12 ms·

Food labels and the lies they tell us about ‘best before’ expiration dates (2021)

141 points by gsky 2y ago

bitnasty 2y ago
If anyone thinks that “expires” date is anything but a recommendation, they should seriously consider improving their reasoning skills. Might actually be a good interview question.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  I know some people who are very conservative about food expiration dates, generally based on past bad experiences. It would not be a good idea to filter out people just based on this IMO. These people are very diligent workers and extremely intelligent regarding work-related issues so it would be a shame to pass them over based on personal habits.
BobbyTables2 2y ago
Believing expiration dates on raw, unsealed food is silly. But for packaged food, I have to wonder if the companies are as evil as some would wish. I’ve definitely noticed chips/crackers start to taste rancid not long after the expiration date. Preservatives and such do break down. Do we really want to be eating that? The manufacturers know the breakdown behavior and probably want to limit liability and negative experiences. Do safety studies take decomposing preservatives into account? (Questions, but suspect the answers are “No”)
- rs999gti 2y ago
  > chips/crackers start to taste rancid It's the oil/fat used on or in the chips/crackers that goes rancid. That stuff oxidizes when the package is opened.
  - rolph 2y ago
    it tastes bad but wont hurt you.
  - yareally 2y ago
    You can throw old tortilla chips and crackers into the air fryer and they come back out fresh.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > I’ve definitely noticed chips/crackers start to taste rancid not long after the expiration date. That's because they're not expiration dates, they're "best by" dates. They're the date at which the food starts to get less tasty in various ways, but that happens much, much sooner than when the food actually becomes unsafe to eat. Manufacturers (generally) aren't lying about those dates. They really do line up with when the food is no longer as fresh-tasting as it can possibly be. At the same time, manufacturers don't mind even a little when people confuse them with expiration dates.
  - anticensor 2y ago
    Why don't make it reliably expire at that date, with precision (less than a day of) tolerances?
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      Since the amount of time before food goes bad is incredibly variable and depends a ton on how it was treated after it left the manufacturer, I'm not sure that's a thing that is even possible. But it is a thing that isn't really necessary. With the vast majority of foodstuffs, it's really easy to tell whether or not they're safe to eat by observing, smelling, or tasting them.
throwaway22032 2y ago
Best before and use by dates are more useful if you use them as a tool when buying food, not when choosing to throw it out. If I know that I'm going to be eating something today or tomorrow then it doesn't matter, but otherwise choosing the longest dated food makes sense in order to know that it'll still be edible when I need it. For a lot of foods it's an exponential process so something that has two days left and something that has ten can look and smell exactly the same.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  At least here, there's a lot of margin built into some use-by dates also. Since they are expecting the cold chain to be broken at least somewhat while you transport that food home. A lot of stores here also do extreme discounts on things that expire that day or soon after. I've had so many dinners that were basically "oh, that thing's 80% off and I have to use it today. Fantastic."
mypastself 2y ago
> The only people who could benefit are the producers, and I could imagine an unscrupulous manufacturer shortening the date on their food so that people will sigh, throw out a half-eaten package that has “expired,” and go buy some more. Baffling argument. I’m sure producers would be much happier with indefinitely fresh products. > Distributors fear legal threats if someone eats past-dated food and becomes ill (something that has rarely happened, but it’s still a looming threat). That’s basically it. No scams or conspiracies needed. As for the proposed solution about labeling standardization, I haven’t read the linked Harvard study in full, but I also haven’t managed to find the methodology by which they estimated the $1.8 billion benefit.
mannyv 2y ago
People underestimate the cost of shipping produce. If you look at banana boxes, most of them come from Ecuador (in my area). There's a river of bananas coming from Ecuador to the US, and that river gets broken up into various tributaries which get smaller and smaller until the dribble of bananas ends up at your local store. And then they sell for .68/lb. Anything that makes those things last longer is something everyone wants. In fact, in the case of bananas that variety (Cavendish) is chosen because it lasts longer. There are plenty of produce that aren't shippable because they spoil - like Hood Strawberries, which only last for a few days and are only available locally. That's two examples, but really - the idea that producers change the expiration date is patently ridiculous, at least in the US. Frozen food and canned goods probably never expire. But things do break down. As a sort of ridiculous example, soda doesn't last forever for sure. And if it's in the sun or not refrigerated it gets weird.
- rs999gti 2y ago
  > Frozen food and canned goods probably never expire. They do, just much slower.
  - beerandt 2y ago
    We hit a peak of canned food durability probably 20-40 years ago. Where we figured out manufacturing well enough, but hadn't gone fully synthetic with liners, overly minimized wall thickness, etc. Probably packaging contamination issues as well. I've had more (young) cans rupture in the last decade than any time before, even as they're stored next to much older ones. We're doing the same thing right now with plastic - drink bottles now weak thin and brittle vs the relatively strong/ ductile stuff of 10-15yrs ago.
    - SkyPuncher 2y ago
      Sounds like manufacturing is getting better at reducing waste, since they’re able to use less material per can. Yes, you should recycle, but we all know that not everyone does.
tech_ken 2y ago
> Every so often, I go through my refrigerator, check labels on the items, and throw out anything that’s a month, or a week, or maybe a few days past the date on the label Does anyone actually do this for real? In the overwhelming majority of cases it's extremely straightforward to determine if the food is safe to eat empirically. Only in a couple highly specific cases do you need to be conservative about eating old food (meat products and cooked rice are the two I worry most about, and I don't eat much meat so it's really just the latter). If it smells bad or tastes bad: don't eat it. If you can cut off or pull off the parts that are bad, but the rest is good: you're fine. Humans can (and have) survive and thrive on a shocking variety of food items and qualities, this level of omnivory is one of our biggest evolutionary advantages. I don't even look at the expiration date unless I'm already concerned that the food might be spoiled. Am I just weird? I thought everyone did this.
- rawbert 2y ago
  Yes, I do that. But in my case it is mostly products that are months or even years after BBE. I think most waste we produce is from bread. Got a little better when we started baking ourselves.
