My wife insists on throwing out food on the expiration date. Isn’t the expiration date used by stores as a “must sell-by” date? If so, isn’t there a margin of time is built into the date system for the actual consumer to consume the item? For example, if you’re sold a gallon of milk on the day of expiration, surely the expectation isn’t that you’ll drink the entire gallon of milk on that day?
I’m from the sniff-and-toss school, but would like to strike a balance between my wife’s system and mine.
The OP’s title asks about milk and I think that’s been answered, but then it seems to generalize about other foods. There is no industry standard for how to interpret a date on food unless it explicitly says what the date means.
Food can go bad and have toxins while giving off no bad smell, so the sniff test isn’t foolproof.
Remember that the sell by date assumes that it won’t be opened in the meantime. In my experience, the more a galln of milk is used --pulled out of the fridge, opened up, recaped–the faster it goes bad.
I never keep milk more than a week after I opened it, regardless of the sell-by date.
I’ve almost always noticed that milk starts to taste a very noticeably ‘off’ on the expiration date, leading me to wonder how they can time it so accurately. I suspect that the only realistic way you could treat that as a ‘sell-by’ date is if you have the kind of family that puts a half-gallon or gallon of milk on the table every night and you go through it in one meal.
You can buy milk as much as 10 days ahead of the expiration date, so rather than quibble, why not just do that?
Anecdotally, I have heard the 5-7 days thing, but I go with a sniff test beginning the day after the sell date. I continue with the sniff test at each use, but never to exceed 3 days after the sell date.
I’m about three weeks from my 67th birthday and I’ve always used the smell/taste
method. Milk gets a slight “sweet” taste before souring. Sour milk is still good for
many cooking and baking applications, as a matter of fact there are many recipes that
call for it.
I’m very casual about this and, to the best of my best of my recollection, my several
bouts w/ ptomaine have all been from eating in restaurants.
I don’t think you can get sick from milk that just went sour in the fridge, can you? So what’s the problem. Taste it, if you don’t like the taste, throw it out or use it in cooking.
When I lived in New Orleans and shopped at supermarkets of dubious quality (it was all we had nearby) I could not count on milk staying fresh until the expiration date. Thus, I instituted the universal smell test for all milk, even newly opened. Now I buy Lactaid milk, which is ultrapasteurized and keeps for much longer. The expiration dates are way out there, and it keeps a bit longer. We don’t go through much milk, and I’ve rarely had one of those go bad at all. I don’t trust the smell test for everything, but for milk it has served me well.
Specifically to the OP, I would not buy a gallon with today’s date. Look in the cooler, they probably have some newer milk. If not, maybe a different size. If the merchant sells a gallon with today’s date, he’s awful lucky. I wouldn’t buy it unless perhaps I was having a whole kindergarten over for milk & cookies.
If there is no industry/government standard, then who sets the expiration date? Is it just the latest date the producer will risk the vendor selling the product to the consumer? In some cases, is it set by the vendor alone? (I know from experience vendors can fail to remove items after the date: we recently found vegetarian sausage at the local Dominicks 3 months past its expiration date.)
I’ve read/heard (sorry no cite) that milk can be perfectly edible (drinkable) up to one week after the sell by date. All milk past that week gets dumped. I’ve NEVER had milk go sour or “off” prior to that. I don’t think I’ve ever dumped milk prior to that one week projection.
Slight hijack here – I just love me those milk cartons with the plastic spout! Way easy! I’ll go out of my way to hit the Safeway just so I can get them. Also makes me think of Joey in the infomercial for the milk carton spout. Hilarous!
I’m really squeamish about food that may be going off. Even if it seems fine by smell and/or appearance I’ll tend to chuck it anyway – and I apply this to nothing more than I do milk. I have had rare occasion where my milk has begun coagulating a day or two before the expiration date, and I’ve had times when the milk seems to look and smell fine a day or two after. In both cases though I won’t take any chances with potential bacteria, so down the drain it goes.
I used to by Natrel brand milk. Like Lactaid it was unpasturised and filtered and typically had expiration dates as long as three or four weeks. My supermarket no longer carries it though so I’m stuck with the ordinary local brand.
I’ve purchased two jugs of milk with the same expiration date. I open one and drink it over a few days. Eventually it starts tasting “off”, but it hasn’t reached the expiration date. I toss it and open the 2nd jug. It’s filled with tasty fresh-milk goodness.
This is especially true with ultrapasteurized milk. It’ll go bad after being opened a certain amount of time, even if this is well before the expiration date.
To be clearer, there is no standard used throughout the food industry for expiration dates. The standard for dairy is to show a sell-by date but I don’t know if there is federal law, state law, or industry standard that sets how to determine the sell-by date. The FDA web site has a document that describes the law in Pennsylvania requires a sell-by date of no later than 17 days after the date of pasteurization.
Lots of foods have a “best by” date, presumably to ensure a good experience for the consumer, but not standard or required, and avoiding the implication that it might be dangerous after that date. Breakfasts cereals do this, for example, because old cereal might taste a little stale, but doesn’t really spoil if kept dry.
A lot of foods have a coded date that is not intended for the consumer at all. I presume this might be to identify lot numbers in case of a problem.