A lot of food doesn’t even have an expiration date. It’s more common on a lot of foods to have a sell by date, which is not the same thing as an expiration date, and some foods are even just labelled with a packaged date, which is hopefully always in the past. Otherwise you’ve got bigger problems than spoiled food. MREs are especially notorious for this.
That being said though, I’m still usually the one throwing food out. At some point you just have to admit you’re not going to eat it, and no one wants your dubious opened packages or half eaten leftovers. It’s just gonna have to go eventually.
Expiration dates are useful, but they are not usually a hard end point to a food’s safety or edibility.
One’s own nose is usually the best way to see if old food is edible. Doesn’t smell good enough to eat? Don’t eat it.
My sense of smell is pretty bad. I only keep milk in my fridge for coffee so it lasts a while, and once it’s past the date I smell it every day assuming it could have gone bad. Usually it hasn’t, but occasionally it has curdled into chunks, and apparently I can’t tell the difference with my nose - only once the pour feels “off” or the chunks make their way into my coffee can I have any better indicator.
I recognize that “best before” means exactly what it says
Me.
If it’s after the BB date it means you have to use your sense and senses to make the determination.
It’s not going to magically be super bad when it’s the BB date +1.
Expiration date believers are my sworn enemies.
When I was 14, I hated cheerios and had a whole pack bit noone in my family liked em.
Noticed it expired the same date as me and my brothers birthday and we excitedly waited and threw it out on our birthday.
Still regret it to this day.
Why do you regret that?
Food waste. Completely unnecessary
If it wasn’t going to get eaten, the waste happened when the item was bought, not when it was thrown out.
Never had cheerios before that. Loved honey. Didnt intend to waste it.
And later coulda given it away or smth
It’s pretty normal for kids to waste food, and it’s messed up to guilt trip them over it or really be concerned. It happens.
Kinda hard to give away opened food near its expiry date.
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What if neither of you believe in expiration dates but one of you think it turned and the other doesn’t?
I recognize that “best by” dates are mostly bullshit, but I’m also a firm believer in “why risk it?” Especially for food where you can’t tell if it’s gone bad, like canned goods. I don’t fuck around with botulism.
They are estimations. I do give them weight in the to eat or not to eat decision, but I also use my own senses.
There is no “expired”, only “improperly fermented”. Sure, it could be very bad, but then you should’ve paid attention to it in advance, respect the nutrient and all living things who brought it about.
Could you explain your suggestion that there’s a correlation between one’s subjective awareness of a food item’s nutritional content and it’s objective fitness for human consumption over time? These things seem entirely unrelated to me.
There is nothing subjective here, it’s knowledge of biochemistry and manufacturers use of good practices. Of cousre, this is impossible on large scale production, yet you could be sure that your local milk providers milk will just become something else upon curdling, and your local butchery vacuum sealed bags are as clean from pathogens as their line and are good far beyond expiration date, but will change. And that things were stored correctly and are not blooming with thermophiles inside. I do not mean nutritional content, I only address industrial labeling and its purpose. And things that could not possibly be regulated, and have to rely on community (in many forms, from “lets love each other” to “I will break your face if you burn me, pal”). Eating expired stuff is an act of trust, whether it is trust to chance and supernatural, or trust of community that builds cultural value, is a whole different question.
Then you can always inoculate food yourself before expiration, but then it counts as cooking I guess.
i’m the person that understands the conflict of interest between companies and the creation of their own expiration dates.
Are you sure you do? Expiration dates are a factor when buying food, longer shelf life usually boosts sales.
Source: worked for a time making machines specifically for enhancing the shelf life of a specific product.
In the US, expiration dates aren’t a thing. The date on the product is just the last date the company will guarantee it meets their quality standards.
With one exception. Baby food/formula. Those companies do not fuck around with the dates, because they got regulated.
In Japan they have two types of dates, which map to “Use by” and “Best before”, but they don’t use them interchangeably or some vague middle-of-the-road term like “expiry date”. One is operative, the other is a recommendation.
消費期限 (shouhi-kigen) literally means “consumption time limit” and 賞味期限 (shoumi-kigen) literally means “guarantee of taste time limit”.
Germany does that too.
Especially minced meat always is “use by” and you really should respect that. Someone I know went to the hospital for that.
Let me put it this way: They print expiration dates on SALT.
Now, it’s pretty convenient that stores here in Denmark sell products cheaper just before they “expire” because certain products actually get better with time like cheese.