- asquabventured 2y ago
  Yes, there are lots of people who do this. Type A personality from my personal experience lets the tail wag the dog at times and food has a schedule printed on it so it’s just an easy thing to do just follow the directions and schedule and fuck all context. Life seems easier if you have the ability to put blinders on and never question why?
- glonq 2y ago
  Even though I think my sense of smell and taste is fine, I have been accused on multiple occasions of eating food that was not good. In fact, my children have stopped asking me whether an item in the fridge is okay because they don't trust me :D
  - tharkun__ 2y ago
    If I had a nickel for every time I have been asked by family to throw out awesome cheese because "it's moldy"... (it was just "sweating" the salts and tasted amazing)
mindslight 2y ago
There has to be a term for this type of article that throws out a bunch of subjects in a purported progression of logical argument, but is really only taking the reader on an emotional journey. Non-interactive Gish gallop? If you want to focus on fallacious expiration dates, the don't drag in the subject of food distributors wasting food out of commercial expedience. If you want to talk about people going hungry in a country of plenty, then don't talk about individually wasting food. If you want to talk about fresh water being squandered, don't do it in a pan-country context where most of that water is a renewable resource continually falling from the sky. If you want to riff on the ridiculousness of landfills, don't focus on one of their most decomposable ingredients. All of these things are certainly problems to be discussed in their own right, but I don't see how lumping them together in one big ball does anything besides letting readers feel that they might do something about any of the larger problems.
- jwagenet 2y ago
  Food waste in landfills is actually a huge issue because it doesn’t decompose normally. It typically gets buried and undergoes anaerobic decomposition, producing methane, which is much worse in the short term as a greenhouse gas than CO2.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Some landfills count as major methane ultra-emitter sources visible from satellites like MethaneSAT.
JohnMakin 2y ago
Eggs are a great example of this - they can be good to eat several weeks after their date when refrigerated. Especially if you do stuff like flip them every now and then. All you have to do is put them in a pot of water, and if it doesn't float, you're fine.
- bad_username 2y ago
  > All you have to do is put them in a pot of water, and if it doesn't float, you're fine. How does that work? Buoyancy is determined by the volume and mass (i.e. density) of the egg, and neither of them changes when the egg goes bad.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    An egg shell is porous
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    As time passes, some of the liquid content escapes through the shell and evaporates, being replaced by air, increasing its buoyancy. Even if the liqud->air change doesn't directly cause spoilage (?) the passage of time at least correlates with both.
- rconti 2y ago
  We fairly regularly eat eggs that are many months old, but I make sure they aren't floaters at least.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Smell them before you eat them. Floating only means the egg is old, which isn't causal for also being bad.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Here's how to decode the dates. And a floating egg may still be safe to use. https://food.unl.edu/article/cracking-date-code-egg-cartons https://food.unl.edu/article/cracking-date-code-egg-cartons
QuadmasterXLII 2y ago
As global policy, there is a very important, optimal amount of food waste: to first order, the xth percentile of uncontrolled variance in harvest size, where x is the percentage of years when we are willing to let some fraction of the population to go hungry. We can start eating 'expired' cheese in an emergency a hell of a lot easier than we can go back in time a year and a half and raise more calfs.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  If the harvest is down 25% this year, the result is not that 75% of people eat the same amount of food as they do now and 25% starve to death, it's that the price of food increases and then the average person buys 25% less food. A significant percentage of the world population is overweight. That implies not only that they're eating in a caloric surplus and could feasibly eat less than they do now forever, but that they could eat in a caloric deficit for a period of time and the result would benefit their health. If production of food was temporarily low, people would not have to resort to eating foods that are expired, they could simply eat foods that are stored. The date on the can of soup in your pantry is two years from now, and you were going to eat it two years from now, but you can also eat it now. Low harvests in one year can generally be addressed by the next year, for example by planting different crops this year that aren't susceptible to this year's problem, or planting crops in a larger amount of land area, possibly in another part of the world not experiencing the same yield issues. The optimal amount of food waste is none.
- kragen 2y ago
  you can stockpile food safely for a lot more than a year
rolph 2y ago
will it harm you, vs does it still meet marketing criteria ? if the can is undamaged, the "best before" date has little to do with safety. how the items were stored is likely more important. ive eaten 7 year old canned seafood from pantry shelf, but i would probably use "sun meat" bulge, or corroded cans for bait.
yumraj 2y ago
It rubs me the wrong way when most people refer to best by date on food items as the expiration date. Looks, smell and taste go far in deciding if food is good to eat or not. Interestingly even medicines don’t magically go bad the day after the expiration date.
- nick7376182 2y ago
  Some medicinal compounds are hygroscopic and may go bad over time due to the permeability of moisture through the packaging. (Hence the use of metallized foils, which have nearly zero moisture permeability). Same for oxygen/oxidisation. But yeah, depends on how far past expiry you go.
- MarkLowenstein 2y ago
  It's also a logically trivial statement. There is no threshold for "best"--food quality is a matter of degree. So you can cite any date at all and justifiably say the food is "best" before that date.
  - kragen 2y ago
    not cheese or wine
throwaway14356 2y ago
when the iron curtain went up i visited a corner store in east Germany. They had a lot of fresh products! The shelves were divided into days. Today's yogurt, 1 day old, 2 days, 3 days, 4, 5 with a pricing curve that started with unusually expensive, 1 day was a lot cheaper, the rest declined linearly until the last single bottle thar was 1/20 the price of the first. A really old lady at crawling speed made her way to the oldest cheapest bottle and grew a beautiful smile on her face. Mind blown, they sell everything!? I thought as I grabbed some milk at tourist trap rates. Those prices are obviously for me. The idea of spending less felt just shameful. How dare I think that?
deleted 2y ago
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kazinator 2y ago
