They likely have a better customer.
That’s why we buy Lactaid milk, so we never need to check sell by dates.
What’s the difference then between milk going bad, and milk just going sour? How would you be sure it’s safe?
Generally, uncontaminated milk becomes unpalatable (sour, lumpy) before it becomes unsafe - just because the populations of bacteria present - even in pasteurised milk - are of types that tend to sour or curdle it.
Detecting when things are ‘bad’ is actually hard. Many food poisoning pathogens can be present at dangerous levels without affecting taste, smell or texture of foods or drink.
If it smells like poo or brackish water, that’s e. coli, not lactobacillus. Don’t drink it.
Also, unlikely to be a problem. Pasteurized milk will turn solid long before it grows anything nasty these days.
Listeria is probably the most realistic concern, but you’ll never know until you start getting diarrhea, so don’t worry about it. You’re more likely to get it from produce and frozen vegetables than pasteurized milk. (Raw milk, on the other hand…)
In other words, your milk has probably never gone truly “bad”. Sour, lumpy, and gross, yes. But probably not actually bad.
I often see goods on the shelf beyond their “best before” or “sell by” dates. On one occasion, every bottle of my favorite (obviously not everyone else’s favorite) orange juice was well past the date.
Yesterday I finally finished off a carton of Birds Custard Powder that had a best before date of some time in 2007. It tasted fine all the way to the end.
There was one morning I went to the nearby convenience store for a half gallon of milk because I didn’t want to drive all the way to the grocery store. There was some old guy blocking the door to the milk cooler, pulling all of the milk jugs out of the cooler to find the one with the latest sell-by date. After waiting several minutes I finally said “If you’re going to be there all day can you just hand me one of those? I’m not picky.” I mean, seriously…if you’re *that * worried about it going bad, just buy a smaller carton.
When I buy milk, the sell by date is far enough off I don’t usually worry about it. The gallon in my refrigerator, bought on 12/30, has a date of 1/15/17 on it. It will probably still be good on 1/22, but I’ll have finished it by then.
I’m going to buy the freshest milk I can reasonably reach. I won’t get on all fours and crawl halfway through the refrigerator to get the one way in the back. But at a reasonable height, I’ll reach arm’s length into the back to get the milk with the latest date.
I grab the nearest carton and put it in my cart. I can’t remember the last time I looked at an expiration date on a carton of milk.
I just don’t see why the OP sees an ethics issue: someone buying a fresh carton from the back has the same effect on the amount of older milk as that person not buying any milk at all.
It’s already been explained upthread. If you view food wastage as a moral issue, then you will want to take the oldest milk that meets your needs.
Since I’ve never in my life tasted a difference between milk in a few days, I would get the oldest milk in the OP’s scenario. Not because I think it’s that important a moral issue, but because I don’t really have any reason not to, so why not be that sliver more moral?
Good thing I don’t. It’s not like me buyer newer milk is going to make that starving child in Africa starve even harder.
Usually this. If I do think to look, I look at a couple and take whichever expires last. Most of the time the ones I do look at all have the same date anyway, I’m not looking at every carton, just a few.
“You’re pretty sure the carton you buy will be empty in a week.” Actually, I’m pretty sure it won’t be, based on experience.
Morality has nothing to do with it.
The oldest milk is most likely to be wasted when it sits in my fridge too long and I have to dump it, whereas if I got the newest I would use more before it gets dumped.
Still not moral though. No one extra is starving if I pour half a quart vs a quarter of a quart down the drain. No one extra is eating if Kroger sells me the milk I pour a quarter of away vs half of.
I don’t like to waste food, but “people are starving” has nothing to do with what I do waste. “People are starving in China” was a dumb thing to say to get kids to eat back in the day, and it’s not gotten any smarter since. People starve because they don’t have access to food, not because I don’t eat all I take. They were never going to have that.
[quote=“jtur88, post:8, topic:776603”]
I don’t care. Everything is good for weeks, months or years after the best by date. I actually prefer to buy the oldest milk, because I like it when mine clabbers before I finish it.
[quote]
Eeeww.
We are the mongrels, underneath the table,
Unaware of the banquet up above our heads.
—Joan Osborne
Um, are we just talking about milk? Because we go through that quickly, date is not an issue. Brand is, however; where I live, some brands of milk taste oddly sweet or weirdly sour.
Loose produce never has a date–we’re on our own here.
Clearance meats–Yeah, I’ll look through those for a bargain every
now and then. Expiry doesn’t matter much, because I usually “dry-age” meats at home for a few days before cooking (not hamburger mince, obviously).