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A change to the sell-by dates on food
- voxic11 10y agoIt's nice to see an example of self regulation working once in a while.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoAnother example is MPAA movie ratings. Since they decide which ages are appropriate for the movies that they license local theaters to play, theaters prohibit kids from sneaking into R-rated movies, even though it isn't against R law. It's a shame self-regulation doesn't occur more often.
- slg 10y agoThe MPAA rating system might look like a success from the outside but I think a lot of people familiar with it would disagree. It is wildly inconsistent and the rules that it does follow are mostly arbitrary (one "fuck" is ok, but two isn't) . The process of getting a film rated is not very transparent and getting a film re-rated can be prohibitively expensive for low budget films.
- rrdharan 10y agoAgreed. "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is a very enjoyable documentary on this exact topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated
- nandhp 10y agoWhich, incidentally, was released without a rating because the MPAA wanted to rate it as NC-17.
- ptaipale 10y agoOn the other hand, government rating systems can get hilarious. Here in Finland, VHS and DVD distribution of program materials were rated for audiences (does it suit children or not, etc) by a government agency. They wanted to raise money for the government. So, even if a program was rated for VHS, distributors couldn't use the same rating for DVD distribution; they had to pay another fee to get the DVD rating. Without government inspection, movies had to be distributed with K-18 (X-rated) label. Eventually, one of the distributors got fed up when they were told to pay yet again for the new rating of "Little House on the Prairie", the nostalgic 1970's family series classic. The distributor simply said no, and decided to sell Little House as an X-rated DVD release. Supermarkets had to verify that buyers had photo ID and were over 18 years old. Parents were told it's forbidden to show the series to their children (it had been on air in prime time in 1970's and many remembered it fondly). Everyone started to laugh at the government rating agency, and they gave up and changed the regulation.
- Symbiote 10y agoI met someone who worked for the British equivalent, the BBFC. She said every release had to be submitted for classification, since they often contained different material -- a slightly different edit of the main film, or "extra features" which occasionally needed changing, such as where the director's interview "The Making of Fluffy Bunny Adventures III" had him cursing about something.
- Piskvorrr 10y agoBritish Broadcasting F*ck Commision?
- SmellyGeekBoy 10y agoEh? British Board of Film Classification
- DanBC 10y agoAlso, there's sometimes a long delay in providing a DVD / Bluray version of a film that had previously been released on VHS, and it's possible that the same film now gets a lower age rating.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vacri 10y ago... well, well after non-self regulation has been in place in other countries.
- erpellan 10y agoThis has been the case in the UK for many years. There's an actual regulatory difference between 'use by' and 'best before': https://www.food.gov.uk/science/microbiology/use-by-and-best-before-dates https://www.food.gov.uk/science/microbiology/use-by-and-best...
- jwdunne 10y agoThis can generate a bit of confusion. Many won't eat anything past its best before date, as though it's a use by date. Best before date = no guarantee of quality after. Use by date = potentially poisonous after. In fact, we have online stores that sell past best before date food at ridiculous prices because retailers can't really sell them.
- simplehuman 10y agoThey could simply have used the terms "Unsure quality after" and "Discard after"
- gpawl 10y agoHow would using more confusing terms help?
- jwdunne 10y ago"Guaranteed until xxx" - all brands guarantee their products before the best before. "Hazardous after xxx" - literally, this could kill you after this date. The other problem is forcing brands to put "hazardous" on their labels.
- flukus 10y agoOr "could be dodgy" and "will be dodgy".
- danieltillett 10y agoFellow Australian think we are going to have to explain to most of the rest of the world what dodgy means first :) Anyway shouldn't it be "might be dodgy" and "is dodgy"?
- huangc10 10y agoIn case you missed it (since there are a lot of quotes being thrown around in the article...), the new standard will be either: "Use By: (date)", or "Best if Used By: (date)" However, the article still claims there are no guarantees of adoption.
- sarreph 10y ago> "Use By: (date)", or "Best if Used By: (date)" Since one contains the other, seems like this could be open to packaging errors. Much better to use an alternative verb for 'best if used by', i.e. 'display until'.
- majewsky 10y agoGermany uses the wording "Mindestens haltbar bis", which roughly means "good until at least". Yet despite using the "at least" wording, a lot of people still throw out their yogurts that are one day over the date.