There is one truth you can more or less rely on. If there are two items on the shelf X and Y, such that (< (best-before X) (best-before Y)), then you know X is the older item. A jar of peanut butter that is best before January 2025 is one month older than one that is February 2025. Therefore, of course, you want to grab the latter one. Whether it's actually good until February 2025 is just someone's opinion. Furthermore, if you know that X is a month older than Y, then you know something else: X is at least a month old, today. If you buy the January 2025 jar of peanut butter, you're getting something that was already around for a month when the February 2025 jar was just made, assuming they keep the best before offset the same between runs. And then add the time it took for the jars to arrive to that store shelf. I would much rather see "date packaged" on every product. For instance, roasted coffee beans are not very good past only two or three weeks, but not in a way that you would get sick from consuming them. (You can keep them in the freezer to keep the flavor a bit longer.) The exact roast date is important, which they often don't want you to know, substituting a fictitious best before date which includes a generous margin regarding how long it's going to sit in warehouses and on store shelves.
- throwaway20222 2y ago
  Small nit - coffee beans are often times better after 10-14 days of roasting and have had some time for degassing when making espresso. Earlier than that and you will get a lot more creme than you really want if you are going for a balanced shot. But in the end it’s all taste so I can also be wrong for your personal situation.
  - bozhark 2y ago
    Afgato? <14 days from roast Expresso > 14 days from roast Cheers
    - aryonoco 2y ago
      What is Expresso?
      - 2y ago
neilv 2y ago
A few food-poisonings can make one cautious about food safety... Even though I'm pretty frugal, one measure I currently practice is to usually not touch food past the best-by/sell-by/expiration date. (Though I'll take this article into consideration, going forward.) Since I don't like waste, unopened shelf-stable food packages go to the "free stuff" shelves in my large apartment building, where they disappear very quickly. (Other measures included getting thermometers for fridge and freezer, stopping using sponges and brushes to wash dishes because the occasional microwaving of them might not be enough, tracking dates that some kinds of food were opened/started, and paying attention to packaging dents/puffiness/unsealing.)
- Turing_Machine 2y ago
  > Even though I'm pretty frugal, one measure I currently practice is to usually not touch food past the best-by/sell-by/expiration date. Three different things. Best-by -> may not be particularly unsafe, but starts tasting gnarly as time goes on. Sell-by -> the store should sell it by this date, but there's still a healthy margin of time left for you to keep it on your shelves and eat it. Expiration -> They definitely don't want you to eat it after this date.
  - kohbo 2y ago
    Why should they sell it by that date?
- locallost 2y ago
  I've been actively ignoring these for the last 15 years. For things like fresh meat the smell test is more important - I would even not use something that the label says is good if it smells bad, which happened. Very rarely, but it happened. They have to put those things in most places by law, e.g. honey, even though something with a high level of sugar can last a very long time. Honey can probably last forever. I've eaten candy 10 years past expiry date, some kind of a sugary spread 4 years after expiration etc. I've even had yoghurt a month past expiry. Did not expect, but it was fine after taking a small sip. It's not completely useless for all things and it is some indication to at least pay more attention, but for the most part it's not really decisive.
moribvndvs 2y ago
If it doesn’t look weird, smell weird, have an off taste or texture change, let it rip. I’ve notoriously used stuff way beyond its sell by date and I’ve never gotten sick from it. I used to work at a grocery store and also did a lot of dumpster diving when I was younger because I find the amount of perfectly good food wasted along with atrocious amounts of packaging fucking offensive.
- jpeeler 2y ago
  Yeah there's a service called "Too Good to Go" available in select larger cities in the US that allows you to purchase "old" food and save it from waste. The whole point of the service is to enable consumption of goods past the sell-by date. Here[1] their website (perhaps biased) claims that a broad range of the dates don't matter for one's health. [1] https://next.toogoodtogo.com/en-us/look-smell-taste https://next.toogoodtogo.com/en-us/look-smell-taste
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Some guys I hung out with who lived in one of the most expensive ZIP codes in the US selectively freeganed pretty good grub from behind Whole Foods. IIRC, there is an inconsistent practice where grocers purposely destroy food they throw out to prevent freeganing. I do wonder about how many years various condiments last, especially those that don't contain any preservatives. Have had ketchup turn very dark brown before. At a minimum, barely expired food should be donated to nonprofits. At worst, food unfit for human consumption should be composted. Disposing of it in landfills is a waste of waste.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I had a neighbor growing up who would get large quantities of vegetables and breads from the local grocery store "for her chickens". I'm sure that she actually did give the bad stuff to them, but she also regularly made rounds about the neighborhood placing perfectly good food that was just past its expiration date.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Nice. Chickens will eat almost anything. Some folks I knew even gave their chickens coffee grounds.
- xp84 2y ago
  AFAIK, no nonprofits would touch so-called “expired” food, barely or otherwise. Some poor person falls ill after consuming it, whether or not there was even any real correlation, and they would be sued. And if any store or manufacturer donated the food they’re going to be sued too.
ARandomerDude 2y ago
The flip side is if we didn’t waste so much food, farmers (often in poorer countries) would lose a lot of money. While I’m certainly a fan of frugality, I’m not going to lose sleep about over-hiring rice farmers in Ecuador.
- ajuc 2y ago
  That's a common mistake when thinking about economy (so called broken window fallacy). It's not actually making lives of people in poor countries better when we waste more of what they produce. Food becoming more expansive just means middleman will have higher margin, and the poor people will starve more.
  - croes 2y ago
    The same is true, the other way around. If we waste less, money lose their jobs and can't afford food. You can bet that it's always the poor who pay the price.
    - ajuc 2y ago
      It's not. Scarcity is bad for poor people, abundance is good. In the limit - if food is abundant to the point of being worthless - nobody starves. If the food is so rare it's more expansive than gold - almost everybody starves.
      - croes 2y ago
        Food is already abundant but it rather gets destroyed than sold for nothing.
        ajuc 2y ago
        It's not abundant enough. When it was more scarce - more people starved. Starvation was common even in Europe till the end of WW2 (because after WW2 cheap artificial fertillizers were introduced). And that starvation happened mostly in unindustrialized countries (meaning - 90%+ of population worked in agriculture).
