I can't help but think of that annoying song from my childhood...found a peanut. You know where someone finds a rotten peanut, but eats it anyways, gets a tummy ache, goes to doctor, dies anyways...c'mon, you know the one!

So, we replaced all the canned food at one of the BOL's this fall. These cans had been there for a full year, maybe some of them for two. They were coming up on their expiry dates and we wanted to rotate them. Not wanting to be wasteful, we went ahead and put all these cans at the front of our home rotation. Every one of these cans had been frozen and thawed at least one winter, some of them two.

Veggies and meat products (tuna, canned ham, etc.) were fine. No difference could be detected in appearance or taste. Condensed soups however were a different story. When the cans were opened, there was a skin that had formed on top. This was simply peeled off and discarded. The texture was really interesting to say the least. Tomato soup was particularly "different". Instead of coming out in a thick goopey sludge as expected, it came out in one gelatenous plop, kind of like canned cranberry sauce. While this made it more difficult to disolve in the water, it did end up looking like tomato soup in the end and although it had a bit of an off taste (nothing that would keep me from eating it) no ill effects were detected.

So, for anyone looking to stock some canned goods in an unheated BOL, I say go for it. There might be some interesting textures in some items, but for the most part, still good. Well, good enough to eat if you're hungry that is....