Top 10: Foods That Last 20 Years or More (Buy Them Once, Then Forget About Them)

Why 20 years

Canned soup, crackers, cereal and the freezer full of meat all have one thing in common: they will not be there for you in a long emergency. Cans rust and lose quality after a few years, boxed food goes stale, and a freezer is only as good as the power line feeding it. If you want a pantry you can build once and then stop worrying about, you need food that keeps for decades.

The good news is that this kind of food exists, and most of it is cheap. Food scientists at Brigham Young University have spent years opening cans of wheat, rice, beans, oats, cornmeal and milk powder that sat on shelves for decades, then cooking them and handing them to taste panels. Their finding, over and over, is that dry food packed with almost no oxygen and kept at room temperature or cooler stays safe and usable for 20, 25, even 30-plus years. It loses some flavor and some vitamins, but it still keeps people alive and fed.

We ranked our ten picks by two things: how long they keep, and how much they do for you when there is nothing else. Every pick is real food, and each one is its own food group, so nothing shows up twice.

#10 Dehydrated foods

Crisp, bone-dry dehydrated food, sealed in cans or Mylar, keeps for decades. BYU's guide gives dried apple slices about 30 years, dried onions 30 or more and potato flakes about 20, and the school's earlier taste tests found potato flakes still fine at close to 30. That covers a lot of ground: fruit to break up a diet of grain and beans, mashed potatoes ready with nothing but hot water, and onions to make everything taste better. Store-bought dehydrated fruit like banana chips and peach slices, packed for long-term storage, belongs here too.

Two warnings. Not everything dehydrated goes the distance: BYU puts dried carrots at only about 10 years. And soft, chewy dried fruit, such as raisins, dates, prunes and apricots, does not count at all. It holds too much moisture, it usually lasts a year or two, and it should not be sealed up with oxygen absorbers. The same goes for most fruit dried at home, which is hard to get dry enough. If it bends, rotate it. If it snaps, store it.

#9 White sugar

Kept dry and sealed, white sugar keeps 30 years and more. It does not spoil, because nothing can grow in it. Sugar is pure energy, and a storage diet is often short on calories, especially for people doing hard physical work. It also lets you bake, and if you garden, it is what you need to put up jam and can fruit for the winter. It ranks low only because it is empty calories, with no protein or vitamins to speak of.

#8 Powdered milk

Nonfat dry milk is the one dairy food you can put away for the long haul. In BYU's taste tests, people still found it acceptable at about 20 years. The school's newer guide plays it safer and lists about 15 years in pouches, so this is the one pick on our list you should plan to rotate. It earns its spot anyway. Milk powder brings protein and calcium that grain and beans lack, it goes into bread, pancakes and hot cereal, and for families with kids it is hard to replace.

#7 Cornmeal

Here is one most people would never guess. BYU tested canned cornmeal that had been stored for up to 33 years in a low-oxygen can. A taste panel found no real drop in aroma, texture or flavor over all that time, in both cornbread and hot cereal made from it. The only change was the color, which faded. Cornmeal gives you cornbread, mush, tortillas and a grain that is not wheat, which matters if someone in the house cannot eat wheat or if you just need a change. Store plain cornmeal sealed in cans. Stone-ground whole-grain cornmeal keeps more of the oily germ and will not last as long.

#6 Rolled oats

Rolled oats keep about 20 years sealed in cans by BYU's current guide, and the school's taste tests found them acceptable up to 30. They make the easiest hot breakfast there is, and because they are already rolled flat, they cook in minutes. When every bit of fuel counts, a food that cooks fast is worth a lot. Oats also stretch ground meat, thicken a stew and bake into bread. Quick oats and old-fashioned oats both store well.

#5 Honey

Honey keeps about as long as anything in your kitchen. It holds very little water, it is naturally acidic, and its sugars pull moisture out of any germ that lands in it, so nothing can grow. Sealed and kept dry, a jar of honey will keep for decades. It will crystallize and turn grainy over time, but that is not spoilage. Set the jar in warm water and it turns smooth again. Honey sweetens, it can stand in for sugar in baking, and it is quick energy when people are worn out. It ranks above sugar because it is a real food you can eat by the spoonful. One warning: never give honey to a baby under a year old.