- wink 10y agoYeah, but I've seen it much more often with meat and sausages that people are (over?)cautious. Then again yoghurts months after this date still looked and smelled fine, but at some point even I start getting wary :)
- inferiorhuman 10y agoThe nifty thing about dairy, at least, is that the human nose is very adept at determining spoilage.
- Xylakant 10y agoGermany also uses "zu verbrauchen bis" which is a hard expiry date on goods that are perishable and often dangerous when expired. Minced meat, fish or poultry are examples where that is used. Most people don't grok the difference though.
- droithomme 10y agoThe best thing about these dates is fancy high end stuff gets tossed in the discount bin for 50-75% off when that date is imminent. And based on my experience, yeah, it's not "best" at that time, but it's still edible, not so bad, and maybe even pretty ok compared to fresh cheap stuff filled with artificial flavors.
- anon2264 10y agoIve seen this in the UK Aus and NZ but never in the US. I wonder if it is because US stores stick to a perhaps rational strategy where discounted items cannibalize profits?
- chickenfries 10y agoIn the US we have discount "grocery stores" in lower income neighborhoods that pretty much exclusively sell stuff that is past or very close to it's best by date. I agree it's less common to see a discount bin in a normal grocery store, but if you're in a more working class neighborhood you might find a rack that has stuff that they're not longer stocking, old bread, or dented boxes and cans.
- emilyfm 10y agoIn the US (at least in some states) there are discount grocery stores that buy truckloads of expired products from the major retailers and sell them off cheap. Tend to exist in lower income areas. Some of the stuff is years out of date. A surprising percentage of people don't even look at the date.
- Cymen 10y agoIt's in the US too however it's in lower cost areas. For example, a small rural town in Wisconsin has a bargain store that often gets these kinds of items from Costco and major markets like NYC and Chicago (it's obvious by the ethnic grocery items). Obviously, one small store isn't enough to sell it all so there must be quite a few of these spread out over the country in lower cost of living areas where rent is cheap for low margin small retail.
- 10y ago
- mjevans 10y agoAs a consumer I only want to know two things... 1) Use By (if properly stored) 2) Best By (a guess about quality, should be BEFORE above) Note that both of these are /best case/ outcomes. Food can and frequently does go bad before then. An example that comes to mind is highly pasteurized milk. IF SEALED and STORED PROPERLY it can indeed live to that date. However I've also noticed that it tends to go bad at roughly a fixed time after unsealing, even if it's well before that date.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kevinh 10y agoI've used plenty of products past the use by date (including milk). In my experience, the use by date is generally a pretty conservative estimate when it comes to noticeable degradation in quality.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago"You've noticed"? It's printed on every pack of UHT milk I've seen: 'After opening, refrigerate and use within x days'. UHT isn't some magic process that allows milk to sit in an open container for months.
- mjevans 10y agoAs a followup: I checked the milk in my apartment's fridge. My room mate's only lists a pull date and has no other handling instructions (not even to refrigerate). The milk I am buying /now/ happens to mention, in otherwise completely ignoble and normal looking text in an out of the way area, to refrigerate and use within 7 days of opening, but not past the printed date. I would hazard that most consumers have read the directions on milk /maybe/ once, if at all, and have been operating on prior behavior since then.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago"My room mate's only lists a pull date and has no other handling instructions (not even to refrigerate)" I'm not sure where you live but, if in the US, you room-mates milk packaging is contrary to FDA regulations. See this doc: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/UCM209789.pdf https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/UCM209... Section 4, paragraph 3, point 2 says that milk subject to 'aseptic processing' (defined earlier in the same doc, as milk that can be stored without refrigeration in a hermetically sealed container) must be labeled with the words 'keep refrigerated after opening'.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bbcbasic 10y agoWhat about wine? That should have a best after?
- NamTaf 10y agoCertain beers do; particularly the lambics. They'll have a 'best after' date, or a 'best before' with 20 years in the future.
- wtvanhest 10y agoOff topic, but what is wrong with this site? The top bar is moving around and as a reader, I cannot use the top of the browser as a line to read. It is extremely frustrating.