fortran77 2y ago
Most people in the US are overweight or obese. Most “food waste” is from people eating more food than they need. This costs society trillions of dollars in environmental costs, and medical costs.
talldatethrow 2y ago
When I was younger I for some reason thought butter doesn't go bad. I found some butter that was two years old in my fridge. I made cookies from them, and ate them all. I told my parents I finally ate that butter they gave me to take home with thanksgiving leftovers a few years ago and they looked at me like I was crazy and told me that butter expires. Now I'm not so sure.
- 0xDEADFED5 2y ago
  salted American butter lasts a long ass time in the fridge.
- kragen 2y ago
  the big issue with butter is rancidity, which increases oxidative stress on your body. but butter is mostly saturated, so even at room temperature it lasts months. two years in the fridge is probably fine
joecool1029 2y ago
Only one person mentioned this in passing so far, but I highly recommend getting a thermometer for your refrigerator to ensure it's keeping food cold enough for safety. I really think a lot of people have no clue what the inside temperature of their fridges are and think it's totally normal to have milk and other food spoil within a week. It's also not uncommon to have warmer and colder spots in it depending on airflow.
- GoofGarage 2y ago
  Yep, moreover they cost a whopping $7. Not only can you ensure things are in a safe range, but also not too cold to further improve efficiency. An oven thermometer is another one I’ll recommend, as the temperature the oven claims it’s at is a function of where the sensors are. It’s not uncommon for it to be consistently off by 5-6%, which can really matter if you want the best results. Again, about $7 can solve that one too.
kazinator 2y ago
Here is what I reach for if I have a flu and need to work through it: https://i.imgur.com/hJ2OgWp.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/hJ2OgWp.jpeg Expires 2008. I'm subitizing about 12 tablets left in there, which is half. So this should easily last past 2040.
- kragen 2y ago
  the precious relics of a wiser age, a civilization now fallen
  - kazinator 2y ago
    Site visitors from the USA be like droolin' over the pseudoephedrine content. The real deal that unclogs da schnoz.
    - kragen 2y ago
      not just usa, sadly
bradley13 2y ago
What bugs me is the exaggeration about food waste. How can we deal with a problem, f we don't know the true scope of it? Where I live, if you feed leftovers to your dog, that counts as food waste. As if the dog wouldn't have to eat something else? Peel a carrot, and the peel is food waste. WTF? Such strict definitions are counterproductive, because we cannot judge the actual extent of the problem.
dudeinjapan 2y ago
Apu Nahasapeemapetilon knew about this already.
Keiand 2y ago
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Keiand 2y ago
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DonHopkins 2y ago
Th "Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't" guy gives a tour of the bargain section of the woke grocery store: https://youtu.be/PUFQouwqbe8?t=181 https://youtu.be/PUFQouwqbe8?t=181
Fumblenuts 2y ago
I've been working in the produce department at a grocery store for a few years, and the rule we're told is to remove items a day before their best-before date (or if it looks expired or unsellable), which then get packed and sent to the food bank (even though IMO 80-90% of it is kinda inedible). Other stores (even from the same company as mine) might instead have a compost heap and throw all old produce there and/or give a discount to those items. Best-before dates are crucial for us since we need them to figure out how long a product has been sitting on the shelf (especially the items that can sit on the shelf for months) and especially for keeping the warehouse organized as we can days of orders stockpiled with 3+ different best-before dates, and it's important to always put out the oldest product otherwise the whole box can go bad. Also, as a fun fact, since there are thousands of items, old bad produce can be often be missed. One time I found some prunes that had been past their best-before date for nearly a year. Also, I've regularly witnessed items that go bad basically right as we get them (maybe 5 or so days before their best-before date) while other items can last a week or two after their best-before date just fine. So yeah, for regular people, best-before dates are more like a suggestion that roughly tells you how old the item is and maybe the mean average time the item goes bad (depending on how it's regulated). If it's near the item is roughly near its best before, maybe just give it a close look and a sniff. If it looks and smells fine, it's probably fine.
- TonyTrapp 2y ago
  > Also, as a fun fact, since there are thousands of items, old bad produce can be often be missed. One time I found some prunes that had been past their best-before date for nearly a year. I once bought a glass of jam in a store that was already past its best-before date. It was still perfectly good, especially for baking. If I had seen that before leaving the store, I might have tried to haggle down the price :)
navaati 2y ago
In France (and probably many other places), supermarkets have a shelf with "close to expiry date" produces. They slap a label on each with a new price at a certain discount, from -30 to -50%, and a new barcode over the original barcode. I _love it_. As it's a rotating subset of what's in the shop, it gives me ideas on what to cook. I basically don't go in the other aisles anymore: I enter the shop, go straight straight to what I jokingly call "the rotten aisle" and make a menu for the next 3 to 5 days from what's available. Which means that yes, I'm often eating stuff a couple days past their official date, whatever. It's made inflation bearable for me, the flip side being that I'm now unable to buy food anywhere else, the price shock is just too much, I'm like "no way I'm paying that for food" ^^".
smusamashah 2y ago
Do people really feel at ease throwing away food? Where I am from, generally food is respected. Throwing food actually expired (you could see/smell/taste it's expired) food away has been a guilty act. Was always told while growing up to not waste food from the plate I am eating in. If not right now, then eat later. When I saw Spain's tomato fight event, it made feel very uneasy thinking how can they easily waste/play with perfectly good food.
cadamsau 2y ago
Very interesting and informative piece, but it includes an assumption without evidence - which is, food that’s unwanted in its first use on a shelf is not put to its best possible use after it proves unwanted. Where does “wasted” food actually go? The article claims it ends up in landfills and plowed into fields, but doesn’t give examples or evidence to back that up. If more research is done and it’s uncovered that wasted food does have some sort of afterlife, that’s a sign of the market at work. No doubt some unwanted food isn’t used in an optimal way, but if for example, some gets turned into feedlot and others into pet food, it radically changes the narrative. A well-researched article about broadly what happens to “wasted food” would really help. But right now it’s not clear if there’s anything here to fix.
cadamsau 2y ago
The “best before” and “consume by” dates are not lies. They’re dates after which the manufacturer believes you won’t enjoy the product as much.

