Heat and humidity are the two biggest threats to food storage quality, and for anyone living in a warm climate, protecting a well-stocked pantry takes careful planning. This guide draws on firsthand experience in Phoenix and southeast Texas to walk through what temperatures actually damage stored food, how to find and create the coolest storage spots in your home, which foods can tolerate a hot garage and which absolutely cannot, how to manage humidity with the right tools (silica gel inside containers, DampRid for ambient air), and how to rotate your pantry so that heat doesn’t win. Includes a temperature guide in Fahrenheit and Celsius, specific advice for garages and attics, and an expanded FAQ covering peanut butter in heat, freeze-dried food shelf life, humidity effects on canned goods, and what “store in a cool dry place” actually means.
This article has been completely rewritten with new tips, data, and information. July, 2026.
I learned about heat and food storage the hard way. First in Phoenix, where summer temperatures regularly hit 115°F (121°F on my wedding day!), and then again in southeast Texas, where the heat index makes August feel like a punishment. Both places taught me the same lesson. Heat is the Number One enemy of food and most food storage advice assumes you have a cool, dry basement.
Whether you’re dealing with a hot garage, a stuffy apartment with no AC, or a house that stays warm all summer, there are real solutions, and some of them won’t cost you anything. Here’s what I’ve done to make sure my emergency food storage retains its freshness over many years.
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In this post
- How Hot Is Too Hot For Food Storage?
- Reduce The Temperature In Your Storage Area
- Maintain Temperature Consistency
- Find The Coolest Spots In Your House
- Storing Food In Humid Climates
- Ready For More Useful Info From Survival Mom?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The Final Word
- Related Food Storage Protection Content
Starting in mid-May, my email box begins filling up with questions about storing food in hot weather. There’s always a new heatwave in the news, and people worry because food is particularly susceptible to the effects of high temperatures.
Everyone wants to know what temperature is too hot for food storage. It’s a great question because out of all the factors that affect a food’s nutritional value, appearance, flavor, and texture, heat does the absolute worst damage.
How Hot Is Too Hot For Food Storage?
Most food storage labels say “store in a cool, dry place”, but what does that actually mean in degrees?
The general guideline: 70°F or below is ideal. Most food storage shelf life estimates are based on storage at 70°F or cooler. Above that, shelf life starts to shorten, sometimes dramatically.
Here’s a rough breakdown:
| Temperature | Storage Impact |
|---|---|
| Below 70°F / 21°C | Ideal for most stored foods, including canned goods, grains, dried beans, freeze-dried foods |
| 70–80°F / 21–27°C | Acceptable for short-term storage and well-sealed products; expect shortened shelf life |
| 80–90°F / 27–32°C | Problematic for oils, chocolate, nuts, and anything with fat content that can become rancid; canned goods start losing quality faster |
| Above 90°F / 32°C | Damaging for most stored foods; oils go rancid, canned goods deteriorate, freeze-dried food quality declines, and thin packaging is vulnerable |
A garage in Phoenix in July can hit 130–150°F (54–65°C). An attic, even one that’s insulated, can reach 120–150°F (49–65°C) on a hot summer day. Neither is a storage environment, nor is any similar out-building unless it has air conditioning. They’re food destruction environments.
One reader in Alabama keeps a simple thermometer in her pantry year-round specifically to monitor this. It’s a $10 investment that tells you exactly what you’re working with. Give this a try to verify the temperature of a storage area to determine whether or not it’s viable for your long-term food storage.
Reduce The Temperature In Your Storage Area
In our Phoenix home, a spare bedroom served as our food storage pantry. Since keeping just that one room quite cold at 75 wasn’t realistic, we found other ways to protect the food. These are strategies you can put in place if you don’t happen to have a chilly basement or root cellar — and few of us do!
Air conditioning is the most effective solution but also the most expensive to run continuously. If you have a dedicated storage room, a small window AC unit or mini-split on a timer can keep temperatures manageable without cooling your entire house. My husband installed this exact same mini-split, and the installation is quite easy.
Even cycling the AC on during the hottest part of the day (typically 2–6pm) makes a difference in the ambient temperature wherever your food is stored.
