Please think about this question, /diy/.... the stupid one first.
Is there ANY way to actually can your own food in tins? No mason jars. I'm very fond of vacuum sealing with Mylar, but I've got no idea how to vacuum seal anything with liquids. I look at military MREs and think "hey, I could probably do that and get a much longer shelf life than 5 years". There are tons of foods that pretty much last forever anyways. Honey, salamis, properly cured meats, waxed cheese, hard tack, pemmican, freeze dried/dehydrated fruits and veggies, etc etc. But what's the most cost effective and timely way to package them?
I'm open to ideas, the question is the most cost effective and efficient way to preserve foods indefinitely.
Basically one day I want to start making a huge stockpile of packaged food that will last indefinitely. As in, archaeologists could eat it a thousand years later. There have been many kinds of grains, wine, honey, etc that have been found and eaten by archaeologists with no ill effects.
I just believe it's a damn shame our emergency rations only last a measly FIVE years, and I know there has to be a way to keep healthy food edible and nutritious for a thousand years.
>>984277
I dont have much to contribute, but have a bump. I'm very interested in it as well!
Also- to my knowledge- cans are really the cheap way, and glass is wayyy better. Mostly because glass is innert and wont rust (which can happen to cans, mostly damaged ones).
>>984283
I have to agree, metals leech into foods and cause us to be stupified :(
It's a damn tragedy.
This is why I'm fond of Mylar, I've never found any negative info about it. Then again it's almost always used for dry foods.
And the problem with glass is also, it's glass. Mason jars are always the best but they are breakable, heavy, let light in, and hard to do in great quantities fast.
Not a cheap date to get started
http://www.mredepot.com/ already done for you
to do your own will need a pressure canner (not a pressure cooker) and or a large kettle for water bath canning
http://www.canningpantry.com/can-sealer-225.html
READ
http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html
>>984304
THAT'S ALMOST 600 BUCKS.
Absolutely obscene. It looks like you could make most of it by melting scrap metal and sand casting.
That's fucking ridiculous.
But thanks for the link to canningpantry, I didn't know those existed.
I heard soda companies spray a polymer inside their cans to insulate them against metal leeching into their drinks. Anyone got ideas about that?
ALSO I need to remind people this thread isn't about canning with mason jars, it's about alternatives for long term food storage that can handle wet food and won't leech metals into the food.
>>984309
Forgot to mention why I posted that pic.
Here, look at this link.
http://youtu.be/zjiFygPCpJY
It looks like the dude let that meat rot for months, but it was perfectly safe to be eaten raw and the fat didn't go rancid.
Look at waxed cheeses that last decades.
I think emergency stockpiles could last decades instead of just five years.
I think we have been doing it wrong for centuries and I want to spread the words and knowledge that could help humanity get back on the right track for disaster preparations. I mean for fucks sake, there's hard tack made during the civil war in museums that's still edible.
I think MREs could be preservative free and last for decades.
I think we've been doing it wrong.
>>984283
Couldn't you wax seal the top of mason jars to prevent rust for pretty much forever? There's probably a spray on solution that would be cheaper and quicker.
The lids on mason jars have been treated so they won't rust from the inside, right?
>>984277
>Is there ANY way to actually can your own food in tins?
Yes, you can buy home canning equipment for metal cans. "All American" brand has a line of Can Sealers.
I should warn you that they are "fucking expensive" when compared to regular glass mason jar home pressure canning equipment. I have a couple pressure canners and use mason jars. I have about 6 months worth of food on hand at all times that is kept rotating.
>eternally reposted pic of mine
>>984311
>I think MREs could be preservative free and last for decades.
They are preservative free.
The 5 year thing is way overblown. Their guarantee is that they will still be good 3 and a half years after their date of manufacture when stored at 80 degrees F. If you refrigerate them the last longer. Freeze them and they basically never go bad.
>>984314
I also have a commercial food dehydrator and vacuum sealer for mason jars (both electric and hand operated).
>another eternally reposted pic of mine
>>984312
>The lids on mason jars have been treated so they won't rust from the inside, right?
Yes, they have plastic on the inside, but this plastic does not touch the food unless you did the processing incorrectly or have the jars laying on their sides. These lids do rust through if they are not in a cool dry location. Some forms of canning use wax to seal the top of the food. With a wax seal on the food in the jar, the plastic on the lids won't have any effect in anyway on the food.
>>984318
>Freeze them and they basically never go bad.
True, the colder you can get the food the longer it will last exponentially. Couple that with sterility, acidity, and no oxygen and it will last indefinitely.