141 points by gsky 2y ago

If anyone thinks that “expires” date is anything but a recommendation, they should seriously consider improving their reasoning skills. Might actually be a good interview question.

gnicholas 2y ago
I know some people who are very conservative about food expiration dates, generally based on past bad experiences. It would not be a good idea to filter out people just based on this IMO. These people are very diligent workers and extremely intelligent regarding work-related issues so it would be a shame to pass them over based on personal habits.

BobbyTables2 2y ago

Believing expiration dates on raw, unsealed food is silly. But for packaged food, I have to wonder if the companies are as evil as some would wish. I’ve definitely noticed chips/crackers start to taste rancid not long after the expiration date. Preservatives and such do break down. Do we really want to be eating that? The manufacturers know the breakdown behavior and probably want to limit liability and negative experiences. Do safety studies take decomposing preservatives into account? (Questions, but suspect the answers are “No”)

rs999gti 2y ago
> chips/crackers start to taste rancid It's the oil/fat used on or in the chips/crackers that goes rancid. That stuff oxidizes when the package is opened.
- rolph 2y ago
  it tastes bad but wont hurt you.
- yareally 2y ago
  You can throw old tortilla chips and crackers into the air fryer and they come back out fresh.
JohnFen 2y ago
> I’ve definitely noticed chips/crackers start to taste rancid not long after the expiration date. That's because they're not expiration dates, they're "best by" dates. They're the date at which the food starts to get less tasty in various ways, but that happens much, much sooner than when the food actually becomes unsafe to eat. Manufacturers (generally) aren't lying about those dates. They really do line up with when the food is no longer as fresh-tasting as it can possibly be. At the same time, manufacturers don't mind even a little when people confuse them with expiration dates.
- anticensor 2y ago
  Why don't make it reliably expire at that date, with precision (less than a day of) tolerances?
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    Since the amount of time before food goes bad is incredibly variable and depends a ton on how it was treated after it left the manufacturer, I'm not sure that's a thing that is even possible. But it is a thing that isn't really necessary. With the vast majority of foodstuffs, it's really easy to tell whether or not they're safe to eat by observing, smelling, or tasting them.

throwaway22032 2y ago

Best before and use by dates are more useful if you use them as a tool when buying food, not when choosing to throw it out. If I know that I'm going to be eating something today or tomorrow then it doesn't matter, but otherwise choosing the longest dated food makes sense in order to know that it'll still be edible when I need it. For a lot of foods it's an exponential process so something that has two days left and something that has ten can look and smell exactly the same.

jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
At least here, there's a lot of margin built into some use-by dates also. Since they are expecting the cold chain to be broken at least somewhat while you transport that food home. A lot of stores here also do extreme discounts on things that expire that day or soon after. I've had so many dinners that were basically "oh, that thing's 80% off and I have to use it today. Fantastic."

mypastself 2y ago

> The only people who could benefit are the producers, and I could imagine an unscrupulous manufacturer shortening the date on their food so that people will sigh, throw out a half-eaten package that has “expired,” and go buy some more. Baffling argument. I’m sure producers would be much happier with indefinitely fresh products. > Distributors fear legal threats if someone eats past-dated food and becomes ill (something that has rarely happened, but it’s still a looming threat). That’s basically it. No scams or conspiracies needed. As for the proposed solution about labeling standardization, I haven’t read the linked Harvard study in full, but I also haven’t managed to find the methodology by which they estimated the $1.8 billion benefit.

mannyv 2y ago

People underestimate the cost of shipping produce. If you look at banana boxes, most of them come from Ecuador (in my area). There's a river of bananas coming from Ecuador to the US, and that river gets broken up into various tributaries which get smaller and smaller until the dribble of bananas ends up at your local store. And then they sell for .68/lb. Anything that makes those things last longer is something everyone wants. In fact, in the case of bananas that variety (Cavendish) is chosen because it lasts longer. There are plenty of produce that aren't shippable because they spoil - like Hood Strawberries, which only last for a few days and are only available locally. That's two examples, but really - the idea that producers change the expiration date is patently ridiculous, at least in the US. Frozen food and canned goods probably never expire. But things do break down. As a sort of ridiculous example, soda doesn't last forever for sure. And if it's in the sun or not refrigerated it gets weird.

rs999gti 2y ago
> Frozen food and canned goods probably never expire. They do, just much slower.
- beerandt 2y ago
  We hit a peak of canned food durability probably 20-40 years ago. Where we figured out manufacturing well enough, but hadn't gone fully synthetic with liners, overly minimized wall thickness, etc. Probably packaging contamination issues as well. I've had more (young) cans rupture in the last decade than any time before, even as they're stored next to much older ones. We're doing the same thing right now with plastic - drink bottles now weak thin and brittle vs the relatively strong/ ductile stuff of 10-15yrs ago.
  - SkyPuncher 2y ago
    Sounds like manufacturing is getting better at reducing waste, since they’re able to use less material per can. Yes, you should recycle, but we all know that not everyone does.

tech_ken 2y ago

> Every so often, I go through my refrigerator, check labels on the items, and throw out anything that’s a month, or a week, or maybe a few days past the date on the label Does anyone actually do this for real? In the overwhelming majority of cases it's extremely straightforward to determine if the food is safe to eat empirically. Only in a couple highly specific cases do you need to be conservative about eating old food (meat products and cooked rice are the two I worry most about, and I don't eat much meat so it's really just the latter). If it smells bad or tastes bad: don't eat it. If you can cut off or pull off the parts that are bad, but the rest is good: you're fine. Humans can (and have) survive and thrive on a shocking variety of food items and qualities, this level of omnivory is one of our biggest evolutionary advantages. I don't even look at the expiration date unless I'm already concerned that the food might be spoiled. Am I just weird? I thought everyone did this.

