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This man ate ‘expired’ food for a year. Here’s why expiration dates are practically meaningless.
Washington Post ^ | June 17, 2019 | Daron Taylor

Posted on 06/18/2019 3:55:13 PM PDT by EdnaMode

Last year, Mom’s Organic Market founder and chief executive Scott Nash did something many of us are afraid to do: He ate a cup of yogurt months after its expiration date. Then tortillas a year past their expiration date. “I mean, I ate heavy cream I think 10 weeks past date,” Nash said, “and then meat sometimes a good month past its date. It didn’t smell bad. Rinse it off, good to go.” It was all part of his year-long experiment to test the limits of food that had passed its expiration date. In the video above, we interviewed Nash about his experiment and examined where expiration dates come from and what they really mean.

It turns out that the dates on our food labels do not have much to do with food safety. In many cases, expiration dates do not indicate when the food stops being safe to eat — rather, they tell you when the manufacturer thinks that product will stop looking and tasting its best. Some foods, such as deli meats, unpasteurized milk and cheese, and prepared foods such as potato salad that you do not reheat, probably should be tossed after their use-by dates for safety reasons.

Tossing out a perfectly edible cup of yogurt every once in a while does not seem that bad. But it adds up. According to a survey by the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and the National Consumers League, 84 percent of consumers at least occasionally throw out food because it is close to or past its package date, and over one third (37 percent) say they always or usually do so.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Food; Society
KEYWORDS: expirationdate; expirationdates; expiredfood; food; mom; momsorganicmarket; nash; scottnash
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Well if that's the case, I guess it's safe to eat that pasta sauce from 1987.....
1 posted on 06/18/2019 3:55:13 PM PDT by EdnaMode
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To: EdnaMode

Heck, we used to eat C-rations well over 20 years old.


2 posted on 06/18/2019 3:58:33 PM PDT by doorgunner69
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To: EdnaMode

Is it … clam?


3 posted on 06/18/2019 4:03:17 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Trump 2020 - Re-Elect the M*****F***er!)
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To: doorgunner69

Yup. Was eating them in the 80’s.


4 posted on 06/18/2019 4:03:24 PM PDT by TomServo
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To: EdnaMode
year-long experiment to test the limits of food that had passed its expiration date.

Definitely NOT on my bucket list...

5 posted on 06/18/2019 4:05:01 PM PDT by rhinohunter (Dear Mr. Trump: I'm still not tired of winning)
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To: doorgunner69

“Heck, we used to eat C-rations well over 20 years old.”

In 1968 we had Turkey canned in the 40’s. USN, Nom, Nom.


6 posted on 06/18/2019 4:05:06 PM PDT by dljordan
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To: EdnaMode

Sure. Lemme drink that 2 year old milk that looks like concrete by now...


7 posted on 06/18/2019 4:05:36 PM PDT by max americana (Fired libtards from our company & did so happily at every election since 2008. I hope all libs die.)
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To: EdnaMode

I spent 33 years in the grocery industry at every level on the leader chain.
The ONLY mandated ‘use by’ dates were on the baby formula.
That’s it, everything else is marketing.
Milk: crap shoot...
Cheese: it only get better with age...
Bag salads: Is it rotten?
Your nose knows much better than the packaging manager....


8 posted on 06/18/2019 4:06:17 PM PDT by glasseye ("24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not." ~ H. L. Mencken)
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To: EdnaMode
Much depends on the exact comestible and the conditions under which it's stored. Dried rice, beans, and pasta can last decades if sealed tightly against pests and stored in cool, dry conditions away from temperature fluctuations and direct sunlight. Oxygen absorbers and dissicants help a lot. For that matter, I've drunk ultra-pasteurized milk from Dollar Tree that had passed its "best-by" date by two years. It was fine.

Gossner Foods Premium 2% Milk, 1 Quart Boxes (Dollar Tree)

9 posted on 06/18/2019 4:06:24 PM PDT by Sarcasm Factory
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To: EdnaMode

I sometimes purchase close dated and even expired food.

They are probably safe if not too far beyond expiration. I actually like steaks better if they are just past it.

Other food such as candy and potato chips lose their flavor or taste stale.

Fish? Forget it.


10 posted on 06/18/2019 4:06:46 PM PDT by yarddog
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To: EdnaMode

Expired gas-station sushi is right out.


11 posted on 06/18/2019 4:09:09 PM PDT by hanamizu
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To: EdnaMode

So, when someone gets violently ill from eating expired food, can they sue the Washington Post for miseducating them?


12 posted on 06/18/2019 4:10:39 PM PDT by P-Marlowe (Freep mail me if you want to be on my Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitar Ping List)
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To: EdnaMode

My kids are still mad because I would scrape the blue mold off of a block of cheese and grate it. They are still breathing 40 years later!


13 posted on 06/18/2019 4:13:01 PM PDT by grame (May you know more of the love of God Almighty this day!)
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To: doorgunner69

Roger that. My brother Ken said while on Okinawa in 1944 he checked the date on a C-Ration he was eating. Omaha, Nebraska 1929! It’s a continuous struggle to keep my bride from heaving canned goods and stuff the day after the arbitrary Use By Date.....which is another “gift” from the grifters in DC.


14 posted on 06/18/2019 4:14:04 PM PDT by Tucker39 ("It ishttps://y impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." George Washington)
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To: grame

Many years ago on a very late business day, I ate 15 year old oatmeal that was hiding way back in the cupboard late in the evening. I am still breathing. It did have an odd texture.


15 posted on 06/18/2019 4:16:06 PM PDT by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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To: EdnaMode

https://outline.com/wduSeD


16 posted on 06/18/2019 4:17:24 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Capitalism produces EVERYTHING Socialists/Communists/Democratic-Socialists wish to "redistribute.")
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To: EdnaMode

Hey! Who put the cottage cheese in the milk carton?


17 posted on 06/18/2019 4:17:47 PM PDT by archaicoldschool (.)
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To: grame
My kids are still mad because I would scrape the blue mold off of a block of cheese and grate it. They are still breathing 40 years later!

It would shock the average person to see cheese aging!

18 posted on 06/18/2019 4:18:08 PM PDT by ExSES (the "bottom-line")
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To: EdnaMode
Depends on how it's processed/packaged. Foods cooked (effectively sterilized) in steel cans will last through the next ice age, similarly with irradiated food. Peanut butter however has a distinct shelf life and will go rancid undisturbed a few years past the ‘expiration date’.
19 posted on 06/18/2019 4:18:19 PM PDT by SpaceBar
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To: glasseye

“Bag salads: Is it rotten?”

Been following the news lately? Bad Bag Salad nowadays is not about “rotten”, it’s about Salmonella and E-coli. How do you judge that through the window on the bag?


20 posted on 06/18/2019 4:18:19 PM PDT by NYAmerican
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