Can we eat it: shelf stable foods left in car

April 2, 2020 2:27 PM

To kill the coronavirus with time, I left groceries in the trunk of the car for about a week. The car has been kept outside only (not in the garage). It's ranged from the 40s to the high 60s in that time, but of course higher in the trunk.

The food I left in there was all sealed processed food: bags of tortillas chips, pouches of tuna, bags of dry dog food, bread. I figured it was a fine way to store food packages before putting them away together with clean stuff, & without using chemicals on it.
Now I'm wondering if food actually has to be kept in a moderate storage space, like medicine does. (We just ate the chips, oops.) Is this a bad plan?

posted by nantucket to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

I could picture the bread maybe getting moldy given the right conditions, just check for mold before you eat it, but everything else ought to be fine for sure.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:30 PM on April 2, 2020 [15 favorites]

You’re fine. It gets trucked from the factory to the store under similar conditions.
posted by corey flood at 2:45 PM on April 2, 2020 [12 favorites]

Given than lots of those foods get shipped in non refrigerated vehicles I think they're amenable to temperature swings. I concur that the bread could be iffy but the chips you ate likely had so much salt that they were nearly sterile
posted by Ferreous at 2:46 PM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

I wouldn't think twice about it if it's something that would normally be store-able for long periods in a pantry, so other than the bread I think you're fine (and the bread could be totally fine).
posted by DoubleLune at 2:55 PM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Depends on the bread, too. I was horrified to find a loaf of Wonderbread (the kind in the silver wrapper, don't know if it's still available) that purported to be "Fresh 'til the Last Slice!" was indeed, even though my husband had put it away out of view before he left for a trip 10 days prior. YMMV.
posted by kate4914 at 3:13 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Like everyone else, I would check the bread for mold, and if it's OK, I would refrigerate or freeze it (and probably toast it lightly for better texture before eating). Everything else is fine.
posted by brianogilvie at 3:42 PM on April 2, 2020

Except for bread, that stuff sits in warehouses with more extreme temps. The coronavirus lasts up to 3 days on plastic or metal, up to 1 day on paper/ cardboard. So over 3 days is overkill, as it were.
posted by theora55 at 5:14 PM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Not sure about the bread, but I think everything else should be fine. I don't have any form of air con in my house, so during summer (especially if there's a heatwave) my shelf stable foods could be exposed to similar temperatures to what it would have been in the car for multiple days.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 12:13 AM on April 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

We didn't have A/C until this year. It gets to 105+ here in the summer for weeks at a time. Our house would certainly get warmer than the trunk of your car at 60 ambient for basically two months in the summer. Our bags of tortillas chips, pouches of tuna, and bags of dry dog food were always fine. As were basically any other shelf stable foods.
posted by Mitheral at 8:16 AM on April 3, 2020 [2 favorites]