Expiration Dates
Whether you store food from the grocery store or buy pre-packed emergency food, you need to check expiration dates as time goes on.
The essence of emergency food is that you need to keep it in storage, because you never know when you will need it. Which means that most of the time you will not need it (although you’ll feel awfully good about it when the time comes). Some prepackaged emergency food is intended for very long storage, up to 25 years. You do not have to check that type very often, lol. But some emergency food has a shelf life of perhaps five years, and some only a year or two. If you mix types or buy quantities at different times, you need to schedule checks every month or two.
That way you not only get to see if there is anything that needs to be taken out of storage, used and replaced, but you also get to check your stores and see if there is any unforeseen damage from the environment. Small animals or insects can turn a carefully planned emergency store of food into a disaster if left unchecked. Sometimes water can leak into an area where you do not expect it. It’s just good to take a look every once in a while and make sure you still have what you think you have.
If you store food from the grocery that is not specifically intended for long term storage, it is all the more important to check expiration dates, and do it more often. Chances are that you have not bought everything at the same time, so many different items may have many different expiration dates. You will want to make it easy to check expiration dates, so when you buy food for storage, write the expiration date on the front and/or top of each item with indelible marker. It takes just a little effort as you take things out of the grocery bags, and it saves SO much time and effort each time you do a check.
We have been doing this for so long that we automatically write expiration dates on all the food we get. It’s really quite nice being able to see how old the food you have on the shelves is at any point in time. We almost never have to throw out food because it is too old. A nice savings in these days of high food prices.
