me to check the dates on my spices -- I don't have a strong sense of smell -- and I quirked my lip at seeing that the expiration dates on both my large jar of Mrs Dash and the thyme were in 2019. Out they went.