Fans alone won’t cool a space. They move the air but don’t reduce the temperature. A fan blowing hot air around a hot room is still a hot room. What fans can do is improve airflow from a cooler space into a warmer one. That is, pulling cool air from an air-conditioned room into an adjacent storage area, for example. If you try this, track the temperature of the warmer room to determine its effectiveness. There’s no point in cranking down the AC and blowing a fan if it doesn’t make much difference other than increasing your electric bill.
Evaporative coolers (swamp coolers) work well in dry climates like Arizona and New Mexico but are counterproductive in humid climates. In Phoenix, our swamp cooler would literally freeze us out of the house. They can be extremely effective, but they add moisture to the air, which creates humidity problems for stored food. Know your climate before going this route.
Thermal mass — Can you store your food on concrete floors, within brick walls, or in rooms with tiled floores? They all hold cool temperatures longer than wood or drywall. A storage area with concrete floors will stay cooler longer into the afternoon than a wood-floored closet. If you have options, choose the space with more thermal mass.
Earth sheltering is ideal, but few modern homes have them. These are areas like a basement, a root cellar, or even a storage area built against a north-facing exterior wall. They will stay significantly cooler than interior spaces. If you’re in a hot climate without a basement, a north-facing closet against an exterior wall is your next best option.
Prevent heat from entering in the first place. Since windows transmit a big percentage of the heat entering your home, we started there with our spare bedroom pantry. My husband covered the window with an opaque film like this one to help keep out the heat. Plus light itself damages food over time, so this film helped protect the food in more ways than one. Also, the film aided in concealing the contents from any casual passer-by.
Besides window film, always keep your windows covered with blinds and/or curtains, year-round. If you can do something to insulate them, that’s even better. Home improvement stores sell large sheets of Styrofoam, which can be cut to measure any window, and then pressed against the glass and taped to the window frame. Styrofoam insulates stucco homes, and while it’s not at all attractive, it can be effective in keeping heat out of individual rooms. Also remember heat rises, making the second story, if you have one, hotter than the first.
One reader in Florida uses a small dedicated chest freezer set to 50°F / 10°C as a “cool room” for her most temperature-sensitive items, like olive oil, chocolate, nuts, and freeze-dried foods she’s opened.
Your solution can be determined by the size and cost of your food storage. If you’ve invested thousands of dollars, spending $500 on a mini-split to maintain an ideal temperature makes sense. If your goal is to just have an extra 30 days’ worth of food, then utilize less expensive options.
Maintain Temperature Consistency
Consistent temperature matters almost as much as cool temperature. Food that stays at a steady 75°F / 24°C holds up better than food that swings between 65°F / 18°C at night and 90°F / 32°C during the day. Temperature fluctuation can cause condensation inside sealed containers, which introduces moisture, and moisture is the second biggest enemy of food storage after heat.
Here are a few practical steps to maintain a consistent temperature:
Use a thermometer. A simple indoor thermometer with a min/max memory function, available for under $15, tells you the actual temperature range your storage area hits over 24 hours. Most people are surprised by how wide that range is. Check it in July and August, not in March.
Insulate your storage containers. Wrapping mylar bags or buckets in moving blankets, sleeping bags, or foam insulation slows temperature swings. The contents heat up and cool down more slowly, which reduces the impact heat has on food.
Keep storage areas away from appliances that generate heat. A hot water heater, clothes dryer, or refrigerator compressor in the same room raises both temperature and humidity. If your food storage is next to any of these, that’s worth figuring out another option.
Don’t store food directly on a concrete floor. Concrete draws moisture and creates cold spots that cause condensation on the outside of containers. Use wooden pallets, wire shelving, or even cardboard to create an air gap between containers and the floor.
Val Clark, a reader in Florida, keeps her pantry on a strict rotation schedule — first in, first out. New food purchases go to the back of the shelf, and older items come to the front and get used first. Because her storage never gets truly cool, she makes sure nothing sits long enough for the heat to significantly degrade it. It’s a practical workaround. If you can’t keep things cool enough, keep things moving fast enough and maintain a lighter pantry that keeps up with your typical level of food consumption.
