Following those Three Questions is what keeps the ill effects at bay.This table contains data about book sales. I’ve eaten, with no ill effects, canned goods 10+ years past their Best By dates. The smell of it cooking drives most folks out of the room. Even when heated high enough and long enough to destroy the spore and poison, the food is compromised way beyond being palatable. Stovetop cooking isn’t usually hot enough to destroy the spore or its poison. It’s also an endospore producing bacteria, meaning the poison it releases is enclosed in a spore that is only susceptable to very high heat. The Clostridea family (a member of which causes Gangrene is very distinct, and once you’ve smelled it, you’ll never forget it)of bacteria is a facultive anaerobe, in plain english, it can live and thrive in the absence of oxygen. If the expected odor of a canned good is off, don’t eat it! Some pathogens have very strong and distinct smells. Obviously some are beneficial like the bacteria in yogurt, but there are some that can not only make you ill, but kill you. There are millions of bacterial pathogens that can effect a food. Canning, whether home or industrial is an anaerobic procces (the goal is to reduce the air to none being present), if air can get in, so can bacteria. In other words, oxygen has gotten past the seal. What if it’s dark brown? Color change is a sign of oxidation. Yes prepared/canned goods are often not the same color after processing as fresh, but one expects Tomato sauce to be a deep red. Liquid evaporating past a seal is not good. If that liquid is reduced or absent, the seal has most likely failed. Why? This is canned food we’re talking about that was prepped and sealed with a certain amount of liquid in it. One, is the fluid level in the canned good reduced? Two, is the contents color consistant with a newer can? and Three, does the contents odor vary from a fresher can? If the answer to any of those 3 questions is yes, then you really need to proceed with increased caution.

A couple of basic questions that need answered, are what you need to answer before proceeding to eat or prepare the product. When you open a canned good long past its “Best if Used By” date, your eyes and nose are your guides.

Food expiration code book