While eating packaged food that’s expired for a day or two likely isn’t going to poison you, some people take their frugality too far. One older Wyoming man has a serious hoarding problem, along with the bizarre belief that expiration dates don’t matter. As a result, his pantry and freezer are packed with food that’s decades old. One of the worst offenders of this long-term storing obsession is a ham that he bought back in 1992. His son, who’s 4 years younger than this ancient ham, took to r/GrandmasPantry to share his parents’ unbelievable lifestyle.
“He refuses to throw it out and says, ‘It’s still good. Frozen meat doesnt go bad,’” explains the son. Apparently, the hoarding and expired food obsession aren’t the only abnormal quirks about the man’s dad. He’s an impulsive shopper and prefers plastic, disposable silverware over metal ones. “Plastic is good for the earth, because God wanted us to make it for him,” the dad once told his son. “He will keep and hoard food and doesn’t believe in expiration dates, all the while creating as much waste as physically possible. It makes absolutely no sense to me.”
It’s bad enough to have a parent suffering from mental illness who has such unhealthy habits, but the dad forces his poor wife into his hellish living conditions. “Every single thing is expired or rotten, and he feeds it to my mother as well. Sauces with mold in them that expired 3 years ago. Mayonnaise with streaks of color. Juice from 2015 with mold chunks floating in it,” the son says with disgust. Some might imagine that the dad just needs help and doesn’t mean to hurt anyone intentionally, but OP says otherwise.
“He’s the classic entitled boomer who thinks he knows better than everyone else,” the son explains, recalling his father was “so cruel and did such horrible things to him as a child.” Unfortunately, the mother refuses to leave the dad despite knowing how bad things are. The son claims he keeps in touch with her but refuses to speak to the abusive father.
All that being said, many Redditors in the post’s comments were in shock to imagine that the boomer dad’s ham existed before many of them were even born. Now, as to whether it’s safe to eat, one person has an answer: “It may not go bad but it definitely doesn’t stay good.”