Find The Coolest Spots In Your House
In a hot climate, not all interior spaces are equal. Spending 30 minutes walking through your home with a thermometer on a hot afternoon will reveal surprising differences. Some spaces might be up to 10–15 degrees cooler than others.
As you check out various closets and spaces otherwise used for storage, you’ll discover it’s time to declutter! When you empty your home of unneeded, unwanted items, you make room for what you do want, such as stored food! With that in mind, start looking for cooler spaces and then plan on decluttering as needed.
Coolest spots to look for:
Interior closets — These are the closets on interior walls, away from the roof and exterior walls. They’ll stay significantly cooler than rooms with direct sun exposure. A hallway closet in the center of your home is often the coolest non-basement space available.
Under beds — Another handy space for food storage, and interior bedrooms, especially in the center of the house, will maintain more consistent temperatures than rooms near exterior walls. Under-bed storage in flat-bottomed rolling bins keep food off the floor and out of direct light. This is one of the most underutilized storage spaces in most homes.
Lower floors — Because heat rises, the ground floor of a two-story home is consistently cooler than the upper floor. If you have a choice, store food on the lowest level of your home.
North-facing rooms — Rooms on the north side of the house receive less direct sun throughout the day and stay noticeably cooler in summer.
Closets along interior plumbing walls — Yet another creative option. The pipes run cool water through the wall, which slightly reduces ambient temperature. Not dramatic, but measurable.
What to avoid:
- Rooms with west-facing windows that receive direct afternoon sun, the hottest part of the day
- Rooms above a garage because when the garage heats up, the heat radiates upward.
- Any space near the water heater, dryer, or refrigerator compressor
- Anywhere that gets direct sunlight at any point during the day
One reader converted a hall closet in the center of her home specifically into a dedicated food storage area. She added a small thermometer, lined the walls with rigid foam insulation, and keeps the door closed. It stays 10–12 degrees cooler than the surrounding rooms in summer. That kind of repurposing is exactly the right approach when a basement isn’t an option.
By the way, having food storage divided into different storage areas of the house can actually be a good plan. Fire, flood, or other damage to the home can destroy a single food storage pantry in one fell swoop. Consider dividing your food storage into smaller caches, so to speak.
Storing Food In Humid Climates
Heat and humidity together are harder on food storage than either one alone. Humidity introduces moisture, and moisture causes rust on cans, clumping in dry goods, mold in improperly sealed containers, and condensation inside mylar bags that weren’t fully dry when sealed.
We have lost more food due to humidity than anything else.
If you live in the Gulf Coast, Florida, the Southeast, or anywhere that stays humid for good portions of the year, here’s what to know:
Rust on cans is a real problem. I lost about two dozen cans of freeze-dried food to rust during a particularly humid summer in Texas. Not because the cans were damaged, but because the humidity got to the exterior and worked its way to the lids. Rusted lids on sealed cans don’t necessarily mean the contents are compromised, but there’s no way to confirm that without opening the can. If you’re dealing with those huge #10 cans, you don’t want to open dozens of them and then have to repackage the food if it’s still fresh if you don’t have to.
One reader tip worth trying — coat the rims and lids of cans with a thin layer of petroleum jelly or food-grade wax to create a moisture barrier. It sounds old-fashioned but it works.
Silica gel packets are your friend. They work by absorbing moisture from the air inside a closed container, reducing the humidity level around your stored food. Use them inside mason jars, mylar bags, sealed buckets, and airtight containers. A 1-gram packet works for containers up to about 2 quarts; larger buckets need 50 grams or more. You can regenerate silica gel by drying it in a low oven (250°F / 120°C for about an hour) when it becomes saturated.
DampRid and similar products work well for larger storage areas, and this is what I used in our food storage room until we installed a humidifier. They absorb moisture from the air rather than from individual containers. Replace them regularly because once they’ve absorbed their capacity they stop working. Make a note on your calendar when you’ve added DampRid and then check it weekly to determine how often it will need to be replaced. It just depends on the humidity level in your storage area.
