When it doubt throw it out 🤪
It may be safe to eat but is no longer tasty.
Same reason so much kale goes in the trash.
Does it pass the smell test?
Smell and texture beats out any “by” date.
In the old days, you knew when your food went bad. The downside of irradiation is nothing I ever expected from when I briefly worked for (in a long ago life) PIRG. It’s that when food goes bad, it still looks good. Beef doesn’t turn brown; it just eventually breaks down into glowingly red, sticky, rotting cow.
Ping!................
Government is not the solution. In fact, get the government away from anything dealing with food. Government is not a replacement for common sense or personal responsibility. Neither are businesses. It’s not rocket science eat safely, and for those that don’t then maybe a little Darwinism should be in store.
I have eaten 17 year-old MRE tuna. The taste suggests a lot of alum but it did not make me sick.
Guess I was hungry.
We put a maximum 10 year expiration date on medical products. If they are sitting in our warehouse that long it means hospitals don’t want to buy the product in the first place.
Resorbable products are a bit different. Because they are meant to go away in the body they degrade over three to five years.
Common sense can be followed here. Dry foods will probably last years. Moist or wet foods like milk and meats degrade quickly.
Here’s a new term for the day: Psychrophilic bacteria. They are present in fish and grow at cold temperatures...that means refrigerated fish don’t last long.
(I learned that in packaging engineering, hadn’t heard the term before then)
It's synical to believe that date labels are there to get you to throw it away and buy more. Probably closer to the truth though.
Yes...there can be some effects on flavor but actual spoilage? Not so much. Depends on the product and the packaging.
If it turns blue or green, throw it out.
If it smells bad, throw it out.
If it tastes bad, stop eating and discard the rest.
If it looks different than normal, throw it out.
It will cost you lot more if you get sick than cost of the food item, not to mention possible death or damage to liver.
Kirkland chicken and Kirkland beef are goid 10 years after exp. date. Tuna of several brands as well.
Opened an Augason Farms oat meal 10 into its 30 storage life and it was spoiled. Powdered eggs last forever. Even after opening.
Storage techniques are more critical than most consider.
Fresh foods- well, they rot, or stink and you know.
Dried food in non-sealed/ non-canned packages, they’ll grow weevils but still are edible if you don’t mind bug carcasses.
Freeze your excess noodles, flour and rice, for a few days, then bag in a zip lock, or put in sterilized canning jars in teh oven at 200F for two hours, cover with seals and rings immediately, let cool, last 4-ever. store is cool, dark dry place. Lasts indef... both methods kill weevil eggs that are present in all noodles and rice and flours.
All the above extended AND flavor maintained if you drop in Nitrogen emitters- they consume oxygen and exude nitrogen. Best way to keep dry goods fresher long.
Canned goods- same- store in cool dry dark place, lasts indef, but flavor can go south- called “stale”. Home-canned goods- I found a 7-year-old quart jar of green beans; was just as yummy as a recent batch.
Just remember- dark, cool, dry.
A South African tracker instructor and friend of mine explained that even rotting meat can be consumed safely- boiled in excess water for at least two hours, remove from the water, rinse with clean water, eat. DO NOT save any for later. Toxic once it cools and then rapidly decomposes. Worst survival course I “enjoyed”. A stinking, fly and maggot infested slimy long dead cow (I think) was “meat du jour”, for a seven-day S. African survival course; none of us got sick (but we all lost 15 lbs).
Reading the article and the comments here, there seems to be as many opinions as there are .....commenters (yeah, that is the word)
Which leads to my opinion.
The real answer to the food freshness, best by or throw out date is......SPAM.
My wife and I both enjoy Spam at least once a week and have come up with a couple of observations about it.
Spam was introduced to the world in 1937 by the Hormel Corporation
Spam has a shelf life of approximately, a still unknown date.
If the Biden Inflation continues, we may have to up our Spam consumption.
If others are in the same boat, Hormel may have start producing their second run of Spam. Then we may never find out it’s expiration date.
P.S. Shop the perimeter of your grocery store.
Stay out of the middle aisles where the FrankenFoods live...forever!
Eat as close to the DIRT as you can, Listeria be d@mned! ;)
Shop local. Love Your Farmers! :)
BTTT!!!!
So how nutritious is it one day before the "use by" date? 100%? 50%? 1%?
Mark
Food and medicine expirations dates stamped on product containers are based on lawyerly advice towards being conservative in the maximum.
The DOD, using its stores of medicines as well as the inventory of medicines in the VA system, analyzed thousands of batches of medicines, reviewing findings indicating the level of efficacy of the pills, and found most were still efficatious, even with expirations dates many years past.
Food, unlike most medicines, is “live” material and its expiration dates are trickier.
I use my own sight and smell test and an item has to pass both. Even then, occasionally I have decided to use up some leftover that I should have tossed out. But there is always peptobismol LOL.