- everybodyknows 10y ago"In fact, it's totally fine to eat a product even well after its so-called expiration date." Not so, unless lost nutrition and bad flavor are totally fine. Americans eat a lot of moldy nuts, rancid olive oil, and stale coffee. Just Google for the expert opinions on these foods, and compare to what you read on the label of any mainstream, high-volume product on the shelves.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago>> Not so, unless lost nutrition and bad flavor are totally fine. They're fine in the sense that they won't poison you and aren't worth wasting.
- to3m 10y agoCheese is best after the expiration date, if it's 2+ of blue, unpasteurised and soft. I only buy cheese from the reduced shelves, when it's less than half price because its use by date is today - this gets me tasty cheese, and helps limit my consumption (since on the average visit, there's no reduced cheese available). Not recommended: buying your cheddar this way. That tends to go a bit hard and crispy. Always found that unappealing. Also not recommended: using this purchasing strategy with raw oysters.
- abruzzi 10y agoSince I live somewhere now where I can't get sharp provolone, I get the stuff the supermarket sells and leave it out on the counter for a month before I eat it. It tastes much better that way.
- maus42 10y ago>stale coffee I'd say consuming stale coffee is totally fine. The only certain way (that I'm aware of) to get coffee that won't be stale is to grind the beans just before use, and I certainly do not have patience for that. I buy packaged coffee even if my hipster-y friends disapprove. For a regular coffee drinker, a far more useful way to improve the taste of coffee is to remember to wash the pot of the coffee machine more regularly.
- tremendo 10y agoAh another reminder I am old, and thankful I got to learn the lost art of using my senses, and appreciating food that although not useful for winning photography awards, it was still yummy. Yes, I'm one of those that gets frustrated when I see someone throw away a banana because it had a softer spot on one end, or "ew, too many freckles". I am from a past that will never return. While I'm here, I'll miss it. EDIT: I should mention that I prefer buying non-packaged food, so I still trust my senses better than any "sell by" or "best before" labels.
- rangibaby 10y agoIt's one of the superpowers I got from being poor back in the day. The "sniff test" always makes my wife and her family laugh :-)
- rectangletangle 10y agoThe human olfactory system is the product of millions of years of evolution, it's highly adept at detecting food that's no longer edible. Nature doesn't come with labels, that's why the smell of inedible food is so obvious and fowl.
- gerbilly 10y agoSure but food is is almost too clean now. For example an unpasteurized cheese has a whole ecosystem of bacteria, each keeping the others in check. The cheese like substances in most American grocery stores however are almost sterile, so a single bacteria like Campylobacter can colonize it and take it over unopposed. Not all bacterial contamination leaves a detectable smell.
- DanBC 10y agoYou can smell meat that is rotting. You can't smell most bacterial contamination, and some of these can be fatal. For example, fresh chicken will smell fine, but a lot of it (in Europe) is contaminated with campylobater. https://www.food.gov.uk/science/microbiology/campylobacterevidenceprogramme https://www.food.gov.uk/science/microbiology/campylobacterev... > We carried out a survey of campylobacter in chicken on retail sale in the UK between May 2007 and September 2008, and it reported that campylobacter was present in 65% of the fresh chicken samples tested. A European Union baseline survey carried out in 2008, and published by European Food Safety Authority in March 2010, showed the UK estimated prevalence for campylobacter in broiler batches (caecal contents) was 75.3% and 86.3% in broiler carcasses (skin samples). These results were above the weighted EU mean prevalences of 71.2% and 77% respectively. There was a wide range of campylobacter prevalence across members states varying from 4.9% to 100% in broiler carcasses and from 2% to 100% in broiler batches.
- gydfi 10y agoSonetimes the dates are inaccurate, but I've always been impressed by the ability of milk to go from totally fine to weird-tasting on precisely the use-by date.
- mysterypie 10y agoThe expiry date put on medicines are sometimes absurd. Certainly antibiotics may break down, but why would aspirin have an expiry date that's only a year or two away? It's a simple stable molecule that would probably last decades. Anyone know what's up with that?
- maxerickson 10y agoIt is sort of a promise the drug will still work. Short expiries don't cost them sales and limit bad publicity and other hassles.
- sndean 10y agoIt's simply a guarantee of full potency of the drug. A while ago, a study (currently looking for it...) found ~90% of OTC drugs were perfectly fine 10+ years after the expiry date, IIRC. And most antibiotics should be just as stable as aspirin.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoThe US military operates the Federal Shelf Life Extension Program which, from what I understand, regularly tests federal stockpiles of medications to avoid waste. http://www.astho.org/Programs/Preparedness/Public-Health-Emergency-Law/Emergency-Use-Authorization-Toolkit/Federal-Shelf-Life-Extension-Program-Fact-Sheet/ http://www.astho.org/Programs/Preparedness/Public-Health-Eme...
