Five Enemies of Food Storage and How to Defeat Them

Superman has his arch enemy – Lex Luther.  The kingdom of Gondor has a hated enemy – Sauron.  The Avengers were almost defeated by their nemesis – Thanos.  There are even enemies of food storage.  Today, we’ll go through these five enemies of food storage and how to defeat them.

Did you know that mice have a favorite food?  Yes, they actually do!  And do you know how I know this?  During the move between houses several years ago, we spent a lot of time transferring our food storage room from one house to another house.  We went down to our basement at our old house and started pulling items off the shelves to box them up or just to move them to the new house.  In the process of doing so, I pulled a small plastic tote – (probably a 2 – 3-gallon tote off of the top shelf of one of our shelving units.  Fortunately, I wasn’t standing under it when I dumped what seemed like an avalanche of mouse droppings onto the floor.

Yes, the critter had either eaten through the plastic or mangled the plastic by squeezing through it.  Then he gnawed through not one but TWO bags of Trim Healthy Mama Peanut Flour!  That is obviously their favorite food judging by how much of it they destroyed.  There were some other miscellaneous soup mix bags that he seemed to delight in as well.  Enemies of food storage are a real thing.  They are vile, nasty, and elating in their triumph – well maybe not all those things, but they are a real pain in the backside.  The problem comes when there is a real need for the food that you have stored.  Then it changes from becoming a pain to causing problems because you’ve lost some of the food you were counting on.

Enemy of Food Storage #1 – Critters, creatures, bugs, and other pernicious vermin

So I explained my exciting mouse problem from when we moved, but let me tell you about another kind of creature that has ruined food of ours.  When we lived in Ferguson, I had purchased about 250 pounds of white wheat in 25-pound bags from our local LDS Food Storage Cannery.

I homeschooled four kids at the time, so  I was kinda busy.  The ten bags of wheat sat under the stairs for what seemed to be overnight, but it was really about a month.  Every now and again, I started noticing a moth here or there.  One moth in itself isn’t a big deal, but it didn’t stop with just one.  The moth problem started escalating.  Two, five, ten, and then I realized we had a problem somewhere.

We had been infested once before by these critters in store-bought brownie mixes, so I headed up to our storage room to check on various boxed items, but they were clean.  Not too long after I realized that the moths had planted themselves in our bags of wheat.  We lost ALL TEN of them to one of the enemies of our food storage – insects.

How to defeat the vermin

Well, the mice like peanut butter, so that’s what we did.  When we moved to our next house, I decided that I wasn’t waiting until mice got my food before we put out traps.  These are the traps that I purchased, and they work wonderfully!  We’ve caught three mice in the last six months.  As crazy as it sounds, if no one is allergic, I’d also suggest getting a cat – they are effective mice killers.

Insects are another of the enemies of food storage.  If you put your wheat, rice, or other unsealed, but bulk purchased food in the freezer for 3 days before you let it sit out, you’ll kill any larvae that might be hiding out.  I would still suggest packaging your food up as quickly as possible though.

Enemy of Food Storage #2 – Oxygen 

While you need oxygen to survive, that same oxygen is an enemy of your food storage.  Have you ever heard of the term oxidation?  It’s one of those ‘sciency’ terms that you learned in chemistry.  If you take a nail and get it wet and let it sit out in the air, what happens?  It rusts.  Rust is a form of oxidation.  If you let your food sit out exposed to the moisture and oxygen in the air, it will oxidize.  Because it’s not iron, it won’t rust per se, but it will oxidize and ruin your food.

How to prevent oxidation

When you repackage food that you buy in bulk for long-term storage, one of the things you must do is use oxygen absorbers.  These will remove any oxygen from the packaging making sure that your food remains perfectly preserved.

Enemy of Food Storage #3 – Temperature

Consistent cool temperatures are not a problem for food storage.   The hotter the place that you keep your food storage (even if it’s a consistent temperature) the shorter the time that the food will remain edible.