rawbert 2y ago
Yes, I do that. But in my case it is mostly products that are months or even years after BBE. I think most waste we produce is from bread. Got a little better when we started baking ourselves.
asquabventured 2y ago
Yes, there are lots of people who do this. Type A personality from my personal experience lets the tail wag the dog at times and food has a schedule printed on it so it’s just an easy thing to do just follow the directions and schedule and fuck all context. Life seems easier if you have the ability to put blinders on and never question why?
glonq 2y ago
Even though I think my sense of smell and taste is fine, I have been accused on multiple occasions of eating food that was not good. In fact, my children have stopped asking me whether an item in the fridge is okay because they don't trust me :D
- tharkun__ 2y ago
  If I had a nickel for every time I have been asked by family to throw out awesome cheese because "it's moldy"... (it was just "sweating" the salts and tasted amazing)

mindslight 2y ago

There has to be a term for this type of article that throws out a bunch of subjects in a purported progression of logical argument, but is really only taking the reader on an emotional journey. Non-interactive Gish gallop? If you want to focus on fallacious expiration dates, the don't drag in the subject of food distributors wasting food out of commercial expedience. If you want to talk about people going hungry in a country of plenty, then don't talk about individually wasting food. If you want to talk about fresh water being squandered, don't do it in a pan-country context where most of that water is a renewable resource continually falling from the sky. If you want to riff on the ridiculousness of landfills, don't focus on one of their most decomposable ingredients. All of these things are certainly problems to be discussed in their own right, but I don't see how lumping them together in one big ball does anything besides letting readers feel that they might do something about any of the larger problems.

jwagenet 2y ago
Food waste in landfills is actually a huge issue because it doesn’t decompose normally. It typically gets buried and undergoes anaerobic decomposition, producing methane, which is much worse in the short term as a greenhouse gas than CO2.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Some landfills count as major methane ultra-emitter sources visible from satellites like MethaneSAT.

JohnMakin 2y ago

Eggs are a great example of this - they can be good to eat several weeks after their date when refrigerated. Especially if you do stuff like flip them every now and then. All you have to do is put them in a pot of water, and if it doesn't float, you're fine.

bad_username 2y ago
> All you have to do is put them in a pot of water, and if it doesn't float, you're fine. How does that work? Buoyancy is determined by the volume and mass (i.e. density) of the egg, and neither of them changes when the egg goes bad.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  An egg shell is porous
- Terr_ 2y ago
  As time passes, some of the liquid content escapes through the shell and evaporates, being replaced by air, increasing its buoyancy. Even if the liqud->air change doesn't directly cause spoilage (?) the passage of time at least correlates with both.
rconti 2y ago
We fairly regularly eat eggs that are many months old, but I make sure they aren't floaters at least.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Smell them before you eat them. Floating only means the egg is old, which isn't causal for also being bad.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Here's how to decode the dates. And a floating egg may still be safe to use. https://food.unl.edu/article/cracking-date-code-egg-cartons https://food.unl.edu/article/cracking-date-code-egg-cartons

QuadmasterXLII 2y ago

As global policy, there is a very important, optimal amount of food waste: to first order, the xth percentile of uncontrolled variance in harvest size, where x is the percentage of years when we are willing to let some fraction of the population to go hungry. We can start eating 'expired' cheese in an emergency a hell of a lot easier than we can go back in time a year and a half and raise more calfs.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
If the harvest is down 25% this year, the result is not that 75% of people eat the same amount of food as they do now and 25% starve to death, it's that the price of food increases and then the average person buys 25% less food. A significant percentage of the world population is overweight. That implies not only that they're eating in a caloric surplus and could feasibly eat less than they do now forever, but that they could eat in a caloric deficit for a period of time and the result would benefit their health. If production of food was temporarily low, people would not have to resort to eating foods that are expired, they could simply eat foods that are stored. The date on the can of soup in your pantry is two years from now, and you were going to eat it two years from now, but you can also eat it now. Low harvests in one year can generally be addressed by the next year, for example by planting different crops this year that aren't susceptible to this year's problem, or planting crops in a larger amount of land area, possibly in another part of the world not experiencing the same yield issues. The optimal amount of food waste is none.
kragen 2y ago
you can stockpile food safely for a lot more than a year

rolph 2y ago

will it harm you, vs does it still meet marketing criteria ? if the can is undamaged, the "best before" date has little to do with safety. how the items were stored is likely more important. ive eaten 7 year old canned seafood from pantry shelf, but i would probably use "sun meat" bulge, or corroded cans for bait.

yumraj 2y ago

It rubs me the wrong way when most people refer to best by date on food items as the expiration date. Looks, smell and taste go far in deciding if food is good to eat or not. Interestingly even medicines don’t magically go bad the day after the expiration date.

nick7376182 2y ago
Some medicinal compounds are hygroscopic and may go bad over time due to the permeability of moisture through the packaging. (Hence the use of metallized foils, which have nearly zero moisture permeability). Same for oxygen/oxidisation. But yeah, depends on how far past expiry you go.
MarkLowenstein 2y ago
It's also a logically trivial statement. There is no threshold for "best"--food quality is a matter of degree. So you can cite any date at all and justifiably say the food is "best" before that date.
- kragen 2y ago
  not cheese or wine

throwaway14356 2y ago

when the iron curtain went up i visited a corner store in east Germany. They had a lot of fresh products! The shelves were divided into days. Today's yogurt, 1 day old, 2 days, 3 days, 4, 5 with a pricing curve that started with unusually expensive, 1 day was a lot cheaper, the rest declined linearly until the last single bottle thar was 1/20 the price of the first. A really old lady at crawling speed made her way to the oldest cheapest bottle and grew a beautiful smile on her face. Mind blown, they sell everything!? I thought as I grabbed some milk at tourist trap rates. Those prices are obviously for me. The idea of spending less felt just shameful. How dare I think that?

