4 ms·

A single crossing of the road can kill you. A single car drive can kill you, hell you could go to sleep one night and never wake up for many many reasons. You

A single crossing of the road can kill you. A single car drive can kill you, hell you could go to sleep one night and never wake up for many many reasons. You can't avoid things just because they could kill you. You've listed the one exception to being able to rely on your senses, and it doesn't really correlate with best before dates, cooked reheated rice is the main risk.

differentView 8y ago
Having a lot of other risks is not reason to take on more risk, it's reason to reduce risk.
- benj111 8y ago
  When you cross the road you look around, evaluate the risk, then cross. You don't close your eyes and hope, neither do you just never cross the road. The same should apply to food, there have been multiple food poisoning cases in the US stemming from salad, so following best before labels isn't going to avoid all risk. The best option therefore is to evaluate risks for yourself. I don't blindly drink milk based on the date. If it stinks and is lumpy, I don't drink it, regardless of whether it's in date or not.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    The Use By date is one method people canuse to evaluate the risk. Your salad example doesn't support your point, it counters it. We can't smell food poisoning, so suggesting that people just sniff the food to see if it's safe to eat is, by your own example something that isn't going to work.
    - benj111 8y ago
      My point is you cant blindly rely on labels to decide whether food is safe, you have to use common sense. In most cases that extends to using my senses, but if I'd left a bottle of milk outside for a week in summer, I wouldn't sniff it to 'check'. Also the original comment mentioned best before, not use by. But use by dates are a useful tool, I'm saying you shouldn't just blindly rely on that.
      - DanBC 8y ago
        You keep saying "use common sense" and "using my senses", but you cannot use your senses because you cannot smell most food poisoning bacteria. When you sniff food and it smells bad you know that food can't be eaten, so you throw it out. When you sniff food and it doesn't smell bad can that food be eaten? You don't know. That's why they have the dates: the dates take into account the most common food poisoning bacteria, and best practice storage in the home, and make a balancing act. What you do with your own body is obviously up to you, but please don't use "I can smell if it's bad" if you're feeding children or old people because they are at risk of death or permanent harm.
thereisnospork 8y ago
It's about the statistics, same reason we have seatbelts and helmet laws. If a less aggressive sell-by date means one in a million loaves of bread gets moldy, that might kill a handful of people a year. If nothing else, allowing people to die from preventable sales of expired food is bad politics.
- benj111 8y ago
  How many people a year die from moldy bread? Best before and sell by is a guarantee. Its the company saying this product will last until X date. Just like your car doesn't become unusable when the warranty runs out, neither does bread, especially when you make some attempt to store it properly, because best before dates are based on the opposite.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    Each year about 3000 people in the US die from food poisoning. About 100,000 people are hospitalised, and some of them will have been caused permanent harm.
    - thereisnospork 8y ago
      To add: even if we throw out a few hundred million dollars worth of food, that's more than a fair trade for a few thousand lives and 40x that in hospitalizations.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > Best before and sell by is a guarantee. Its the company saying this product will last until X date. As I mention elsewhere in the thread, these dates do not have any legal meaning at all for the manufacturer. They do have meaning for the vendor (the grocery store), but that's not what people generally imagine is going on. Even the phrasing "best before" explicitly doesn't guarantee anything; a manufacturer would be crazy to make such a guarantee.
    - benj111 8y ago
DanBC 8y ago
> You've listed the one exception to being able to rely on your senses, There's not "one" exception. You can't smell the toxin caused by bacillus cerius; you can't smell campylobacter; you can't smell listeria; you can't smell samonella; you can't smell e coli; you can't smell C. perfringens etc etc etc.

differentView 8y ago

Having a lot of other risks is not reason to take on more risk, it's reason to reduce risk.

benj111 8y ago
When you cross the road you look around, evaluate the risk, then cross. You don't close your eyes and hope, neither do you just never cross the road. The same should apply to food, there have been multiple food poisoning cases in the US stemming from salad, so following best before labels isn't going to avoid all risk. The best option therefore is to evaluate risks for yourself. I don't blindly drink milk based on the date. If it stinks and is lumpy, I don't drink it, regardless of whether it's in date or not.
- DanBC 8y ago
  The Use By date is one method people canuse to evaluate the risk. Your salad example doesn't support your point, it counters it. We can't smell food poisoning, so suggesting that people just sniff the food to see if it's safe to eat is, by your own example something that isn't going to work.
  - benj111 8y ago
    My point is you cant blindly rely on labels to decide whether food is safe, you have to use common sense. In most cases that extends to using my senses, but if I'd left a bottle of milk outside for a week in summer, I wouldn't sniff it to 'check'. Also the original comment mentioned best before, not use by. But use by dates are a useful tool, I'm saying you shouldn't just blindly rely on that.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      You keep saying "use common sense" and "using my senses", but you cannot use your senses because you cannot smell most food poisoning bacteria. When you sniff food and it smells bad you know that food can't be eaten, so you throw it out. When you sniff food and it doesn't smell bad can that food be eaten? You don't know. That's why they have the dates: the dates take into account the most common food poisoning bacteria, and best practice storage in the home, and make a balancing act. What you do with your own body is obviously up to you, but please don't use "I can smell if it's bad" if you're feeding children or old people because they are at risk of death or permanent harm.

thereisnospork 8y ago

It's about the statistics, same reason we have seatbelts and helmet laws. If a less aggressive sell-by date means one in a million loaves of bread gets moldy, that might kill a handful of people a year. If nothing else, allowing people to die from preventable sales of expired food is bad politics.

benj111 8y ago
How many people a year die from moldy bread? Best before and sell by is a guarantee. Its the company saying this product will last until X date. Just like your car doesn't become unusable when the warranty runs out, neither does bread, especially when you make some attempt to store it properly, because best before dates are based on the opposite.
- DanBC 8y ago
  Each year about 3000 people in the US die from food poisoning. About 100,000 people are hospitalised, and some of them will have been caused permanent harm.
  - thereisnospork 8y ago
    To add: even if we throw out a few hundred million dollars worth of food, that's more than a fair trade for a few thousand lives and 40x that in hospitalizations.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > Best before and sell by is a guarantee. Its the company saying this product will last until X date. As I mention elsewhere in the thread, these dates do not have any legal meaning at all for the manufacturer. They do have meaning for the vendor (the grocery store), but that's not what people generally imagine is going on. Even the phrasing "best before" explicitly doesn't guarantee anything; a manufacturer would be crazy to make such a guarantee.
  - benj111 8y ago

DanBC 8y ago

> You've listed the one exception to being able to rely on your senses, There's not "one" exception. You can't smell the toxin caused by bacillus cerius; you can't smell campylobacter; you can't smell listeria; you can't smell samonella; you can't smell e coli; you can't smell C. perfringens etc etc etc.