When All Hell Breaks Loose (50 page)

Older canned food—provided it's not bulging or leaky, thus indicating toxicity—can be rotated into a fresher food diet to help extend the fresh food. Think of it as filler that's much better than the Haitian filler of dough balls that are composed of water, butter, salt, and dirt. One time, I was given a stored five-gallon bucket of brown rice. Upon opening it, I discovered it was horribly rancid. I decided to experiment with this spoiled food and I ate the rice as a normal part of my diet every day until it was gone. Other than having a slightly sour taste in my mouth and fierce flatulence (I was single at the time), I had no problems and went about my extremely active lifestyle as usual. At the time of this experiment, brown rice comprised half of my daily diet. Another time, I failed to rotate a large amount of canned tuna fish and found that many of the cans had slightly swelled up. They were out of date by two or three years. Being stubbornly cheap and wanting to know what I could get away with, I saved the cans that had the least amount of swelling and ate their contents, one per day for a period of a few weeks. After I finished each can, I noticed that I felt a bit "off" for half an hour, and then I was fine. I contribute this "off" feeling to my body dealing with the mild amount of toxins that were produced from the old tuna fish trapped inside the can.

I don't like wasting resources, and this includes food. I routinely eat rancid tortilla chips and pull, peel, or push mold off bagels, vegetables, cheese, and other food items. For many years I "dumpster dived" to retrieve a bounty of wasted food and have eaten in alleys where generous restaurants and health food stores left their dregs out for the homeless to feast. I eat the majority of trapped mice and rats at my homestead, not wanting to waste their value and wanting to ever know more and keep in practice about how I would react to extreme foods in times of need. On some of my field courses once-finicky students gleefully eat bugs, rodents, weird plants, flowers, crayfish, frogs, snakes, and anything else we can find. The "five-second rule" for dropped food has never applied in the wilderness.

Sometimes while pushing the envelope in my experimentation with food, I've broken through the paper. I once ate a garden squash that was far too old on the inside, but looked fine on the outside. Another time I cooked and ate beans that I had left for several months in the garden after they had cured. In both instances I was deep in the wilderness, miles away from civilization, and in both cases I wound up power puking and with a bad case of the runs. The extremely painful stomach and hamstring cramps ripped through my muscles, jerking and bending my body like a reed in the wind. The cramps made the physics of trying to go to the bathroom in a normal position awkward to say the least. In both cases the food was "cooked."

After those learning curves, I did some research into how heat affects the pathogens that cause food poisoning. I used to think that I could boil virtually anything, including older roadkill, and that the heat would destroy all of the bad bugs that would present a problem. What I learned in the four-inch-thick medical manual that a physician friend lent me was distressing. Heat does destroy the actual critter, some of which are very reluctant to die. What the heat does NOT destroy, however, is the fecal matter created by the critter. Laboratory studies have been conducted with pressure cookers cooking food for long periods of time, and the food still posed a problem due to the long-dead organism's poop. Some varieties of molds can produce toxic substances called
mycotoxins
which are also unaffected by heat, and those are most likely the culprits that knocked me for a loop in the infamous squash incident. Keep this in mind if you're forced to get creative with really nasty vittles.

I realize pulling a stunt such as eating questionable cans of tuna fish is stupid and potentially deadly, as certain organisms such as botulism and others can kill quickly. What I also realize is many so-called food storage gurus have never had the nerve to experiment in this way. Thus there is very little data about what happens to people when they consume spoiled food. There are too many variables in human physiology and "food physiology" for an experiment such as this to be accurate anyway. Anytime you deal with food that has expired, you risk becoming a victim to food poisoning or at the very least severely reduced nutrition. As my experiments prove, however, there is a gray area when eating some older foods. Use extreme caution when dealing with infants, small children, and the elderly or you could kill a loved one.

Being a survival skills instructor by trade, I'm well versed with how human nature reacts under extreme stress. I decided to include my personal stories above to give you as much information as possible about consuming marginal foods. In summary, I know what you will do if driven by extreme hunger. . .you will open the questionable can.

The Big Four: Whole Wheat, Powdered Milk, Honey, and Salt