Airtight containers are non-negotiable in humid climates. A mylar bag inside a food-grade bucket with an oxygen absorber and a sealed gamma lid gives you significant protection. A cardboard box or a loosely covered bin does not. If your current storage system isn’t airtight, humidity will find it, not to mention rodents and insects.
Monitor with a hygrometer. A hygrometer measures relative humidity, and they’re available for under $15. Ideal storage humidity is below 15%. Anything above 60% is a problem. If your storage area consistently reads above 60%, you need either a dehumidifier or a different storage location.
Opened packages are the most vulnerable. Once you open a #10 can, a mylar bag, or a large container of dry goods, the contents are immediately exposed to whatever humidity is in your storage area. I’ve been shocked by how quickly freeze-dried food is ruined by humidity. Even if they’re in a metal can with a plastic lid, humidity will still get into the container. Transfer the food to canning jars and seal with a jar sealer attachment or a mylar bag or bucket with a gamma seal lid and add silica gel packets and oxygen absorbers.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The general guideline is 70°F / 21°C or below for ideal storage. Above 90°F / 32°C is damaging for most foods. They lose ther nutrients, oils go rancid, the color and texture of the food deteriorates, shelf life drops dramatically. Between 70–90°F / 21–32°C is a gray zone where short-term storage is acceptable but long-term shelf life estimates no longer apply.
It means below 70°F / 21°C and below 60% relative humidity. Most food packaging uses this phrase as shorthand for conditions that preserve quality and shelf life. If your storage area regularly exceeds either threshold, the shelf life printed on the package no longer applies, and your food will degrade faster than the label suggests.
Peanut butter is high in fat and will go rancid faster in heat. An unopened jar of commercial peanut butter at room temperature in a hot apartment will hold up for several months, but don’t count on the full printed shelf life if temperatures consistently exceed 80°F / 27°C. Natural peanut butter with no stabilizers goes rancid even faster. Once opened, refrigerate it if temperatures are high. Keep it out of the garage entirely during summer.
Technically, salt, sugar, honey, distilled white vinegar, and hard liquor are the most heat-stable options. But be careful with anything edible that might attract rodents and/or insects. A very determined rat, given enough time, can chew through just about anything — on top of the effects of heat and humidity.
Signs of heat damage include a rancid or off smell when opened, color changes in canned goods, swollen or bulging cans (discard immediately and don’t open), texture changes in dried goods, crystallization or separation in oils, and unusual taste. When in doubt, don’t eat it.
Yes, and in a major way. Freeze-dried food shelf life claims of 25–30 years assume storage at 70°F / 21°C or below. Every 10 degrees above that roughly halves the remaining shelf life. Freeze-dried food stored in a hot garage or attic may have a realistic shelf life of only a few years, f that. Humidity ruins freeze-dried food even more quickly.
Humidity affects the outside of cans, causing rust on the exterior, especially around the seams and lids. Rust on the exterior doesn’t necessarily mean the contents are compromised, but a deeply rusted seam is a concern. Wipe cans dry, store them off the floor, and consider coating rims and lids with petroleum jelly or food-grade wax in high-humidity environments.
It depends. A damp, uninsulated basement in a humid climate can actually be worse than a climate-controlled room upstairs. A basement that stays consistently below 65°F / 18°C and below 60% humidity is ideal. A damp basement that smells musty is not. Use a thermometer and hygrometer to verify before committing your food storage to any space.
They do completely different things. Oxygen absorbers remove oxygen from inside sealed containers, protecting food from oxidation, rancidity, and insect activity. Silica gel packets absorb moisture, which protects food from humidity, clumping, and mold. For long-term food storage, oxygen absorbers are the primary tool. Silica gel packets are a secondary tool for foods particularly sensitive to moisture. They are not interchangeable.
The Final Word
Hot climate food storage isn’t impossible but it does require more attention and intervention than the standard advice assumes. Most of that advice was written for people with basements and cool, dry climates. If that’s not you, you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just working with different conditions, and the solutions exist. Find the coolest spots in your home, use the right containers, rotate aggressively, and keep a thermometer in your storage area so you actually know what you’re dealing with.
