The 4 common foods not to buy in bulk

When you walk into the supermarket you always feel like buying and storing as much as possible, so that you don't have to travel to the store again. Add that up with some of the offers that you get in store when you buy in bulk, you don't feel like missing out on them.

But some food is better bought in small batches.

Nuts, Seeds and Spices

Both seeds and nuts contain a lot of oil, which comes from healthy unsaturated fats. The thing about fats, healthy or otherwise, is that they tend to go rancid rather quickly. Especially in a humid place like ours, it gets rancid even faster. You should, of course, store your seeds and nuts in an airtight glass jar and keep them in the refrigerator, but even then, they'll only keep for a couple of months. Ground spices will start to lose their potency after just six months while spices purchased in a whole form—cumin seeds for example—have about a year before they begin to get dull.

Coffee

Real coffee lovers will buy a small bag of roasted beans rather than a giant sack. Why? Because the freshest, best tasting cup of coffee is made from beans that have been roasted within two weeks of the cup being brought to your lips. If you value what your coffee tastes like, you're best off doing two things: choose a bag that contains as much coffee as you could get through in a week or two and avoid those giant barrels of coffee altogether as we simply don't know how long the its aroma and flavor have been sucked out of the beans and into the surrounding air.

Flour and Bread

Exposure to air makes bread get rock hard. That's why bakeries are willing to slash prices at the end of the day, and, of course, we can be persuaded into thinking that we're getting a good deal. Flour, be it all-purpose, whole wheat, or another variety, attracts water. That's why it's so effective at thickening soups, stews, and sauces. The thing is, the more time flour has to suck up moisture in the air, the closer it is to turning rancid. This is one area in which white, all-purpose flour is a better option than a whole-grain or nut flour. It can keep for up to a year, while the others only last a couple of months before they begin to turn nasty. As above, you can extend the life of flour by putting it in your fridge, but if you keep buying everything on this list in bulk, your icebox is going to get pretty crowded.

Baking powder and yeast

You could waste a lot of bread in the act of baking a lot of bread. That's because leavening agents like baking powder and yeast have a relatively short lifespan—making purchasing them in large quantities a, ahem, waste of dough. While baking soda can last for a long time, baking powder is prone to attracting moisture. That means that it can only stay fresh and active for about six months to a year when stored in a cool, dry place. Dried yeast may still do the trick after six months, but the fresh variety will lose its mojo months sooner. Store fresh yeast in the fridge and dry yeast in the freezer for maximum shelf life.