Grocery store…
woman:Oh is that a special?
grude:Yep, you get two salad dressings for the price of one.
woman:Oh but I bet that is going to expire in a month or two!
grude:I don’t care, as long as it is cheap.
woman:Oh when you get poisoning and DIE then you will care!
:rolleyes:
My sister would throw shit out if the exp date passed a few minutes earlier, she somehow believed it was some kind of magic.
Magic? No. Good policy? Yes.
I respect food scientists. If they tell me to throw food away, I do it.
It depends on what it is. First, unless the product is baby food or milk (the only two classes that have any federal or state standards), the dates are voluntarily put there by the company that makes the product. There is no set industry standard that a company has to follow. Second, the types of dates change as well. Salad dressing usually has a “best if used by” date on it. That does not mean that it is dangerous to consume after that point, it only means that the company will not guarantee the taste after that point. Huge difference there.
The point is, it is the type of foodstuff that matters. Eggs are going to go dangerously bad pretty quickly after their expiration date. Don’t eat them. Saltine crackers will be fine years after their date - though they will be stale. If you like stale crackers, have at 'em. Salad dressing is going to be somewhere in between, and will also depend on the type of dressing.
When does she think you’re going to use the salad dressing? It’s entirely possible to go through two bottles of salad dressing in “a month or two”. Less, if they’re small or a family of four is using them. Or if you were going to make a large salad for a party. If it’s been “a month or two” and you’re just then opening the first bottle, perhaps you shouldn’t be stocking up on salad dressing.
OTOH, if you keep salad dressing, or anything else, until the expiration date is years instead of months earlier, you’re a hoarder. That’s one of my favorite things on Hoarders: when Matt Paxton holds up a package of bacon and says, “This expired in two thousand and three. Okay, two thousand and three. Why do you still have it?” But those are the people who don’t care if they “get poisoning and DIE!”. And they probably wouldn’t, anyway, since they’re not already dead from the way they live.
Yeah, a lot of it is totally arbitrary. I pay attention to like dairy products, but I’d be telling a bald-faced lie if I said I hadn’t eaten stuff like instant oatmeal that expired 3 years ago. Unopened salad dressing with a recent expiration date? Eh.
The Illinois Department of Agriculture disagrees.
[QUOTE=ILDA]
Is it safe to use eggs after the “sell by” or expiration date has passed?
Yes. “Sell by” or expiration codes indicate freshness, not necessarily wholesomeness. Since egg quality deteriorates over time, “sell by” dates are used to ensure the grade specified on the label is accurate. If stored properly, eggs may be safely consumed several weeks beyond the expiration date.
[/QUOTE]
Most cases of egg-related illness are caused by improper preparation or storage of egg products rather than age.
Oh dear - the other night, my husband had a salad with dressing that was dated 2010… :eek:
I’m a believer in the sniff-test method of monitoring freshness. The nose knows.
I will tell you that the date on Diet Coke cans should not be ignored. My sister had a party and the soda I grabbed from the fridge had a funky taste. Turns out she’d had it for 4 years! I have no idea how many times in those years is got hot then cold then hot then cold, but I suggested she might want to dump the last of the cans. She doesn’t drink diet, so she had no idea how old they were… ick.
When we moved into this house, the previous owners had left a buttload of stuff in the fridge and cabinets - items with expiration dates from ten years earlier!!! We bought the house in 2004 and found a six-pack of Coors Light dated 1997 in the garage fridge. I still have no idea how old the bottle of Cold Duck was - do they even make that any more?? The point is, sometimes those expiration dates can be helpful guides. 
I was surprised that the Diet Coke I’ve been buying on sale to store tastes flat and awful after only a few years beyond its expiration date. I opened can after can, and they were ALL like that!!!
A lot of people seem unable to think for themselves when it comes to expiry dates. If it’s not a fresh, spoilable food, then the expiry date is only going to be a guideline.
If the expiry date is in the format “MONTH YEAR” rather than “DAY MONTH”*, then you can probably pretty safely ignore it and just use the sniff/taste test.
