Many years ago (I was there) expiration dates were useful and only on products that would actually expire–mostly just milk, cheese, and meat.
Then, I think it was Budweiser came up with the “born on date” marketing campaign for beer. Since then, on anything that doesn’t actually expire, like beer, it’s been used to prompt people to throw away perfectly good food, so they’ll hopefully buy more “fresh” food.
It’s been going on for so many years, we now have at least two generations who have been duped into believing them.
Expiration dates have a lot of leeway.
Yeah this is me.
If it’s on or after the last day I need to leave it in the fridge for several weeks until I’m in the mood to acknowledge that it’s dead.
My partner does believe in use-by dates but she has very poor situational awareness and is just oblivious to the concept. Recently she tried drinking a flavoured milk that had been in the fridge for a few months.
Was it flavored when she put it in the fridge?
Joke’s on you - I’m not in a relationship.
I believe in expiration dates, my dogs do not.
Expiration dates are a myth
They’re not a myth; they’re a scam. They’re set by the brands, by determining when the food is the “freshest”. But that determination is made entirely by the brand, and they have a direct financial incentive to encourage food waste. Because if consumers throw more food away, they buy more food. So they set the expiration dates extremely short, so people will throw food away, well before it actually goes bad.
They’re also highly incentivized to make you eat it when it’s freshest so you have a good experience with their food and become a repeat customer.
But the point is that it’s not truly an expiration date. In most cases, the food is perfectly safe to eat after the date. It may taste stale, but it’s still safe. Many people treat expiration dates as a food safety thing, when it is not.
These are two different things, and it’s usually worded as such:
Expiration Date: we cannot guarantee that eating food after this date will not cause sickness. Eat at your won risk, and we are not responsible if you get sick.
Best By Date: basically means nothing. We think it tastes better before this date but there are no actual health implications after this date.
Fuck “Best By” dates. I’ll decide if it tastes good or not, and if I don’t like it, I’ll throw it out. As long as there are no actual health implications. You usually only find expiration dates on dairy meat, and sometimes bread.
It also very much depends on your country, food authority, and retailer. Some food authorities have stricter categories for very perishable foods where unless it has gone very bad, you can’t see it’s not suitable for consumption anymore, eg. meat and vegetable. And while the producer has an incentive to encourage waste, the retailer has the incentive to reduce it, as you typically can’t sell items to consumers that are no longer within date (Again, depending on your location). If an item is unreasonably often thrown out by the retailer, that leads to consequences in the deals being made between the retailer and the producer, which pushes the producer not to be too inaccurate either.
If they go to the expiration date while still on the shelf ig going to go back to them, the supermarket isn’t going to pay for that.
Most things taste off or stale anywhere near the expression date.
If you can afford it and it’s a wildly overproduced thing like milk, I certainly wouldn’t encourage you to force it down.
If it’s scarce, don’t do it again. Maybe force it down. Probably use it in something where the lessened/worsened taste becomes a non-issue.
My wife just threw out a ~12 hour old fried rice we doggy bagged last night that I was planning on lunching on because we “touched it with our spoons”. Sigh.
She does know that reheating leftovers is a thing, and that heat kills bacteria, right?
It was in the fridge for 11 of those 12 hours!
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.
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…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.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sugar content, I believe
That makes sense.
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.
There are different types of dates in the US. Few things have expiration dates, which means it can be dangerous (or, for medication, ineffective) after that date. Most things have “best before” dates, which means the company has tested the product that far from its production and found it still met the quality standard.
The problem is that the FDA requires that testing and that every product have such a date. People have mentioned salt, which is inert, having a date, and that’s probably the most ridiculous example, but there are lots of things that have super long shelf lives beyond the best buy dates. Honey, soy sauce, bottled water, and vinegar being examples that come to mind.
Old plastic bottled water can have chemicals from the plastic leached in to it that you wouldn’t want to ingest though.
Do they ship those bottles in climate controlled trucks? Are there regulations requiring that the plastic bottles never reach excess temps when stored/during commercial transport?
No clue. Not making any claims other than that there’s no known expiration for water that’s not subject to excess heat.
Like when people keep water in thier car and it goes crazy hot in the summer.
Right, and doing that can make it go above levels even before the best buy date. But bottled water that isn’t allowed to get really hot doesn’t have a known expiration.
True, but unless you know what conditions the bottles were in it’s not worth messing with one bottled 3 years ago.
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.
Oh they’re real. They’re just arbitrary most of the time.
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.
My wife is servsafe certified and I have a terrible sense of smell. Guess which one I am?
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.