Most of our food storage is in the basement where’s there’s ample space. We keep the dehumidifier going at all times to maintain a constant temp and humidity factor. Even here in MA it’s incredibly hot and humid.
I live in South Florida and I Just Laugh when someone in Massachusetts says that it is “it’s incredibly hot” . HAHA on that.
We have a closet in the center of the close to the thermostat. It stays relatively cool there year round. Interesting side note: after a small flood in our hallway a few weeks ago I was forced to put a fan on the carpet to help dry the area out. I noticed soon that this fan, a cheap box fan, actually circulated the cool air in the hallway to the rest of the house. The house is now cooler and the hallway is only sightly warmer with no extra use of the AC. BTW, we are in Bakersfield, CA, so our summer temps are routinely over 100F.
We live in Joshua Tree CA, summer temps here can hit 105 or higher. We manage to keep the temp. around 80 on those days. By storing food down low it does stay cooler and the temp is more constant.
A lot of our stuff is in the basement in a metal cabinet. I always keep the dehumidifier running and it stays cool down there.
I also store in a basement room with insulated and blacked out windows (bubble wrap on the glass surface and cardboard over the entire interior frame). As the summer goes by, the basement temps in my un-airconditioned house will raise to an unacceptable level. I address this by, after consulting the weather forecast, opening the basement windows over night in order to let cooler air circulate through (as overnight temps and humidity allows), being sure to shut them back up first thing in the morning before the days heat starts building. I have also installed thick shades for those windows on the first floor that would allow direct sunlight to heat up the floor that is over my storage room, as that heat will radiate down into the storage space. And don’t forget to caulk and seal all those gaps and cracks that will let the hot air in such as cable, electric, & gas line penetrations, I hate to say that most of my storage has been ordered and delivered during the hottest months of the year, and often has had to sit out in the sun before I got home to care for it.
In South Florida where heat and especially humidity is always a concern. Big electric bills year round. Have the food stored under the stairs in a nice dark storage closet but we keep the door open to make sure it stays cool and dry. Oscillating fans help a great deal!
Question – we’re renting extremely small one bedroom with no storage. Uninsulated secure shed is only space to store our extra canned goods and freeze dry foods; no electricity to run a fan so temps are 50-90 degrees. Will food be ok until we move in November?
Do you have other things you could store in the shed instead and bring the food into the apartment? maybe there are clothes in the closet you can do without until then? A lot of food could fit into the space that one bag of clothes or shoes would take up. More blankets or towels taking up space on the shelves? Store those types of extras in the shed and bring your food in where you can control the temps better.
Try and pack the food low to the ground with all you other stuff packed around it as an insulator. Might be OK for a few months.
There used to be a high calorie food called “Wate-On”. Apparently, it’s been discontinued. But you can still buy “Survival Food Tablets” that contain almost everything you need to live for several months. This is probably the most space efficient way to prepare for a food shortage, although the tablets appear to be expensive.
Plumpy’nut has a two year shelf life and requires no water, preparation, or refrigeration. Its ease of use has made mass treatment of malnutrition in famine situations more efficient than in the past. Plumpy-nut has been recognized by the United Nations, which stated in 2007, “new evidence suggests… that large numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated in their communities without being admitted to a health facility. Plumpy’nut conforms to the UN definition of a Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food
The ingredients in Plumpy’nut include “peanut butter, powdered sugar, vegetable fat and skimmed milk powder, enriched with vitamins and minerals”
You can make this at home. Tweak the basic recipe if needed. My daughter has made this on mission trips. We’ve tried it at home. It is a high calorie, high protein food that can be made fast and all the ingredients hold up to long term storage.
Thank you for this post. I just got started canning and I live in very hot valley in CA. I’ve been worried about how that will affect my canned goods.
