71-Year-Old Canned-Rice Looks Fresh as Ever

Canned food is meant to "live on" but not "for 71 years"..... But, then, here's an extraordinary case of a canned-rice having survived that many years and its contents still looks fresh and shiny.

In January, 1944, a year and a half before the World War II ended, a Hiroshima cannery canned and delivered a Navy ration "Rice with Red Beans" to the Imperial Japanese Navy in Yokosuka.

A crate of canned food was first found in 2011 when remodeling an old merchant's residence. It contained 17 cans seemingly of some value, so the crate was kept aside.

In Shodoshima Island, where the crate was found and kept, an art project MeiPAM is drawing attention as an antenna for art and cultural activities. A while back, the crate was opened and the contents were reexamined. It was then that the canned food was identified a Navy ration canned 71 years back and etc.

The news caught the attention of the leading cannery Toyo Seikan Group Holdings. The company runs its own Container Culture Museum in Shinagawa, Tokyo, where varieties of canned food are exhibited. Toyo Seikan requested and MeiPAM granted to have one of the canned Rice with Red Beans exhibited at the museum.

Toyo Seikan's PR experts admit that they had never heard of canned food that old and that a canned food so well kept and preserved is a rare specimen of Japan's high-level canning technology. The museum is preparing for a public exhibition of the can within the month of October.

A TV personality Yuto Kurokawa a.k.a. Dr, Can was asked by MeiPAM to open one or the cans and here's is word-by-word comment:
"We boiled the can first for 30 minutes and the opened it. My knees were laughing, opening a 71-old can, I tell you."
"Rice was shiny and looked fresh. The red beans looked fluffy, ready to eat.....".

The 71-year-old can brought ten memories to ten  people. Many still vividly remember those trying days during the last years of the war.

News Souce: Withnews