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
I was surprised that the Diet Coke I’ve been buying on sale to store tastes flat and awful after only a few years beyond its expiration date. I opened can after can, and they were ALL like that!!!
[/QUOTE]
The culprit is aspartame. It has a surprisingly short life before it turns bitter. Heat will greatly speed up the deterioration, so it’s easily possible for a six-pack of pop that’s been out in the garage in summer to be bad-tasting *before *the “best by” date.
Well, except for botulism and salmonella.
We have a rule about eggs. When their expiration date has passed, I may only use them in food Mr. Mallard won’t be eating. So far, no ill effects. It’s true they’re less fresh, but nothing rotten or poisonous so far, and I’ll go weeks beyond the date.
Mucho information on eggs in this post, as well as the entire thread. Summary by pullet:
I’ve cooked eggs that were a month past date and they were fine (gave them the float test before cooking, of course). In fact, older eggs work better for hard-boiled because they’re easier to peel.
I treat expiration dates as advisory, with my eyes and nose getting the final vote on “is this still OK to eat?”, and I’ve never had food poisoning.
I think you will know if an egg is too bad to eat as soon as you crack it.
I dated a guy for a short while who had a habit of asking me out for dinner and then telling me he had no money.
Hr got me to pay for dinner once, the next time I offered to make something.
So I fixed him scrambled eggs.
The eggs were so old the the whites had disappeared, but I was pissed so I scrambled up the yolks for him and melted some cheese on top.
He said they were the best eggs he had ever eaten, and he had no ill effects.
Expiration dates are like speed limits, you thumb your nose at them and keep on going.
People, my point wasn’t to disparage eggs. I know full well that they can last weeks after the use by date. My point was that stuff like a bottle of salad dressing could last possibly years longer than its use by - much longer than more perishable items such as eggs. The dates are a guideline, but how closely you follow that guideline depends on the type of food stuff. I don’t want anybody to be scared about an egg that’s three weeks past it’s expiration date. Three months for an egg may be a different story, but salad dressing that’s three months after it’s date? Fuck it, it’ll be just fine.
My point really wasn’t about eggs. It’s just that the dates are guidelines and everybody should just think about the type of foodstuff when looking at the guideline.
Float test?
I was using salad dressing the other night. My gf picked up the bottle and started scouring the label, searching for a date. I told her I remember purchasing it, long before “best by” dates were implemented.
I’ve used eggs past the date, but only if they pass the float test. Fill a glass with cold tap water and put the egg in the water (don’t drop it, you’ll break it). If it floats, it’s no good, toss it out. An egg that floats has started producing hydrogen sulfide, the compound that makes rotten eggs stinky, which lowers the density of the egg and allows it to float. An egg that isn’t yet rotten should stay on the bottom.
I feel like soda goes off surprisingly quickly. One of my college dorms had Coke machines that would apparently go for months without being refilled and so I kept getting Cokes that were a good six months past their use-by date if I didn’t pick just the right time to buy a new bottle. Even kept in machines in presumably proper conditions, they were so nasty. Just flat and OFF. They weren’t even Diet Cokes, so aspartame wasn’t the issue. I guess the carbonation can only hang around for so long or something.
So now I check the expiration dates on drinks if I suspect they’ve been sitting for a while.
Plastic bottles, I’m assuming? Plastic “…is somewhat more CO2-permeable than aluminum.” I’ve got a couple of unopened one liter bottles of soda that have collapsed in on themselves, having lost most of the internal pressure from carbonation. They’re about a year old.
The aspartame problem mentioned by gotpasswords is my big problem with diet drinks, because you never know when vendors have had their cases in the heat. A single hot summer day with a case of diet drink on an outdoor display like you see at a gas station can render a diet drink undrinkable; if I leave a can or bottle in my car on a hot day, there’s no point in even trying to drink it. Fully carbonated, but bitter. Even without heat, the lifespan of aspartame is really short; if you look at the expiration dates of sugared and diet drinks bottled/delivered at the same time, the diet drink will have a substantially shorter “best by” date.