This has been my biggest concern since we started really storing food last year. When we remodeled after Katrina – yeah, it’s hot AND humid here, we put the new small, but useful, walk in pantry in the kitchen. Note to self- NEVER put the pantry on the sunny southeast side of the house again! Finally bought an indoor/outdoor thermometer and placed the “outdoor” part in different places, rooms heights, in rooms I thought were the coolest. Have spent weeks analyzing the results- pantry- without door open, and no air circulation, stays around 80. But upstairs office closet, our clothes closet and upstairs bathroom all stay nearer 72-75 with central air on second floor set at 75 or so. Answer- guess it’s time to build more shelves in those places! I worry a bit about the humidity of the bathroom, but if we put everything in there in sealed mylar and inside containers, use the fan every time we shower, hopefully that will make the difference. At any rate- lessons learned!
I know many have said not to store in a garage. what I have done is insulated all the walls and rafters then I built a room also insulated to store dry goods and long term dry food storage, in that room with a fan and vent into attic area to let heat rise out..we have had some really warm days hear in Maine,this summer.but many of our nights have been in the 50′, It stays around 70-75 in the small room .after Sept though it is pretty cool in the garage for around 7 months. I have kept potatoes and apples in the small room till about December. I have a 4 room house and no cellar, and already use one room as a panty for things that would freeze. I just hope things will keep at least half the shelf life stated.any ideas would be greatly apprieciated. Great site
Joan, there are quite a few places around the country where even summer temps don’t get all that high. If an attic or outbuilding is insulated and can protect the food on the hottest days, that’s great.
I bought a small chest freezer and store my large cans in there (low setting) and the smaller cans go in the refrigerator because I cannot set the indoor temp cooler than 85 and still pay the electric bill. It’s been a year and the cans I take out of the freezer to use are perfectly fine. They go in the refigerator once opened. I plan to buy a basic refrigerator to use for more storage. The unit that is here in the duplex is small. I plan to set the new fridge temp at 70, so my bill should not go up that much. The unit will have to go in the bedroom. I live alone, so I can get away with doing that. There are refrigerator locks that are available that do not require drilling, and they cost less than $30. Handy to have for nosy landlords!
I have read about storing root veg in sand in crate boxes and moistening the sand with a spray of water. I would imagine the same thing could be done with jars. I read the other day about some canned food being discovered after a shipwreck in the bottom of the sea. The cans were one hundred years old, but apparently the corn especially, tasted like it had just been canned. I guess the light and heat were gone.
making a number of these may help http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Pot-in-a-Pot-Refrigerator
I see you lived in Phoenix. This is a great post but I have a similar but different issue. I live here in Phoenix as well and I always keep a get home bag in my vehicle. I keep a little bit of food in the bag in case I’m stuck on the freeway for hours or actually have to hike back home or to safefy.
With the heat of the summer, our cars get up to 150* during the day. Is there any food that is stable enough to store in a car in Phoenix? If there is, what’s the recommended rotation time?
Cheers!
Matt
I have a get home bag with food and water too and I bring it inside whenever I’m not driving. Not fun, but for now it works.
We have our house on the market right now so all our food storage is in a rented storage unit. (We have quite a bit saved.) I’m worried that it will all be ruined if the house doesn’t sell in the next month (before it’s too hot).
I recommend moving that food to an air conditioned location as quickly as possible. When we moved to Texas, we were able to store our food in the extra bedroom in the home of a relative. Another possibility is a very small, air conditioned storage unit.
What can we do about humidity if the power goes out and we have no basement to store food in?
LindaA, I can never find an answer to that question. No basements in the low country and no way to keep house cool enough and still afford the electric bill. When electricity goes out, hot and humid.
Lorna, in some situations, there just isn’t a way to keep food very cool. In those cases, food rotation is your best bet. Your food storage pantry should be constantly rotated, by adding new food and then using up the older food. That will help insure the food is as nutritious as possible. Unless contaminated, old food won’t kill you. It just won’t taste as good and will have lost some of its nutrients.
It seems to me that storing food for long term is a walk in the park. But what happens to all our food that we’ve prepared to last for several years when the grid goes out and we no longer have a/c? Will the first summer we go through ruin all our carefully prepped food?
