Tinned tomatoes 3.5 years past date - safe or not?

[cathyj77]

I've just made some soup and as I was throwing the tin of tomatoes away, I noticed its expiry date was Dec 2020. Do I need to bin the soup?

Tomatoes had been in the pantry since then (so cool dry place) but info on the internet is mixed - some says canned goods basically fine indefinitely, elsewhere it says acidic foods like tomatoes may produce rare toxin after 12-18 months.

What would you do? Views of sciencey people particularly welcome!

(they taste fine, from the tiny bit I ate from the spoon if that makes any difference!)

Taste it and see?

I'd probably risk it.

Oh, cross post!

If it tastes ok, I'd risk it. I have quite a strong stomach though and it takes alot to actually make me unwell.

I wouldn't. The acid in the tomato might have reacted with the metal in the tin

Tins are lacquered inside to resist acid. Canned food lasts for years if the can is undamaged. The food is sterilised during the canning process so nothing can grow.
BTW online references to "canning" are often from the USA, where they call canning what we call bottling in the UK. Bottling is much less safe than canning in tins, because it doesn't sterilise the food completely, plus it's possible for the container to not be completely airtight. This can lead to survival of pathogens like Clostridium botulinum, which does produce toxins. So articles about bottling produce at home does warn about that.

I can remember the time that tinned food came with no BBD so yes, I would happily think they were safe.

thanks everyone. I am going to freeze the soup and unless anyone else appears to say I may get botulism, will probably eat it later in the week!

If the tin was undamaged id imagine they were safe. Prob give it a boil though just for peace of mind. Agreed there may be some confusion from American sources, they refer to home preserving as canning.

If the tin was sound - no rust or bulges - IMO it’d be fine. We’ve eaten tinned stuff rather older than that!

I have known several old tins of fruit explode. The tin was undamaged before the explosion, but the contents clearly were not safe....

Several?! You must have amazingly bad luck....

no, I dont think it is particularly unusual. Not bad luck, just the natural course of things