#4 Dried beans and lentils

Pinto beans, black beans, split peas and lentils keep about 25 years sealed in cans by BYU's guide, and its taste tests found them acceptable up to 30. Beans are the protein of a storage pantry, and they fill you up like nothing else for the money. Together with rice or wheat, they make a complete protein, which is why rice and beans have fed working people around the world for centuries. Old beans get harder and take longer to cook, so soak them overnight with a pinch of baking soda in the water, about an eighth of a teaspoon per cup of beans, or use a pressure cooker, which cuts both the cooking time and the fuel.

#3 Freeze-dried foods

Anything freeze-dried belongs in this one pick: full meals, meat, chicken, eggs, vegetables, fruit, even butter and cheese. Freeze-drying pulls nearly all the water out, and without water almost nothing can spoil. Sealed in cans or pouches, it keeps 25 to 30 years and more. BYU's guide gives freeze-dried strawberries about 30 years, and one of the best-known makers, Mountain House, has backed its meals with a 30-year taste guarantee since 2016, as long as they are kept unopened and out of heat above about 75 degrees.

The strongest proof came in 2024, when a BYU study opened freeze-dried beef, stew, scrambled eggs, green beans, carrots, sweet corn and apples that were more than 50 years old. All of it was still safe to eat, and nearly every taster said they would eat it in an emergency. The catch is vitamins: some of them faded a lot over the years. Freeze-dried food gives you what the rest of this list cannot, real meat and real meals with nothing more than hot water. The other catch is price. A few months of freeze-dried food costs as much as years of wheat and rice, so use it for protein and for the hard days, not as your whole plan.

#2 White rice

White rice keeps 30 years and more when it is sealed with low oxygen, and BYU's tasters rated it very acceptable after 30-plus years. It is cheap, it is easy to cook, almost everyone likes it, and it goes with anything. Notice the word white. Brown rice still has its bran and germ, which are full of natural oils, and those oils go rancid in months, not decades. Brown rice is the healthier choice on a dinner plate, but it is the wrong choice for a storage shelf. Store white rice for the long haul and eat your brown rice now.

#1 Whole wheat kernels

Here is the one that surprises people. Our number one is wheat, but not flour. Flour, and whole-wheat flour most of all, goes stale and rancid within months once the kernel is ground open. The whole kernel, often sold as wheat berries, is a different story. With its shell intact and sealed in a can with low oxygen, it keeps 30 years and more. BYU baked bread from canned wheat stored for up to 32 years, and nearly all of the tasters said they would gladly eat it in an emergency. Most said they would eat it any day.

Wheat ranks first because nothing else on this list does as much. In BYU's own one-year storage plan for an adult, wheat is the biggest single item, at about 130 pounds a person. You can grind it into fresh flour for bread, tortillas and pancakes, crack it for hot cereal, boil the whole kernels like rice, or roll out your own noodles. It is also one of the cheapest calories you can buy. The catch is that you need a grain mill, and a hand-crank one is best, so you are not stuck if the power goes out. Buy the mill when you buy the wheat, and practice making bread with it before you ever need to.

Not food, but stock them anyway

Two things on your shelf are not food, but your food is not much good without them. Salt keeps forever if it stays dry. Your body needs it, it makes plain storage food worth eating, and it is how people kept meat for generations before refrigerators. Baking soda keeps 30 years and more, raises your bread, and softens old beans. Both are about as cheap as anything in the store. Buy plenty.

What will not last

Some things people stock with the best of intentions will not be there in 20 years. Cooking oil, butter and peanut butter last only about a year, so buy them in amounts you will use and rotate them. Brown rice, whole-wheat flour, nuts and seeds all carry oils that go rancid fast. Yeast keeps for years only in the freezer. Store-bought canned food is fine for a year or two of rotation, but it is not a 20-year plan.

How to store it so it actually lasts

Every number in this list depends on how you pack it. The long shelf lives come from food sealed in airtight, moisture-proof containers with almost no oxygen inside, such as #10 cans, or Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers set inside food-grade buckets. Keep it at room temperature or cooler, somewhere dark and dry. Do not keep it in the garage, the attic or a shed that bakes in summer, because heat cuts years off everything.

Do not throw old food out just because of a date. Open the can, cook it, and if it tastes fine, eat it. And watch for one hole in every storage diet: vitamin C. Grain, beans and rice have almost none, and going without it long enough leads to scurvy within a few months. Freeze-dried fruit helps, and a few bottles of vitamin C tablets are cheap insurance. BYU found the tablets keep most of their strength for more than 20 years.

And do not forget water. Food you cannot cook is not much help. Plan on about a gallon per person per day, and have a way to make more of it safe to drink.

What would you put on your list that we left off?