Yep. In that worst case scenario, there are no easy answers if you don’t have a backup cooling system or something like a basement or cellar. I’ve seen some people buy a small, portable A/C unit that could run off a generator, if necessary. Now, in many cases, the food will still be edible. As it’s exposed to heat, it will lose its color, texture, flavor, and most importantly, its original nutrients. Something like freeze-dried peaches, for example, will still be edible. They might not taste as good or be as nutritious, but they won’t suddenly become poisonous.
Dry canning is a good solution for nuts, brown rice, seeds, crackers, cereals, anything that may go rancid. It is an old method. Place a cookie sheet in the oven. Set on it canning jars filled with the food and lids on. The jars should not be touching each other. Turn on oven at 200 for one hour. then turn off and allow to cool before removing jars. Sometimes a jar won’t seal. Just redo it with the next batch or use first.
For cans and canning Lids to prevent rust dip them in Candle wax to protect them from rusting. The wax will provided a good protective coating. For nuts, Rice Crackers etc I vacuum pack in Mason Jars.
Unfortunately, a key item that you have omitted is survival rations, such as those provided by Survival Industries (Mainstay) and others. In the case of Mainstay, the upper temperature tolerance is 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and provides a five year shelf life. And that’s not a typo.
Any prepper that overlooks survival rations is foolish.
I’ve written about these types of rations before but any prepper who stocks up on loads of these in lieu of more nutritious foods and with more variety is foolish. And, 5 years is not very long in the food storage world. I’d be interested to know if “tolerance” is the same as all the nutrients being preserved, the flavor remaining the same, etc. “Tolerance” isn’t a very specific word.
Hi, I’m an older woman who lives in a small condo in S. Ca where it often gets up to 85-105 from April to Oct. Often I or older members of my family need to have survival food in our cars. What can I leave in my car for a year that will still be edible and nutritious? I’m at a loss as to what I can use for a few weeks of survival food. Do you have any suggestions?
Hot cars are going to cause rapid deterioration of most every food. If the food contains oils, it will go rancid more quickly in the heat. How about putting together several “mini units” of food, keeping them in the car for, perhaps, a week or two and then rotating to another unit? Maybe a large shoebox size container with lower-fat nuts (dry roast or natural almonds), packages of crackers, high calorie emergency bars (http://amzn.to/2tQgg9P — these are fairly heat resistant), Extreme Sports Beans (http://amzn.to/2umxIo4), freeze-dried fruit, maybe some jerky. I’ve found that jerky becomes brittle and hard to chew if it’s left in the car for too long. Typical “survival food” meals in the mylar bags are prone to the effects of heat, the same as all other foods. It’s not an easy dilemma to solve. However, I recommend you give some thought as to whether or not you need to have this food in the car AT ALL TIMES. If not, have a bucket or two of foods similar to the ones I’ve mentioned, along with some of the survival meals, and then taking those with you only when it’s necessary. At trip’s end, bring them back in the house. Be sure to pack a small propane or butane powered stove, a metal container for heating up water, and then plenty of water.
I’d love to know how successful dehumidifiers are in AC units. Here in England, we don’t tend to have AC units in homes and at my own website we only ever review dehumidifiers because these are what come through to us as being the best ones. Is there a case of the dehumidifying functionality just a lesser feature to drive up the cost of a AC unit?
Before I knew better, I kept canned food outside in a storage shed in Alabama. Opened a can of corn in late summer, and it smelled & tasted like smoke! We threw out everything just to be safe. Lesson learned too late. Good advice here. Thanks!
Saving this article! Great info in the article and comments.
I am wondering what CAN be stored at higher temps? Things like canning jars, q tips, toilet paper, etc..
What about rubbing alcohol and peroxide? Lamp Oil?
Do you have a list of essentials we could store in a crawl space?
Thanks so much!
White rice. Just put them in mylar bags with oxygen absorbent inside plastic box to protect against insects and rodents. Temp won’t affect rice. No canned foods as temp fluctuation can cause leakages.
I need to store food in a shipping container in Africa. Temperatures rise to about 60°C (140°F). Any ideas as to what I can store? I was thinking about sugar, or maybe pasta? What do I use as containers? Will plastic damage the food? Any advice will be welcomed.