![Le-Parfait-Canning-Storage-Jars[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/PK42Lhy.jpg "Le-Parfait-Canning-Storage-Jars[1].jpg")
>>984318
Oh, I forget to add; get some of these fuckers. Le Parfait is the big name in the business. No metal, plastic coated or otherwise, touches the food. Just glass and the rubber seal. The seal is reusable and easy to make yourself (its just flat rubber) if you want to make it out of something else. I use these fuckers for even my dry storage because the easily make an air tight seal. The seals last many years and many canning sessions and the jars last decades. I still have some my mom bought back in the 70's. The seals are easy to replace too as they are expected to wear out, so the manufactures sell replacements. They come in a shitton of sizes and types. Largest I've seen are 3 liters but 2 liters seems to be the max you can easily find.
>>984318
I'm actually pretty sure they put things in MREs that they don't want us to know about.
MREs literally causing you to shit bricks is very suspicious. The only thing I can think of that does that is opiates or drugs and convert medication of soldiers has been done lots of times. They've been treated like guinea pigs before.
America probably has their own version of Unit 731 somewhere that's still doing fucked up shit.
>>985269
They're not actually full of 'preservatives'?
MREs are primarily preserved because they are boiled to death in their pouch and sealed up in the factory. They also don't even have very good shelf life compared to cans, jars, or dehydrated food.
They're full of salt and MSG, and sometimes sugar. Then they have bonzoate and sodium gallate and whatever... but none of that is particularly exciting. You eat all that stuff all the time in the US diet.
>>984277
Pemmican.
Pemmican, pemmican, pemmican.
Dried and ground lean meat and dried berries saturated with tallow/suet/rendered fat. 1:1 ratio (1 unit ground dried meat, 1 unit dried berries, 1 unit rendered fat)
It's nutritionally complete and 1 candy-bar-sized piece is enough for 1 adult for 1 day - calories, vitamins, and minerals.
Ancient Egyptians made pemmican, and it was still edible when we reopened their tombs thousands of years later.
>>985269
Dude, even CIVILIANS that eat MREs a week straight shit literal bricks. Civilians that don't sweat gallons a day. These are properly hydrated people I'm talking about.
There are stories of people having to claw compacted shit out of their bleeding rectum with their fingernails because of MREs.
And it's only American MREs that do this.
They are obviously putting something in them.
>>985331
>it's a secret chemical put in by the us military.
....
To make their own soldiers walking wounded because they haven't shit in a week and when they do it's a bloody brick?
Coming soon American mres guarented to give you the shits.
>>985331
>>985340
They are designed to do that to keep soldiers from needing to use the bathroom a lot. Normal human functions normally cause people to use the bathroom at completely inappropriate times.
Basically, it is so soldiers don't shit themselves during combat. It also has nothing to do with low fiber or lack of water. You can make the exact same stuff at home and not have a problem with constipation. But, MREs are the fucking devil. They are not called "meals requiring enemas" for nothing.
What is wrong with some of your guts? I fucking love MREs and I've never had a problem after eating one (or several).
Also, their "dating" is insanely conservative. In reality they never actually go bad, but if stored at high temperatures their taste will start to change. I at one a couple of weeks ago that I had laying around from around 2003 and it was perfectly normal.
>>984277
Almost all of your examples are incorrect. You will have to address the temperature of your storage environment to achieve any of your goals.
>>985421
Uh.... How the fuck do they actually manage to give people constipation like THAT without using drugs or enough fiber to choke a cow?
I just don't understand how the fuck MREs could do these things to people.
It's a fucking war crime.
Soldiers shitting themselves is common, it's literally age old! Knights in shining armor were more like knights in shit filled armor.
The damage MREs do to your rectum have actually fucking hospitalized people! You can get sepsis from intestinal tearing!!
>>984277
Use glass jars.
We used tins for meat when I was little, and while it generally worked fine, sometimes it just rusts from the inside (a little scratch will do). Plus, empty tins are almost as expensive as glass, and you can easily reuse glass jars.
These days I preserve lots of stuff only in glass. Fruits, meat, juices, vegetables, broth. All those stay fine for many years and you have the bonus to be actually able to see the content inside. Granted, you should store it in a dark room. Bonus if its cool there (same for tins though).
10 years or so ago I found a jar of fruit my grandmother preserved (glass with those rubber rings) and it was fine. Was probably 2 decades old.
Tins are used in the industry because en masse they are cheap, lighter than glass and there is less breakage. But from the health aspect and for long-term storage, glass is superior.