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kazinator 2y ago

There is one truth you can more or less rely on. If there are two items on the shelf X and Y, such that (< (best-before X) (best-before Y)), then you know X is the older item. A jar of peanut butter that is best before January 2025 is one month older than one that is February 2025. Therefore, of course, you want to grab the latter one. Whether it's actually good until February 2025 is just someone's opinion. Furthermore, if you know that X is a month older than Y, then you know something else: X is at least a month old, today. If you buy the January 2025 jar of peanut butter, you're getting something that was already around for a month when the February 2025 jar was just made, assuming they keep the best before offset the same between runs. And then add the time it took for the jars to arrive to that store shelf. I would much rather see "date packaged" on every product. For instance, roasted coffee beans are not very good past only two or three weeks, but not in a way that you would get sick from consuming them. (You can keep them in the freezer to keep the flavor a bit longer.) The exact roast date is important, which they often don't want you to know, substituting a fictitious best before date which includes a generous margin regarding how long it's going to sit in warehouses and on store shelves.

throwaway20222 2y ago
Small nit - coffee beans are often times better after 10-14 days of roasting and have had some time for degassing when making espresso. Earlier than that and you will get a lot more creme than you really want if you are going for a balanced shot. But in the end it’s all taste so I can also be wrong for your personal situation.
- bozhark 2y ago
  Afgato? <14 days from roast Expresso > 14 days from roast Cheers
  - aryonoco 2y ago
    What is Expresso?
    - 2y ago

neilv 2y ago

A few food-poisonings can make one cautious about food safety... Even though I'm pretty frugal, one measure I currently practice is to usually not touch food past the best-by/sell-by/expiration date. (Though I'll take this article into consideration, going forward.) Since I don't like waste, unopened shelf-stable food packages go to the "free stuff" shelves in my large apartment building, where they disappear very quickly. (Other measures included getting thermometers for fridge and freezer, stopping using sponges and brushes to wash dishes because the occasional microwaving of them might not be enough, tracking dates that some kinds of food were opened/started, and paying attention to packaging dents/puffiness/unsealing.)

Turing_Machine 2y ago
> Even though I'm pretty frugal, one measure I currently practice is to usually not touch food past the best-by/sell-by/expiration date. Three different things. Best-by -> may not be particularly unsafe, but starts tasting gnarly as time goes on. Sell-by -> the store should sell it by this date, but there's still a healthy margin of time left for you to keep it on your shelves and eat it. Expiration -> They definitely don't want you to eat it after this date.
- kohbo 2y ago
  Why should they sell it by that date?
locallost 2y ago
I've been actively ignoring these for the last 15 years. For things like fresh meat the smell test is more important - I would even not use something that the label says is good if it smells bad, which happened. Very rarely, but it happened. They have to put those things in most places by law, e.g. honey, even though something with a high level of sugar can last a very long time. Honey can probably last forever. I've eaten candy 10 years past expiry date, some kind of a sugary spread 4 years after expiration etc. I've even had yoghurt a month past expiry. Did not expect, but it was fine after taking a small sip. It's not completely useless for all things and it is some indication to at least pay more attention, but for the most part it's not really decisive.

moribvndvs 2y ago

If it doesn’t look weird, smell weird, have an off taste or texture change, let it rip. I’ve notoriously used stuff way beyond its sell by date and I’ve never gotten sick from it. I used to work at a grocery store and also did a lot of dumpster diving when I was younger because I find the amount of perfectly good food wasted along with atrocious amounts of packaging fucking offensive.

jpeeler 2y ago
Yeah there's a service called "Too Good to Go" available in select larger cities in the US that allows you to purchase "old" food and save it from waste. The whole point of the service is to enable consumption of goods past the sell-by date. Here[1] their website (perhaps biased) claims that a broad range of the dates don't matter for one's health. [1] https://next.toogoodtogo.com/en-us/look-smell-taste https://next.toogoodtogo.com/en-us/look-smell-taste

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

Some guys I hung out with who lived in one of the most expensive ZIP codes in the US selectively freeganed pretty good grub from behind Whole Foods. IIRC, there is an inconsistent practice where grocers purposely destroy food they throw out to prevent freeganing. I do wonder about how many years various condiments last, especially those that don't contain any preservatives. Have had ketchup turn very dark brown before. At a minimum, barely expired food should be donated to nonprofits. At worst, food unfit for human consumption should be composted. Disposing of it in landfills is a waste of waste.

lolinder 2y ago
I had a neighbor growing up who would get large quantities of vegetables and breads from the local grocery store "for her chickens". I'm sure that she actually did give the bad stuff to them, but she also regularly made rounds about the neighborhood placing perfectly good food that was just past its expiration date.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Nice. Chickens will eat almost anything. Some folks I knew even gave their chickens coffee grounds.
xp84 2y ago
AFAIK, no nonprofits would touch so-called “expired” food, barely or otherwise. Some poor person falls ill after consuming it, whether or not there was even any real correlation, and they would be sued. And if any store or manufacturer donated the food they’re going to be sued too.

ARandomerDude 2y ago

The flip side is if we didn’t waste so much food, farmers (often in poorer countries) would lose a lot of money. While I’m certainly a fan of frugality, I’m not going to lose sleep about over-hiring rice farmers in Ecuador.

ajuc 2y ago
That's a common mistake when thinking about economy (so called broken window fallacy). It's not actually making lives of people in poor countries better when we waste more of what they produce. Food becoming more expansive just means middleman will have higher margin, and the poor people will starve more.
- croes 2y ago
  The same is true, the other way around. If we waste less, money lose their jobs and can't afford food. You can bet that it's always the poor who pay the price.
  - ajuc 2y ago
    It's not. Scarcity is bad for poor people, abundance is good. In the limit - if food is abundant to the point of being worthless - nobody starves. If the food is so rare it's more expansive than gold - almost everybody starves.
    - croes 2y ago
      Food is already abundant but it rather gets destroyed than sold for nothing.
      - ajuc 2y ago
        It's not abundant enough. When it was more scarce - more people starved. Starvation was common even in Europe till the end of WW2 (because after WW2 cheap artificial fertillizers were introduced). And that starvation happened mostly in unindustrialized countries (meaning - 90%+ of population worked in agriculture).

fortran77 2y ago

Most people in the US are overweight or obese. Most “food waste” is from people eating more food than they need. This costs society trillions of dollars in environmental costs, and medical costs.

talldatethrow 2y ago

When I was younger I for some reason thought butter doesn't go bad. I found some butter that was two years old in my fridge. I made cookies from them, and ate them all. I told my parents I finally ate that butter they gave me to take home with thanksgiving leftovers a few years ago and they looked at me like I was crazy and told me that butter expires. Now I'm not so sure.

