Ex Trader Joe's president to open store selling expired food

Orlando Sentinel ^ | 1/27/14 | Adrienne Cutway

[traderrob6]

The former president of grocery store chain Trader Joe's is hoping to make healthy food more accessible to the working poor by opening a store and restaurant that sells expired food, according to Fox News.

Doug Rauch's endeavor is called The Daily Table and will open in Dorchester, Mass. come May.

The food sold and prepared at the store will only be items that are deemed unsellable by other grocery stores. That includes items that are past their sell by date and items in damaged packaging, the TV station reports.

[wbill]

buy about all my meats from Kroger and WalMart that are at their expiration dates

Roger that. I figure that so long as they look OK (that's the MOST important), and they're prepared or frozen immediately, they'll be fine. I get great steaks at my local store that way, all the time. 'Tis pretty much the only way I can afford them.

Don't get me started on dry, prepared foods (think, rice dishes, etc) with sell-by dates on them. It's dry. It's sealed. What the heck is going to happen?

[shibumi]

Or ‘E’s gone joined the choir indigestible.

[Salamander]

HA!

[Overtaxed]

.turnip greens, collards

Turnip greens and collards are unusual?

[Paladin2]

"When did this guy bail? I"

TJ's is owned by Aldi.

[TheGipperWasRight]

He may as well save himself some trouble, and just put his money in a pile and set it on fire.

Get ready for a diarrhea class action lawsuit.

[TomGuy]

Sell by and Expired/Use by are two different things.

Sell by indicates when the store should remove an item. Many such items still have days or more of viability.

Expired/Use by indicates that a product is no longer fit for consumption.

Many items, especially in cans, are still edible years after their sell by or use by date. The contents may be discolored and/or have a change in taste, however.

[riri]

Hey —guess he didn’t get the memo. The poor all get EBT cards now and eat better than the rest of us.

[Salamander]

Weevils and meal worms/moths.

I’ve wandered into the kitchen to found a swarm of tiny moths fluttering around, before.

A search turned up a box of sealed and airtight dark chocolate brownie mix with an entire civilization thriving inside.

All dry goods have some kind of bug eggs in them.

Freezing the stuff *might* extend the shelf life.

[dangus]

I was very surprised to find this as common practice in Canada (Quebec anyway). You can go into any store and find expired food, marked down, next to premium food, much the way that food nearing its expiration date is sold in America.

OTOH, be careful buying “ice cream” in Canada. Just like “Cool Whip” sells oil-based “desert topping,” what looks like ice cream isn’t ice cream unless it clearly says all-dairy ice cream on the label.

[Vigilanteman]

True story. Meat canning was invented during the Napoleonic Wars. A London Museum found a well preserved tin in the basement in the mid 1930s over 115 years old.

Being curious about the longevity of such things, they fed it to one of the cats which the museum kept for rodent control. The cat suffered no ill effects.

Lasting even longer than canned food is the dried food. I have stuff in my basement with advertised 25 years of shelf life. There is no danger in eating it even after that time (as long as it remains sealed and dry). The major problem is the loss of flavor.

[Gaffer]

Back in the 70s, I was stationed in Europe and we got sent TDY about 50% of the time on remote mountaintop comm sites to check out and optimize the comm gear. We’d often go buy C rations at the commissary to eat. Once or twice, I even ended up buying a case of old K rations, believe it or not.

I liked them because they gave you a little 4-pack of smokes with them along with the little P-38 openers - I still have one on my key chain.

[FreedomGuru]

“Do Twinkies expire?”

Not with Michael Moore around.

[smoothsailing]

[Uncle Chip]

37 year old Twinkie.

with a 12 year old bite out of it.

[Gaffer]

I believe it. There is an item, canned ham, from DAK I believe, that has NO shelf life marked on it. You can buy it in Walmart, nearly anywhere. I have several cans.

[Ghost of SVR4]

Even past 12 months lots of well canned foods are just fine. The expiration dates are more suggestions than anything else.

[Vigilanteman]

All dry goods have some kind of bug eggs in them.

Freezing the stuff *might* extend the shelf life.

Spot on. The food preservations I talk to say there are one of two ways to prevent this problem:

1. Heat treatment-- 200 degrees F. or greater for two hours or more.

2. Freeze treatment of 0 degrees F. or less for two days or more.

   The freeze treatment is FAR trickier because most dry goods have better cold insulation than heat insulation properties.

[Scoutmaster]

The shelf-life of the original Twinkies was 26 days. The re-introduced Twinkies have a shelf-life of 45 days.

Of course, you can eat (or marvel at) lots of things after expiration of the shelf-life.

[Vigilanteman]

DAK, I believe, is a Danish ham, isn't it? The Danes are the best in the world about preservation of pork, dairy and poultry products.

I heard they developed the skill from long years of neutrality and selling the stuff to the warring state of Europe.