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.
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.
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.