Expiration/Best By dates
 

Recently I've been trying to cook more and use of some of the various staples and condiments I have around, instead of just eating prepackaged crap. I've noticed most of the stuff is a ways past the Best By or Expiration dates printed on the packaging. For example the flour I'm using had an expiration of March 10 2009, the Crisco expired last February. I have a packet of yeast that I have not used yet that says faster rising if used by November 2006. I always end up eating eggs a month or two after their expiration date. So far I haven't got sick yet from eating this stuff, but I'm wondering how much of a time window is there for food from the expiration date to the time it can really do some harm? I get rid of milk when it gets lumpy, and cheese when it dries up and gets hard, and vegetables when they start growing substantial roots, but other than that I haven't noticed any side effects of keeping food too long.

I'm crazy with expiration dates. The day the milk expires, it's in the trash. Same with the eggs, oj, etc. And I don't bother to smell it first. Don't care if it smells fine. It's bad. But fairly recently, I bought a box of Frosted Mini Wheats that were expired by 4 months - didn't notice this till I got home. I kept them anyways. I mean, really - it's dry wheat stuff and sugar. What ingredients in a Frosted Mini Wheat could possibly spoil?

At worst, you're just giving your immune system a workout by ignoring expiration dates, unless the food looks or smells rotten. Most of the time, there's just a slight decrease in quality.

This touches on a larger problem which we all deal with: we should be eating more fruits and vegetables. It is clear when these go bad. The fact that we have a hard time telling what goes bad when just by using our noses... doesn't that tell you something about the nutrition level in our food?

Wut?

This doesn't address the issue of how we should be handling things other than fruits or vegetables.

Besides, I'm not sure the ability to detect freshness with our noses is affected by the nutritional level of foods. i.e. I don't think it tells us much about the nutrition level in our food.

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As far as other food items are concerned, best before dates are more or less guidelines. I used to be strict about them, but then I realized that the dates printed on the packages are usually done so with a bit of a buffer in mind. It's not that they know exactly the day the food will turn "bad." It's "best by" / "best before," not "bad by" or "rotten thereafter."

Use good sense. Did you buy it well before the date, or did you buy it short-dated? If you know you've kept it well yourself, you can trust something a day or two past the date with things such as eggs and dairy. I'd be more careful with fresh meat. In most cases, meat should be consumed within a day or two after packaging to ensure freshness. And some things such as fish should be within the day.

Eggs I think are pretty resilient. I'd not be so concerned about eating them up to a week after the date.

Bread and grains? Hm... maybe a few weeks or so? (I freeze bread.) Probably not more than a month for most things before I get concerned about mold and other invisible things. Plus you should refrigerate whole grain items such as whole wheat flour and brown rice. The germ included in these products causes them to spoil faster.

The bottom line: don't mess around with dairy and raw meat. Try to be sure that stuff is fresh.

As long as they're properly stored (ie, refrigerated) eggs will keep nearly indefinitely. The best by date indicates an approximate date when the egg will degrade sufficiently so that it is no longer grade A (and is in fact a sell-by date, rather than an expiration date). It may not fry up quite as prettily past that point, but will be perfectly edible several months out.

Other than that I agree with Baraka_Guru, although you might as well throw that yeast out. It won't make you sick necessarily, although it will be pretty much useless at this point.

In food there are no "expiration dates" the dates on food items fall under "best by" "use by" "sell by" and "best used by". And yes these are a good indication for when a food item will no longer be good but mostly it indicates that at this point a substantial decrease in quality will be present. This can include nutrient decrease, off color will occur, spoilage mat occur, off odor etc. Eggs are a little different the date that comes on eggs is a sell by date and the numbers that often appear above the sell by date are the Julian date. These tell when this batch was packed. The numbers are a three digit number system.

Remember that a food that is "spoiled" ie moldy or tastes bad may not harm you any more than an upset tummy. More often the foods that have things like salmonella and E.coli will look perfectly fresh and tasty. Mold and yeast are everywhere and they will harm us less often than the viruses that are lurking on "good" food caused by mishandling.