I would never recommend storing any food at those temperatures. Sugar might be the one exception, but I don’t know how the heat would affect the flavor over time. Is it possible to store other household items in this container, get them moved out of your home, and then use that freed up space to store food? To store the sugar, you can use glass containers with airtight lids (canning jars), mylar bags sealed with a flatiron, or food-safe plastic buckets with airtight lids.
I have the same problem in Yuma Arizona, USA. I have friends that live in the desert and they have no air conditioning, it regularly gets to 110° f. Inside a storage container it will get to 160° f which is literally hot enough to cook food …What they do is they rotate the food. They eat the oldest food first. Before it gets too old they give it away…
We lived in Phoenix for many years, so I know a lot about heat. If your indoor, cooled space is limited, here’s what I suggest. No need to store a massive amount of food. Focus on foods that are high calorie and nutrient dense. Store 30 days of those foods (or less if your cooled/AC space is too small). If you store food in the heat, it’s going to deteriorate in just about every way — losing nutrients, flavor, texture, etc. so there’s no point in wasting a lot of money on amassing food. Focus on high quality, satiating foods in quantities that you can store indoors.
Are my canned goods ok if kept in an 85-87 degree garage for just 3 days? I worry about botulism! It was getting 92ish outside and our garage was warming up, but I don’t think it had huge temp swings. We are in Texas. What would you say about packaged pepperonis? I was trying to give groceries time to de-germ from anything we might’ve brought home from the store before it occurred to me how flipping warm it was getting outside. It was literally just 3 days though.
I live in Florida I want to store canned food (Salmon, Chili, Ravioli, Soup) in my well insulated van next summer. but only need to store it for about a month before i replenish. My van has a giant solar panel on the roof that blocks the sun and provides power so i can run ventilation in the middle of the day. They will be in a sealed plastic container near the floor of the van. Just wondering if get to 95F for few days here in there if this will ruin the cans?
It won’t ruin the cans, but any excessive heat will impact the food itself. Heat can cause food to lose nutrients and change in color, flavor, and texture. Since your food will be stored in these conditions for a short time, the impact of the heat will be lessened. Do try to store your food in the coolest possible location, however.
Living in S. FL. My concern is losing electricity in a hurricane situation, we have been without power for weeks after a storm went through. Humidity is horrid after those storms too. Not sure what to do in that case. I also want to add a tip after reading the article, cardboard from boxes can be opened out and used in windows to block light and insulate far easier, you can cut to shape, and in most cases in wedges in so well I don’t need tape, just pop it in and pull it out when needed.
I know this is an old thread, but hey, I’m reading it. I grew up in Miami; I live in Florida,too. I have had to shift my focus as far as food storage because of temperature and humidity conditions in my home. With 4 window units running 24/7 there is no way we can keep Temps below 85. If you follow FIFO and your storage plan is made up of stuff that your family actually eats, you don’t really have to worry about the ‘damage’ done to your preps by the power outage. The hurricane is more so the event that you are prepping for. You don’t need to focus on the stored food ‘surviving’ the storm, but more so, during the outage, your preps are feeding you. Then if you are out of power for weeks, you have food. Then if you are out of work or stuck in FEMA housing for months, you have food. Once life goes back to normal, just intentionally lean on your preps. Try to use up the pre-hurricane foods at a faster rate. I would like to be preparing for a long-game, but a 1 year supply is my max, without taking major loses. BTW we have 10 in our household. I try to strengthen other food sources, foraging, fishing, hunting, farming to help me stay flexible and prepared.
Hi Lisa, love getting stuff from you. My ISP or my National Broadband have crippled my internet speeds, can’t even watch my families videos. I am not the only one who gets cut off or turned off for a few hours or 24 hours at any moment in time.
I can grab pdf’s or stuff on a printed page like above, but any courses I am tempting fate and an agro ISP or the Nat. Broadband.
For anyone who has a dehydrator and live in a humid climate, please use the unit in an area in the house rather than outdoors. The dehydrators is trying to dry foods while there is moisture in the air, and eventually the machine works too hard and dies.