So, free food at work. I grabbed a yogurt that touted its unique style and no preservatives (important). I opened it up and ate a spoon. It tasted odd (not bad, necessarily - just odd), but I thought it was just a result of the style, so I ate another. Still odd. So I looked at the lid - it was over two months over its expiration date. Dairy + two months rot + no preservatives = fun times in the future, I’m sure.
So while I wait for the food poisoning to take hold (I just hope that it doesn’t take me out of work, and that it comes up instead of rushing down; that’s easier to handle), what’s the most “bad” food you’ve eaten?
~23 years expired Fruit Loops. The package was still sealed and I didn’t recognize it as old. I bought it at a bodega in NYC that had just remodeled and apparently the box had fallen behind a shelf. The loops didn’t have much sweetness but the texture was still good.
I can’t bring up the college newspaper article about them (apparently too old for the current archives), but it was pretty funny at the time. Kellogg’s had “No Comment” about their incredible shelf life.
About a year ago I took some Tylenol for a headache. An hour later I was still complaining that it didn’t work. My wife looked at the bottle and said “I can’t imagine why a bottle of Tylenol that says ‘Use by 12/2001’ would be ineffective eleven years later.”
We probably also have “spices” in our pantry that are that old. I put it in quotes because needless to say they do not impart much flavor at this point.
When I was a teenager I was in a group of hikers who came across a burned-down cabin in a wilderness area. There were still some remnants of food items brought in by hikers roughly contemporary with the fire, which was 15-20 years in the past, and among these were some cans of food. I inspected a can of some kind of fruit and the can itself seemed intact, so I opened it, sniffed it, cautiously tasted it, then ate a full serving of it, claiming that if it was in an airtight can it should not have deteriorated and I hadn’t found any rust spots.
They didn’t put “fresh dates” or “best used by” dates on cans back then.
I once drank a little bit of an off brand form of Ginger Ale that was bought for me because I was sick with a stomach virus at the time and the person who got it for me did not realize that the bottle had expired almost a whole year earlier. (shaking my head)
Yogurt is already rotten, you know; that’s what they mean whey they say “live and active cultures”, just a bit more live and active after a couple months (as long as it wasn’t opened).
Granny has a habit of giving us things from her freezer. Like any elderly person who was poor growing up, she hoards food supplies, and we’ve learned to check the dates on anything she gives us.
I think the record holder was a frozen turkey she gave us a couple of years ago that was from the early nineties! It was actually older than my youngest child. My daughter made turkey and dumplings out of it. No, I didn’t try any, but my husband and daughter ate it and swore it tasted like normal turkey.
Not me but my mother. (And this will tell you how cheap and stubborn my family is.)
I was visiting and rummaging in the fridge and came across a jar of Strawberry Jam that was expired by like 13 years. I brought it out to her incredulous because they had moved house like three times in that time span, apparently lugging this antique jelly from state to state. She insisted it was perfectly fine so I got a spoon and insisted she eat a bite. She said “FINE!” Scooped a spoonful out (it had by this point achieved the consistency of spackle) and ate it.
That must’ve been 5 years ago - bet they still have it.
One time when I was working at Tedeschi’s (convenience store) I noticed some expired beef jerky. I took it off the shelf and went around the store is took everything that had expired off of the shelf. I was going to take it all home, being a 20 year old poor college kid, but a coworker complained, saying “that’s b******* that he gets to take this food home. I could be feeding this to my kids.” The food was put back on the shelf. Always check.
Another time I was moving out of a dorm room, up and down three flights of stairs. I was suitably hot and sweaty when I went to move my mini fridge. I noticed some milk in there and took a nice deep gulp. Chunks. Horror. Not refreshing.
Sardines packed in olive oil have fairly arbitrary best before dates, likely more to do with stock rotation than anything else. It’s usually two or three years in the future, but they age beautifully for years after that. I’ve eaten some two years after the expiry date, and they were magnificent.
I’ll use eggs and dairy products as long as a month after the date, as long as they look and smell OK. I’ll used canned goods as long as a year after the date. Mr. Sali found a Kit Kat bar from last Christmas, almost exactly a year old, he said, do you want this? Works for me! It was fine, though not very crisp inside.
My family has a cottage in northern Quebec, built by my grandfather. In that cottage, a lot of things are left that stay more or less forever - or at least, for decades.
A decade ago, before we thorougly purged the food stored in the kitchen, there were glass jars with Red River Cereal in them that dated to the early 1950s. That said, I have no idea what its original expiry date was. But it was some half-century or so old.
I found a single serving yoghurt in the fridge that was a year past its best before date. I wasn’t brave enough to eat it, but I did open it and was surprised that it still looked pretty good.
I often buy meat that’s at its best before date and toss it in the freezer to eat months later, don’t know if that counts. I have some salad dressing in the fridge that’s probably a year past that I still use on salad and will continue to until it’s gone.
