# Why do people keep decades-old food? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 8, 2015, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509 "2015-03-08T06:11:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/41 "2015-03-12T00:51:10Z")
Because they can’t reach to clear it out. ---
**Author:** ![Lorene89095](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@Lorene89095](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lorene89095)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/42 "2015-03-12T02:41:45Z")
Thank you for this thread - I checked my spices,2007 was the oldest… I was wondering why nothing tasted right… So that’ll be the big Food Stamp buy this month… May go for a block of Velveeta too. I try to buy the things that cost a lot,but can be used for months,so it actually costs less per use than the less expensive thingie. Gotta do my homework before I go shopping ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/43 "2015-03-12T03:46:29Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > If they have difficulty reaching that top cabinet why do they have anything up there? Because “how am I going to get rid of it?” My mother’s reason for not moving out of her house. She’s on the verge of needing a daily caretaker (and in many ways, has one, or rather, multiple people taking turns), but “how am I going to get rid of all my things, now that I finally have them?” For some reason, the pieces of furniture Dad inherited from his mother are all horrible (the sofa is flimsy, the armoires are too heavy) and in the way, until someone mentions the possibility of handing one of them down, selling them to an antiques dealer (18th century sofa, older armoires), or plain moving to a smaller house. At that point, they become impossible to get rid of. ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/44 "2015-03-12T04:42:02Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > If they have difficulty reaching that top cabinet why do they have anything up there? Because they put it up there 25 years ago when they were young and healthy. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/45 "2015-03-12T04:52:31Z")
Or maybe it could still be good? These guys dug up an old riverboat from around 1850 and it contained some old canned cherries. “Canned” meaning they were sealed in glass mason jars. He actually ate a few and said that other than tasting a bit more sour and were brown, he couldnt really tell the difference. Frankly I bet he could have sold them to some fancy restaurant which could have put them in a desert for say $1000 a plate. ---
**Author:** ![shantih](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@shantih](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shantih)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/46 "2015-03-12T11:32:49Z")
When I was a wee lass, let’s say somewhere around the early 70’s, someone gave my parents a tinned fruitcake for Christmas. We didn’t open and eat it, because of course we didn’t, and it sat in the pantry for a few years. Then it came out at some point to be wrapped up and slipped into one of our Christmas gift piles as a gag. For a number of years, one of us always got it and we just laughed and laughed. Then my parents split up and my father ended up with custody of the tin. My brother and I had long since moved out at this point and I don’t think anyone thought about it anymore until one year, my father visited us for Christmas and it was one of the gifts from him. It had a place of honor on our own pantry shelf for a while until we visited him for Christmas and regifted it. As far as I know, it’s still with him, this now more than 40-year-old monstrosity that was inedible even when newer. Otherwise, I will say that I now have no compunction about throwing out food that is past its expiration date. If I wasn’t moved to eat it before that, what are the chances that I’ll suddenly decide to now that it’s older? ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/47 "2015-03-12T13:03:18Z")
Or maybe a husband or son who is no longer living or no longer living in the same house put it on the top shelf. Cleaning out the pantry is a chore. If you’ve got a lot of stuff in there, it’s a huge chore. Unless there are bugs or smell, there’s no reason why it has to be done _right now_. It’s not too surprising that it gets put off for years. Who here has never put off a difficult and unpleasant task? Things don’t always go bad right after the expiration date. That makes it harder to determine what could still be used, and what really does need to be thrown out now. That makes a difficult and unpleasant task even more difficult (and maybe more unpleasant, if you’re having to smell stuff that has gone really bad). Canned food is heavy, as is furniture. In the case of furniture, even if you _could_ get it to the curb for trash day, the garbage collectors might not take it. If you know where to dispose of stuff that they won’t take, you need a vehicle that can transport it. That might be a problem if you have a small car. It might not be easy for some people to take large quantities of canned food out for the trash collectors, because of the weight. The kind of physical limitations that a lot of older people have makes this harder, of course. I plead the Fifth on the dates on stuff in my pantry. ---
**Author:** ![Marion\_Wormer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d07c76/32.png) [@Marion\_Wormer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marion_Wormer)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/48 "2015-04-06T00:48:07Z")
A real case of a grandmother feeding her family 25 + year old cocoa. It’s not pretty. > **[Grandma Accidentally Poisons Family With Hot Cocoa That Expired 25 Years Ago](https://www.grubstreet.com/2015/04/grandma-hot-chocolate.html)** > > Oops. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509/49 "2015-04-06T01:24:28Z")
> [@Lorene89095](#): > > Thank you for this thread - I checked my spices,2007 was the oldest… I was wondering why nothing tasted right… So that’ll be the big Food Stamp buy this month… May go for a block of Velveeta too. > I try to buy the things that cost a lot,but can be used for months,so it actually costs less per use than the less expensive thingie. Gotta do my homework before I go shopping Ah, the joy of food stamps! Wife’s first words when ours went through were, “Now we can eat meat!” Not a lot, but it’s good that she took Home Ec and knows how to cook lesser cuts. I tried root beer Fizzies once. I was disappointed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-keep-decades-old-food/714509.md?page=2)