You Can Safely Ignore Most Food Expiration Dates
Expiration dates address quality—optimum freshness—rather than safety and are extremely conservative. To account for all manner of consumer, manufacturers imagine how the laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and handle their food, then test their products based on these criteria.
Full article on food expiration dates.
Use By dates on food mean very little. I once bought three pounds of lower-grade (i.e. aged fewer months) prosciutto ham at Kroger’s for 50% off because it was approaching its “sell by” date. I chuckled because had I gone to Central Market, I could have bought prosciutto ham that had been left out to age a year longer than what I bought on sale at Krogers. Except the “older” Central Market ham was $37 per pound rather than $10.61 on closeout.
I know a doctorate-level research scientist who
is extremely picky about the quality of her food. Yet she claims the smell is the best way to detect when food is spoiled.
Good to know all this. Especially since I always ignore these things anyway.
I use a multitude of tests: smell, sight, expiration dates.
Whatever works. When in doubt, throw it out.
There is a great Seinfeld bit from his stand up where he talks about needing milk for some cereal, but the date has passed. You then smell it, but that doesn’t work becasue who knows what milk is supposed to smell like.
Twenty something years ago//before the world went mad and manufacturers realized they could profit by sell-by dates we just smelled it… If it smelled funny the dog got it!Or if it was in a can, the can had to buckle and leak.Otherwise it was good!