These are the cardinal rules of food storage.

In general the threats to our food value over time in storage are:

• Nasty little microscopic life forms and near-life forms will start eating our food and populating on it.
• Extremest of temperature or other physical agents such as sunlight get to our food.
• Rather larger life forms will take our food from us and start eating it (and likely populating).
• Natural disaster ruins our stored foods.
• We allow our food’s storage terms or limits to be overcome before we ourselves eat it.
• We can’t get the kids to eat it no matter what we do.

The history and science, over time, address each of these concerns. But let’s start simple. Short of really obvious stuff
like don’t store your ham in a working outhouse.

The Four Factors of Long Term Food Storage.

More than any single thing, temperature but the real 4 things, the 4 threats are these:

• Temperature. This should always be under 65°F.
• Moisture (water, H2O)
• Exposure to light and air (O2 and CO2)
• Exposure to microbiotics.

The 4 rules of long term storage for food:

• Keep it cool.
• Keep it dry.
• Keep sunlight, CO2 and O2 away from it.
• Minimize exposures to microbiotics.