I recently bought a stash of food from an elderly couple that were downsizing. The stash was all basically Y2K stuff they stockpiled and had dates of 1999 on them. There were some things that were also dated 1980, but it wasnt much and the majority of it was stuff like hard wheat. I went through all of it and checked for bulges or dents or any abnormalities and disposed of those. I also opened a can in almost every case if they were the same product just to check to see if it was still good. I figured if one can in the case was good, then the others probably were as well. I am not sure if they stored the stuff in a very good environment or not but it was only $250 for all of it and it came with a 60lbs bucket of honey, so I figured I would at least make it worth my money there. Only time will tell I guess.

Half was Mountain House brand and the other half was Safe Trek Foods.

A couple things I noticed right off the bat. Mountain house is the premium product. I have a few other version of freeze dried foods, but nothing compares to the quality of the food, the quality of the boxes, and the quality of the cans to Mountain House.

All the cans were filled to the brim rather than the cans I buy now that are basically half filled. Im sure this is a shrinkflation thing. Cans of powdered stuff were actually heavy in the hand.

Barely any of the Mountain House stuff was bad. I think I only threw out half a dozen cans of Mountain House where I threw out a couple dozen or so cases at least of the Safe Trek Foods. And both brands were dated within a few months of each other.

Both brands had labels stating they were packed in nitrogen.

The #1 thrown out product were pinto beans followed by red beans and some other beans of the larger size. The tiny beans that were the size of lentils were still ok. The bigger beans had bulged cans and when opened stunk like hell. Smaller beans seemed fine. All the big beans got tossed.

All the tomato powder cans were bad and bulged the most. Which kind of threw me off as I thought they would be really acidic and would keep bad things from going. Apparently thats not the case.

Powdered milk was 50/50. Along with eggs and some other products that were similar.

Fruits with high moisture content in their original form were bad. Stuff like pineapple, apples, and peaches. They werent bad as in spoiled necessarily, but they definitely had lost their appeal appearance wise and texture wise. They were all clumped together in the bottom of the cans like one solid object and brown colored. They smelled fine and the cans were fine, but I dumped them anyways due to the appearance and new solid state.

Most of the meats were good and interestingly enough, there were even things like ribeye steaks in #10 cans.

One of the biggest things Im trying to figure out is why the beans were bad. Its one of the highest ranked stored items but those were the ones that had gone bad first. I wonder if its because they are more fragile to the temperatures and they werent stored correctly or what the deal was. Both brands had bad cans of beans, so I dont think it was necessarily a brand issue. I wish I would of taken a lot more pics, but to be honest, it was a lot of food to go through and I just got lost in filtering the good with the bad. Im not counting on it as my main supply, but its a great supplement to my current storage or even bartering items.

Thanks for sharing.
I've often wondered about many of the same products you listed.  I have all of them in my stash plus a deep rotation I'd the wet pack items.  

For the items that went bad, we're the cans obviously ruptured and/or leaking?

Great share!

Were they all cans, or was there any mylar involved?

I’d be surprised if there was Mylar over two decades ago.

The problem with tomatoes being canned is the acid can eat away at the metal and cause problems that way.

Any rice?

They were experimenting with Mylar chip bags in the 1970's.

Were these cans of dried beans, or were they cooked beans that had been canned?

Wow even if only a 1/4 of that was good I'd still say it was a win. Id be fine eating freeze dried food that old (minus what was spoiled).

OP, you got a great deal even if all you do is feed it to chickens and turn it into eggs.

I'd like to downsize my life as well, but the last thing I would part with is my prep food.  wonder why they decided to do that.  Good for you though.  Damn, that's a lot of food.

Thanks and feed the homeless.  

A lot of that depends on how it was stored as well.  If they stored in their garage for 20 years that will cause things to go bad faster.  All of ours is stored in the house, in a temperature / humidity controlled environment.

No. None of the cans were ruptured or leaking. They were just bulging. When I opened them, the pressurized air shot out.

No mylar. These were all factory canned items.

Thank you. That's good to know. I'm assuming metal cans are lines with something typically to keep the food from ruining them from the inside out?

Yes. There were at least 6 cans of rice. Probably more. All were good and nitrogen packed in the #10 cans.

They were all dried beans.

All of the cans of fruit, meat, and stuff like that was labeled as freeze dried and nitrogen packed.

I have a feeling it wasn't entirely their choice. They sons were there liquidating their stuff. I talked to the old man briefly, but didn't want to pry into his personal business. He didn't seem really happy to be selling his stuff. I have a feeling their kids were putting them into a home.

I sure hope that one day I will be able to sell of my stored food, because that would mean nothing ever went majorly wrong.

Great thread!

I've been storing and rotating food since 2005.  I've thrown away very little during that time but somehow a few 2008 era canned kidney beans got to the back of a stack.  When I opened one of them recently, it had definitely started to get funky.  

The tomato powder should not have surprised you at all, really.

Acidic foods in cans usually go first, because they compromise the cans.

They must be wet canned beans?

We opened a mylar bag of black beans last night that I packaged ~2011, looked just as good as the day I packed them, no special treatment other than oxy absorbers.

ETA: I see it was dried beans.  That seems off, wonder why they went bad?  Maybe there was some moisture?

Most of my stored food is stuff we regularly eat. So it gets constantly rotated.
I only have a couple weeks worth of MRE/Freeze dried.
That I don't rotate or toss. I just slowly accumulate.
In other words, I'll probably never reach a point where I'm selling.

Thats a hell of a deal

holy cow!  dried beans smelling off?

heck, they smell off in 8 hours wet! after cooking.


dry, pressurized can of beans  ?  maybe they were prepped poorly?  

I would like to learn more.

60 pounds of HONEY!!!!?????



WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!  

Should send of the vintage mountain house and other interesting stuff to Steve1989MREinfo for a review, would be interesting to see!

Maybe a taste test vs newer stuff, side by side.

Dried beans can have at least a trace of residual moisture. They may have simply been canned too soon. Those were panicky times, and storage food companies were literally shipping everything they could get their hands on, as fast as they could get it.

The original buyers should have been rotating that food through their normal diets instead of keeping it like a trophy or perhaps more accurately, an insurance policy.

Y2K was almost a practice run. There were issues, but not as widespread as many predicted.

Today we're all much more dependent on technology. We'd be totally screwed if what was predicted for Y2K would happen today.