There is a type of prepackaged preparedness food called an MRE where the effects of temperature have been studied.  MRE’s or Meals Ready to Eat are packaged in Mylar like we repackage our bulk food, so the effects should be similar.

If these MRE’s are stored at a steady fifty degrees, they will keep for five years.  If the same MRE’s are stored at sixty degrees, they are good for up to four years.  At eighty degrees, they are good for three years.  If you stored them at a consistent 120 degrees though (like in an attic), they would only be good for one month.

Temperature matters.  Hot temperatures are one of the enemies of food storage.  Make sure you keep your food at consistent cooler temps.

Enemy of Food Storage #4 – Moisture

When I talked about oxidation, I mentioned that you need two things for it to occur – oxygen and moisture.  We’ve already said that oxygen is one of the enemies of food storage.  Moisture is the next of our enemies of food storage.  The thing about moisture though, is that temperature changes can create moisture.

Imagine it’s the middle of summer, and I’m sitting on my back porch in a glider rocker with a bottle of ice-cold soda in my hand.  After setting the bottle down for a moment, when I pick it up, I realize it’s covered in water – why?  It’s covered in condensation.  Condensation is caused when the inside of a container is at a different temperature than the outside of a container.  It’s the same reason that you put defrost on in your car. The inside of the car is warmer during the winter than the air outside of your car, so you pump warm air at the windshield to heat it up so there is no condensation and you can see.  Kinda important!

The same thing happens with food storage.  When you have a metallic (Mylar) bag and the contents of the bag are one temperature, but the surrounding air is another temperature, it will cause condensation on the inside of the bag.  This condensation can cause your food to ferment or mold making it unusable.

How to prevent moisture from ruining your food –

Make sure that you store your food in an area that it kept the same temperature year-round.  Do NOT put your food in the garage unless it is heated and cooled and kept a consistent temperature all year long.  This enemy of food storage is pretty easy to conquer!

How to take care of the temperature

The best place to store your food is in the basement if you have one.  It stays a fairly consistent temperature because it’s underground.  It also stays fairly consistently cool.  Both of those are a plus for keeping your food storage edible for as long as possible.

Enemy of Food Storage #5 – Time

While some foods last longer than others, time will degrade all foods eventually.  The nutritional value of foods and edibility of foods will decrease the longer time goes on.  Some foods will stay perfectly edible for a long time if stored properly, but that’s not all foods.  In a post I wrote about the differences between powdered milk that contains fat and non-fat powdered milk, I mentioned how the fat in the milk causes the powdered milk that contains fat to go rancid much more quickly than powdered milk without milk-fat.

How to keep up with time –

Rotate your food storage.  Whatever comes into your house first should be eaten first.  I do this in one of two ways.  When we moved in, we recently purchased two First In First Out shelving units or FIFOs.  This rotates your food for you automatically.  You put a can in the top of a section, it rolls to the back and drops down to fall right behind the last can you put in.  It’s ingenious and so helpful in rotating your food!

But let’s say that you don’t have an extra $300 laying around to purchase one of these.  Then the best way to handle it is to buy your food storage by the flat.  I stack my flats in order of newest on the bottom and the oldest on the top.    I don’t usually purchase one flat of a given item each month, so this is just an example of how it might work.

So the order would go like this.

Top Flat – Purchased October 2022

Second flat – Purchased February 2023

Third flat – Purchased March 2023

Fourth flat – Purchased July  2023

Fifth flat – Purchased October 2023 etc.

So to make this work, you want to make sure that you label the top of each of your cans with the date that you purchased.  It will help make sure that you’ve got your flats in the right order.  So to make sure that your food doesn’t succomb to another of the enemies of food storage, make sure you’re rotating your food.

So What About You?

Which of the enemies of food storage have you fallen victim to? What creative ways have you come up with for battling these enemies!  I’d love to hear.  Share your stories with us in the comments so that we can all be better prepared.

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