Safe to say I’m the second type hehe…It’s about liability. Companies don’t want their salt returned to them after x years, especially not with some lame excuse. So they just define an expiration date y that’s far off enough to not drive customers away, but still minimizes the risk of complaints.
If a (big) customer successfully complains within this time span, they’ll simply decrease it.As someone who has gone through old stuff like that, imo it’s the packaging (a lot of which these days is coated in plastics that degrade over time) that the expiration date is for rather than the actual product. Eg the cardboard will break down or the cans will rust into the product.
I don’t know if it’s correct, but for the first type I once read that it might be because of the packaging and/or the interaction between product and packaging that might affect the product. And even if it would still be “never expires”, the company doesn’t want to pay to verify.
because certain products actually get better with time like cheese.
Under the right conditions. Sitting on grocery shelves is not one of those right conditions.
In rare cases white mold cheese will taste like blue mold cheese because of cross contamination, but that’s about the only defect I’ve experienced buying cheese close to their expiration dates. Oh, and camembert cheeses being a bit too runny and ammonia tasting, but as a sicko I kind of like that.
I used to work at a cheese and wine joint, and there are some foul abominations out there. You’re a stinky cheese fella aren’t you?
You’re a stinky cheese fella aren’t you?
Well, I am dairy man, so I’ve seen, smelled and tasted a lot of funky stuff.
I’ve been coming around to blue cheese but that’s about as deep as I get.
Idk if you got a mod pizza nearby but they’ve got kind of an odd BBQ chicken pizza that has Gorgonzola on it, and that thing is incredible. I never do chicken on pizza but that’s a quality exception.
These do not sound like mutually exclusive perspectives. Why not both?
Expiration dates are literally made up, very infrequently will any actual testing be done to see the exact time it takes for a food to decay enough to be either unenjoyable, unpalatable or inedible.
They’re usually 1 week from mfgr for unpreserved foods, 2 weeks to a month for soft foods like American sandwich bread, 3 months to a year for dry goods (depending on what it is) and up to several years for canned goods.
My salt has an expiration date. Salt is a rock, it is millions of years old (not sea salt, mined salt). It does not expire.
I don’t know where you got your information, and I can’t speak for other food stuffs, but I used to work in a milk bottling facility. I did quality assurance. Part of my job was to take gallons of milk (many of them) and put them in refrigeration until two days after the expiration date, and then taste them. While most of them tasted pretty much fine, about 30% were sour, coagulated, or some other sign of type of spoiled.
Expiration dates are real, but they are an estimation of when the product will go bad. Use your own judgement. Smells/tastes bad/weird, or is oddly oily and stuff, probably don’t consume that. Seems completely fine but past the expiration date, you will probably be completely fine.
Maybe you can answer this. How can whipping cream have such a long shelf life? It’s like a month. Milk is usually a week or two.
Sugar content, I believe
That makes sense.
Yes I can. Take a look at the carton next time, I almost guarantee it says “ultra pasteurized” which is a more intense process that kills even more microbes than regular pasteurization. A few make it through the regular process, which is not a health risk, but eventually those couple bacteria will multiply and cause the milk to go bad. The literally one or two left after ultra take much longer to grow their population. “Then why doesn’t all milk go through the ultra pasteurization process??” Well, the low water and high fat content of cream means it can take more heat and pressure without causing a “cooked” or “stale” taste like can happen with milk, as well as higher associated cost with the process.
Yeah, most experiation dates are made up. Some are real, like milk usually. I’ll still drink milk after the date, but I always make sure to smell it if I’m approaching or past that date.
99% of foods you can smell or see if they’ve gone bad before you taste it. Always use your senses, not some date printed on it by a manufacturer that wants to sell more product. We’re literally evolved to identify food that’s gone bad.
I don’t mean any offense but is hiring someone to drink expired milk the best way of testing it? Can’t they like measure bacteria or chemical composition or something?
Hahaha no, that’s a fair train of thought. Let me clarify firstly that we didn’t have to actually drink it. It was more of a sip and spit like wine tasting. As for the second part, those processes take materials and money that a human with a free 30 min doesn’t.
Except diary. Milk has an expiration date that (for me at least) is accurate to within 12 hours or so, when refrigerated.
Protip: if this plagues you, grab the Lactaid (lactose-free) stuff. It lasts longer. Soy milk lasts even longer than that, but I get that’s not for everyone.
Best By dates are not expiration dates, expiration dates are estimates.
That said, my wife has no concept of expiration until something is obviously covered in mold, and says some wild stuff. “Oh that’s got lemon juice in it, it doesn’t expire” like babe, lemon juice isn’t some timeless magic spell.