0xDEADFED5 2y ago
salted American butter lasts a long ass time in the fridge.
kragen 2y ago
the big issue with butter is rancidity, which increases oxidative stress on your body. but butter is mostly saturated, so even at room temperature it lasts months. two years in the fridge is probably fine

joecool1029 2y ago

Only one person mentioned this in passing so far, but I highly recommend getting a thermometer for your refrigerator to ensure it's keeping food cold enough for safety. I really think a lot of people have no clue what the inside temperature of their fridges are and think it's totally normal to have milk and other food spoil within a week. It's also not uncommon to have warmer and colder spots in it depending on airflow.

GoofGarage 2y ago
Yep, moreover they cost a whopping $7. Not only can you ensure things are in a safe range, but also not too cold to further improve efficiency. An oven thermometer is another one I’ll recommend, as the temperature the oven claims it’s at is a function of where the sensors are. It’s not uncommon for it to be consistently off by 5-6%, which can really matter if you want the best results. Again, about $7 can solve that one too.

kazinator 2y ago

Here is what I reach for if I have a flu and need to work through it: https://i.imgur.com/hJ2OgWp.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/hJ2OgWp.jpeg Expires 2008. I'm subitizing about 12 tablets left in there, which is half. So this should easily last past 2040.

kragen 2y ago
the precious relics of a wiser age, a civilization now fallen
- kazinator 2y ago
  Site visitors from the USA be like droolin' over the pseudoephedrine content. The real deal that unclogs da schnoz.
  - kragen 2y ago
    not just usa, sadly

bradley13 2y ago

What bugs me is the exaggeration about food waste. How can we deal with a problem, f we don't know the true scope of it? Where I live, if you feed leftovers to your dog, that counts as food waste. As if the dog wouldn't have to eat something else? Peel a carrot, and the peel is food waste. WTF? Such strict definitions are counterproductive, because we cannot judge the actual extent of the problem.

dudeinjapan 2y ago

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon knew about this already.

Keiand 2y ago

[flagged]

Keiand 2y ago

[flagged]

DonHopkins 2y ago

Th "Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't" guy gives a tour of the bargain section of the woke grocery store: https://youtu.be/PUFQouwqbe8?t=181 https://youtu.be/PUFQouwqbe8?t=181

Fumblenuts 2y ago

I've been working in the produce department at a grocery store for a few years, and the rule we're told is to remove items a day before their best-before date (or if it looks expired or unsellable), which then get packed and sent to the food bank (even though IMO 80-90% of it is kinda inedible). Other stores (even from the same company as mine) might instead have a compost heap and throw all old produce there and/or give a discount to those items. Best-before dates are crucial for us since we need them to figure out how long a product has been sitting on the shelf (especially the items that can sit on the shelf for months) and especially for keeping the warehouse organized as we can days of orders stockpiled with 3+ different best-before dates, and it's important to always put out the oldest product otherwise the whole box can go bad. Also, as a fun fact, since there are thousands of items, old bad produce can be often be missed. One time I found some prunes that had been past their best-before date for nearly a year. Also, I've regularly witnessed items that go bad basically right as we get them (maybe 5 or so days before their best-before date) while other items can last a week or two after their best-before date just fine. So yeah, for regular people, best-before dates are more like a suggestion that roughly tells you how old the item is and maybe the mean average time the item goes bad (depending on how it's regulated). If it's near the item is roughly near its best before, maybe just give it a close look and a sniff. If it looks and smells fine, it's probably fine.

TonyTrapp 2y ago
> Also, as a fun fact, since there are thousands of items, old bad produce can be often be missed. One time I found some prunes that had been past their best-before date for nearly a year. I once bought a glass of jam in a store that was already past its best-before date. It was still perfectly good, especially for baking. If I had seen that before leaving the store, I might have tried to haggle down the price :)

navaati 2y ago

In France (and probably many other places), supermarkets have a shelf with "close to expiry date" produces. They slap a label on each with a new price at a certain discount, from -30 to -50%, and a new barcode over the original barcode. I _love it_. As it's a rotating subset of what's in the shop, it gives me ideas on what to cook. I basically don't go in the other aisles anymore: I enter the shop, go straight straight to what I jokingly call "the rotten aisle" and make a menu for the next 3 to 5 days from what's available. Which means that yes, I'm often eating stuff a couple days past their official date, whatever. It's made inflation bearable for me, the flip side being that I'm now unable to buy food anywhere else, the price shock is just too much, I'm like "no way I'm paying that for food" ^^".

smusamashah 2y ago

Do people really feel at ease throwing away food? Where I am from, generally food is respected. Throwing food actually expired (you could see/smell/taste it's expired) food away has been a guilty act. Was always told while growing up to not waste food from the plate I am eating in. If not right now, then eat later. When I saw Spain's tomato fight event, it made feel very uneasy thinking how can they easily waste/play with perfectly good food.

cadamsau 2y ago

Very interesting and informative piece, but it includes an assumption without evidence - which is, food that’s unwanted in its first use on a shelf is not put to its best possible use after it proves unwanted. Where does “wasted” food actually go? The article claims it ends up in landfills and plowed into fields, but doesn’t give examples or evidence to back that up. If more research is done and it’s uncovered that wasted food does have some sort of afterlife, that’s a sign of the market at work. No doubt some unwanted food isn’t used in an optimal way, but if for example, some gets turned into feedlot and others into pet food, it radically changes the narrative. A well-researched article about broadly what happens to “wasted food” would really help. But right now it’s not clear if there’s anything here to fix.

cadamsau 2y ago

The “best before” and “consume by” dates are not lies. They’re dates after which the manufacturer believes you won’t enjoy the product as much.