Expiration date question: "Good thing I read the labels and dates before I opened or ate anything. I avoided potential food poisoning and/or a trip to urgent care by paying attention."
What do you think the percentage is of Americans who throws out good food (even junk food) based on the expiration date? I mean - they do so not because the food might be stale but because they believe it suddenly became possibly toxic to eat.
What's the percentage for non-food stuff like soap? The other day I noticed my liquid hand soap has an expiration date for whatever reason. I better hurry up - I only have two years left of it being safe.
I started thinking about it after I read this...
"Good thing I read the labels and dates before I opened or ate anything. I avoided potential food poisoning and/or a trip to urgent care by paying attention."
It's from an Amazon review. After they checked the label - they learned the package was delivered with an expiration date two weeks past. They are talking about a Ruffles potato chip variety pack.
A lot of this stuff isn't becoming "unsafe" per-say but "inert". Chemically processed components have a shelf life that deteriorate over time. So a liquid soap can congeal or lose its potency or develop a weird smell over time. Gasoline evaporates, leaving behind a gum that can clog engine parts. OTC pharmaceuticals like aspirin lose potency of their active ingredients and become what amounts to a salt pill.
A lot of these dates are simply there for the sake of liability. If you use a ten-year-old hand cream and it gives you eczema as a result, the manufacturer isn't liable. But this stuff doesn't magically become lethal the day after the "use by" date.
one time I moved into an old office that hadn't been used in years, and the former occupant had left all manner of stuff in there. took me weeks to go through it and toss/keep material.
one late morning I find a still wrapped milk chocolate candy bar that had expired literally 15+ years earlier.
I opened it, sniffed it and looked it over. seemed ok, so I ate it. it was sweet but chalky. 2/5, would not eat again. nothing bad happened though.
What do you think the percentage is of Americans who throws out good food (even junk food) based on the expiration date? I mean - they do so not because the food might be stale but because they believe it suddenly became possibly toxic to eat.
As someone who works in a grocery store, the answer is too damn many. "Best by", "use by" "sell by" dates are all meaningless, and entirely vibes based.
Sell by, specifically, is only relevant to the employee stocking the shelves. But people think that the deli meat with a sell by date of tomorrow will kill them if they eat it in two days.
No honey, that was sliced today. It'll be fine in your fridge for like, a week, as long as you take proper storage precautions.
But I'm also filing for a refund, because I paid for in-date chips
I wonder how often large packages (or containers) at Amazon are a bit of a scam. I learned that the Amazon store brand huge size of peanut oil is most likely second rate even though it has a 4.5 star rating. I decided to spend 7 bucks more and buy the size of a local store brand. It has "pure" on the label and I assume that's... honest and real. I was going to type "kosher" as is my habit but then I realized - right now I don't want to use a word that Israelis use. I don't want to slime myself.
With how much of Amazon's business model is based on laundering counterfeit products, I bet the answer is "very often"
The blame will always be diverted toward China, but it's Amazon that has a dynamic, scalable system for sellers to launder fake/defective/used/expired products through official product listings
I was going to type "kosher" as is my habit but then I realized - right now I don't want to use a word that Israelis use. I don't want to slime myself.
Kosher is not a word that only Israelis use so no it is not "sliming yourself" to use a word that Jews across the world use daily.
and - in your case you're referencing the colloquial usage of the term outside of actual kashrut/dietary laws I'm assuming. Using "kosher" the way you would have is... an Americanism
I was going to type "kosher" as is my habit but then I realized - right now I don't want to use a word that Israelis use. I don't want to slime myself.
Kosher is not a word that only Israelis use so no it is not "sliming yourself" to use a word that Jews across the world use daily.
and - in your case you're referencing the colloquial usage of the term outside of actual kashrut/dietary laws I'm assuming. Using "kosher" the way you would have is... an Americanism
Eating like a vegan means paying way less attention to this kinda stuff, just sayin'. Something like vegan mayo or whatever just inherently stays fresh way longer.
Also just in general you can ignore expiration dates so long as you can smell or see when food goes bad. They don't mean much. Also there are "best by" dates that people think are expiration dates but actually they're just a marketing thing about the company's claim for how long the food will be up to their standards.
My nose and tongue evolved for millions of years to tell me what's safe to eat
You, a biological senor developed over millions of years to detect for the sulfurous compounds left by decomposing meat and vegetable matter: "I've got you covered, baby!"
It is generally safe to consume foods like chips a few days past their expiration date, as long as the bag remains sealed and undamaged. In the case of chips, the primary concern is staleness, but they're unlikely to pose any health risks if unopened for weeks/months.
Soap, on the other hand, is a different story. The denaturing of soap, in this context, refers to its chemical composition breaking down over time. Expired soap might lose its effectiveness, potentially making it less capable of cleaning or disinfecting. So, for hygiene purposes, it's best to use soap that's within its date. In coffee or tea, the denaturing process becomes more critical. Caffeine content decreases over time, which might impact the expected energy boost.
In a coincidence yesterday I learned a rare exception. I read a bit to learn about my omega-3 fish oil softgels. If fish oil is in that form or a capsule - it can go rancid and you can't tell.
I grew up poor and we ate stale or almost stale food quite a bit.