- ridgeguy 10y agoAspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. When it's exposed to water vapor, the acetyl group comes off and combines with water to make acetic acid, which is the acid in vinegar [1]. This happens pretty fast. An open bottle of uncoated aspirin tablets can start to smell of vinegar in a day or two, depending on the local relative humidity. If you smell vinegar when you sniff your bottle of aspirin, toss the bottle. Why? Well, the other hydrolysis reaction product (salicylic acid) removes the outer layer of the skin and is used, for example, to remove warts [2]. Not something you want in your stomach. [1] http://www.kii3.ntf.uni-lj.si/analchemvoc2/file.php/1/HTML/SPEKTRA/kinetics2.htm http://www.kii3.ntf.uni-lj.si/analchemvoc2/file.php/1/HTML/S... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicylic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicylic_acid
- bigtunacan 10y agoWhen it comes to food I go by look, smell, and taste. The dates don't often mean much. I've had bread that grew mold a week before the sell by date and I've had bread that didn't a week after the date.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- reitanqild 10y agoMy brother - who is a chef has - has already told me to hunt for the oldest beef I can find in the shelves. Oh, and one of the largest grocery chains here has now started agressively pushing anything that is about to expire by cutting the price in half and put it on display in a designated fridge. Market segmentation I guess but for those who care to check it is often lots of good food at a nice price.
- robk 10y agoif it's the same price why would you want the oldest beef!?
- reitanqild 10y agoIn case you really wonder: Because 1. some ageing is good for beef and 2. often beef isn't aged enough when it enter the shelves.
- KSS42 10y agoMy goto website for this is : eatbydate.com
- grzm 10y agoI've had http://stilltasty.com http://stilltasty.com recommended to me as well.
- agumonkey 10y agoI learned not long ago that fresh meat is not really good; it has to be held for some time to reach its best point. Few centuries ago it was even a delight to let the meat "rot" a little more.
- alkonaut 10y agoI have seen some meats with a "best after" date as well as the regular date markings. Makes sense.
- agumonkey 10y agoI found it funny to think that people in "non civilized" eras knew that fairly well, while I never even considered the idea.
- dbaupp 10y agoRotten (well, fermented) meat and fish is still a delicacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_in_food_processing#Fish-based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_in_food_processin...
- teekert 10y agoThe nose knows people! Just smell and look, I have eaten many past due things and scooped of layers of fungi. I have never been ill from it, 34 years and counting. Sure, be careful with chicken and turkey but yoghurt for example, come on, it's basically a bottle of bacteria already and the smell is hard to ignore when it actually goes bad.
- folli 10y agoI generally agree, but be careful with moldy food. Some mold species produce mycotoxins that can be quite dangerous (e.g. aflatoxin can induce liver cancer, some mycotoxins can't be degraded and build up in the liver). Simply removing the fungi is not enough, since the toxins diffuse into the food matrix (e.g in jam, yoghurt). An exception is mold on fruits and vegetables, there you can cut out the affected areas, the toxins can't diffuse across the cell walls.
- folli 10y agoBecause everyone likes references, here's a good start for further reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC164220/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC164220/
- Udo 10y ago> I have eaten many past due things and scooped of layers of fungi. I have never been ill from it, 34 years and counting. Nobody should follow this advice. Most people will instinctively recoil from what you describe, for very good survival reasons. The fluffy stuff on top is just the surface part of the fungus, its main body actually lies inside the food. The reason why you've never been ill from it is probably because your body is used to this. However, there can easily be long term (and sudden short term) health consequences from ingesting fungus toxins - including persistent infection, cancers, and neurotoxicity.
- gruturo 10y agoYou turn a personal anecdote into generalized advice. Please don't do that - this is irresponsible. Immune systems vary wildly across people, and even you may have simply been very lucky until today. Don't turn this into advice.
- carlob 10y agoI once bought some Camembert in France which, instead of having an expiration date, had a date to determine the ripeness of the cheese e.g. "Eat this cheese 30 days after this date if you like it ripe and runny".