Delicious peanut butter!
At one point I had at least 4 large jars of peanut butter in my pantry. Peanut butter is highly nutritious and satisfying. If I had to I could eat peanut butter for the rest of my life and be Ok with it. Despite avoiding processed food I have decided Skippy works for me. Buy some skippy peanut butter here or get it from Costco for a slightly better deal. I’ve been lucky and my peanut butter has not gone bad despite being WAY past it’s sell by date. According to our google bot over lords, peanut butter powder has a shelf life for a 1-5 years. Get peanut butter powder from wall mart this means reconstituting peanut butter often. I don’t know if that might happen for me. We will see. Naw, I doubt it.
A new California law asks food producers to clarify consumer confusion and label food as best if used by instead of sell by date. This may help to reduce food waste, a large amount of food is thrown away before it spoils.
I personally can not always tell if food is still safe to eat.
Since covid and with a med I’m on I can no longer trust my sense of smell. I discovered much of my core pantry was 2-3 years past it’s sell date, I was able to tell that these things were actually “stale”. I’m sure they were still edible, but had an off taste. I composted it. sad, sad.
I’ve learned that dried beans can be kept for a very very long time, but may loose quality or be hard to cook after a year or so. Beans canned or dried and raw rice may be be your best best. If you make rice for dinner once or twice a week you should be able to go thru it and rotate it. I make it thru a 50 pound bag in 5 years or so. Wheat berries store well too, if you know how to make them into flour.
The dilemma for disaster preparedness
I recently read in a disaster preparedness Facebook group the question of what foods can be cooked that do not smell and alert the hoard that you still have food after the apocalypse. A good question. the best by date will no longer be an issue if the world gets to this level of desperation.
If you enjoy science fiction read In Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem. In that universe, the “Great Ravine” is a devastating, 50-year period of economic collapse and mass starvation. This scenario might be what many disaster preppers have in mind to survive.
The movie tremors depicts disaster preppers played by Reba McEntire and Michael Gross successfully fighting off giant subterrain monsters from their bunker. You might have an advantage against a ravenous hoard if you choose to live in an isolated location in Nevada.
- Can you and your family exist for 50 years with or without outside help
- Would multigenerational members in a bunker be psychologically sustainable?
- Can you store enough of food that will not go bad for 50 years.
- Battling cannibalistic neighbors might be a problem, unless you contemplate the Isolated Nevada idea.
- Would you be able to deny starving people when you still have food
In George Stewarts 1949 Science fiction book Earth abides Earth is depopulated by a killer plague. Stewart gets some scenarios correct. One scenario is that in 50+ 
years people are still eating out of cans. This probably is unlikely.
Time is not on our side
Even the best thought out and stocked disaster pantry suffers from the problem of keeping enough food for a long term crisis and food spoilage, wasted money and food.
A well stocked freezer needs electricity. It may fail to keep food safe before you use it even in a short term disruption or just because you forgot you bought frozen peas on sale. Frozen Food must be rotated frequently to keep it from degrading under a deep freeze.
Nuts are a great recourse but as mentioned before, they have a limited shelf life. Eat fruits and nuts everyday.
Some canned low acid food might last for years beyond the best by date. Use with extreme caution and discard after ten years. Read more from the Utah State University about canned food longevity
Dehydrated food, MRE’s and other emergency food kits advertise a 25 year shelf life. Hopefully, you will have to discard them, you will not eat them in your daily life.
Loma prieta earth quake in 1989
- Initially and immediately people came together and helped each other.
- Despite the large amount diversity in neighbor hoods affected, from some of the worse to some of the most expensive in California, looting didn’t not occur
- Help came quickly from unaffected areas
- We had enough food to last us, even though we did not have a large store and the grocery stores figured out how to help
- Although some areas still are recovering 35+ years later, recovery and rebuilding came fast, sometimes within hours.
Looting seems to be a non emergency activity. During California wildfires, some people have taken advantage of evacuated neighborhoods. You would need to decide if you really want to defend your possessions.
After a natural or human made disaster
Your primary need will be reestablishing shelter. Any disaster supplies may need can be revisited after a short adjustment or may be gone. A go bag and plan are helpful.
In a societal beak down
Your needs will develop as time goes by if it truly is a world wide collapse of society. The odds of that are unknown but theories suspect the probability is low. Most scientific ponderings believe human extinction at some point seems likely. For more thought on this concept see this article from the oxford academic
One thing is certain. If the earth is on a path of destruction, this is not news. What ever the future holds and what will happen may have been true your entire life. It only began to matter when you began to worry about it. It wont change if you go to the park today. Have a good life! buy some extra rice and beans try to relax and enjoy life.