If it's food with a bunch of preservatives in it, I almost never check the dates. If it's fresh produce, just check if it's looking wilted or moldy. Even some wilt is fine imo. Sliced bread I go a few weeks past before I worry. Fresh bread is a few days after but I check for mold spots and if none, I still use it.
Back when I consumes dairy, I wold usually go by the date though. Day of or day after, maybe give it a smell? I will say, Great Value brand cheese, never trust the date even if it's before expiration. That shit will become moldy in a heartbeat as long as it's been opened.
I'm making a curry dish right now for lunch and my curry powder has been expired for 2 years. It's fine, it just isn't as strong as it used to be.
It's usually vibes based, had bagged spinach in the fridge that was like a week out of date that was still usable if you just picked some bad leaves out and washed the rest, but then there's the bag I found a few months ago that was in there for weeks after the expiration date and was just basically sludge. I used to be a lot more of a stickler about expiration dates, especially since my first job was stocking produce shelves and they hammered it into us that anything out of date was to be immediately trashed. The soy milk cartons usually say to use within a week, but they're fine and if I'm not sure I'll do a sniff test and a tiny taste test to make sure. Then there are times where you'd expect something to last basically forever like rice stored in a sealed container or sesame seeds in a sealed metal canister, but oh boy several years out finding them deep in the pantry they had a strong chemical taste and were 100% inedible, even if they were safe, they tasted disgusting. But chips a couple weeks out, whatever, sometimes places will sell this stuff slightly out of date for a discounted price on stuff that's pretty clear to be safe.
Will say that the food waste from grocers and stores will outpace the home to an ungodly degree.
Avoiding the topic at hand to drop some useless trivia: the wide adoption of expiration dates on food in the US can largely be traced to Al Capone. During the Depression he ran food shelves and soup kitchens to improve people's opinions of him. Once, milk his organization was giving out lead many to get sick. And so some enterprising fellow in the Capone organization thought that maybe they should date the milk to avoid it in the future. They weren't the first to use expiration dates, but they definitely helped spread their use
with food, I'm sure most ( 70+%) americans have at some point tossed something good because of the expiry. with non-food i bet most never see it or ignore it.
Its a good frame of reference for items that actually do go bad or for freshness generally, but its almost always too short. I used to have eggs last an almost disturbingly long time in the fridge. they may not be as good after that long but they never tasted or smelled bad or made me sick.
This is one of the ways that America is completely alien to me. I could cycle to the supermarket and get a variety 24-pack for the equivalent of $4.09. Buying through Amazon would cost far more.
There are a number of reasons. Personally I do the vast majority of my grocery shopping at a store which is vastly cheaper than local ones, but which is over 30 min drive away, in the opposite direction of where I work. Hence it makes sense to buy a couple weeks worth of groceries whenever I do get there. And I know many people who live in much more remote areas than I do. So that requires a lot of discipline and forward planning.
Yo, why the fuck does my distilled vinegar have an expiration date. It's ten years out, you would think i'd be able to use it all by then, but still, it's vinegar.
Interestingly, that's more likely to be the expiration day of the plastic bottle than the vinegar itself. Vinegar can become weaker over time, but certain compounds in the bottle will leach out into the contents over time.
Expiration dates, as I understand them, are a date which the producer has expended some effort to prove the product won't harm you within some day. If you're trying to prove the milk won't be bad a month from the cow tit, it's not so hard or expensive. If you're trying to prove the potato chips won't harm you a month from packaging, also not hard.
If you're trying to prove a salt shaker won't harm you five years after packaging, even if there is no biological or chemical process we know of that might have caused the salt to magically become toxic, a company can't put an expiration date thru haven't proved.
In cases like the potato chips, it probably costs less to eat the loss of all chip baggies that haven't sold in six months than it would have cost to prove they wouldn't cause harm for longer. Even if an understanding of the involved biological and chemical processes would imply the product would never actually expire, to print an expiration date there must be some degree of proof by experimentation showing the product causes no harm after that period of time.
PSA: I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm summarizing a reddit comment I read probably a decade ago.
For food I generally try to eat it at least before/a week out of expiration if it's something perishable like dairy or eggs, but if it seems fine I'll eat it even if it's out a few months/ up to a year. Beyond that it really seems like a crapshoot.
Canned food is good for at least months after the expiration date. But even if it isn't expired, I check if the can is dented before I buy it. And if I drop it from my pantry and dent it I'll use it right away.
I googled about dented cans because I wanted to know myself how dangerous the food could be. I found very vague answers. This super-short page at the USDA is typical. They hedged. Note the "should". At least they defined the difference between a small dent and deeply dented can.
If a can containing food has a small dent, but is otherwise in good shape, the food should be safe to eat. Discard deeply dented cans. A deep dent is one that you can lay your finger into. Deep dents often have sharp points. A sharp dent on either the top or side seam can damage the seam and allow bacteria to enter the can. Discard any can with a deep dent on any seam.
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Rant - the CDC was crap. They have stuff about home canning but ordinary cans. All I could find was this and it sounds like company-approved PR...
Commercially canned foods are much less likely to be a source of botulism because modern commercial canning processes kill C. botulinum spores.
I couldn't find a single mention about dented commercially canned foods. What a garbage agency it is!