Canned Fruit

Canned fruit is the sweet thing in a stored diet and most of its vitamin C, and it has the shortest clock on the canned shelf because fruit is acidic and acid works on the can from the inside. Two to five years at full quality, stored cool; safe past that in a sound can with a darker color and a flatter taste. It belongs at the front of the shelf, rotated through every month.

Peaches, pears, pineapple, mandarin oranges, fruit cocktail, applesauce, cherries, in juice or water for everyday and in syrup if the calories are wanted. Whole and halved fruit holds better than diced. Pineapple and applesauce keep their flavor longest; berries and cherries fade first. Fruit in glass jars keeps the same way but shows its color loss sooner in the light; keep jars dark.

Cool, dry, dark and off the floor, between 50 and 70°F if you can manage it; twenty degrees cooler, 70 down to 50°F, roughly doubles how long the contents stay at full quality. Never let cans freeze (the seams can fail) and never store them over a furnace, in a garage or in a vehicle. Rotate first in, first out, with the buy date written on the lid. A dented can is fine if the dent is small and not on a seam; a deep dent, a dent on a seam, rust that pits the metal, or any bulge means the can goes unopened.

Fruit is the first thing on the canned shelf to show its age, so it goes to the front and gets eaten first, two cans a week per person.

Look before you open: bulging ends, a leak, rust that has eaten into the metal, or a seam dent. Listen and look as you open: spurting liquid, a hiss outward, cloudy liquid where it should be clear, foam, or a foul smell. Any of those and the whole can goes, unopened if possible, into the trash where nothing can get at it, because the thing you are guarding against is botulism, which has no taste and no cure outside a hospital. A can past its date with a sound seal and a clean smell on opening is food.

Darkened fruit and a faint metallic taste in an old can are age, not danger. A can that fizzes, smells of alcohol or has cloudy liquid has fermented and goes.

Two cans a week per person keeps vitamin C in the diet with no fresh produce. The juice is sugar water: drink it, cook oatmeal in it, make a glaze, or pour it over the dry pancakes. Applesauce replaces oil and eggs in quick breads, half a cup for each. Canned peaches on hot oatmeal is a breakfast people remember from an outage.

Shelf-stable and ready. In a long outage the opened can keeps less well at room temperature than a dry item, so open fruit for a meal and finish it.

Shelf-life figures are from the Survival Foods field guide; fridge, freezer and pantry times are from the USDA cold and pantry storage charts. Run the look, smell, taste check before eating anything past its date.