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> 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 o
by 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 agoYes, 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 agoYes, 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 agoEven 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 agoIf 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)
- Doxin 2y agoNever mind that unless the cheese is exceedingly moldy you can just cut off the mold and keep going. I'd be throwing out a right fortune in cheese if I threw it out at the first signs of mold.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cafard 2y agoI check the dates on orange juice containers, but only if there are two or more unopened in the fridge, in which case I want to open the oldest. Otherwise I don't check.
- sitkack 2y agoI like my orange juice fizzy, so I only start drinking it when the container starts expanding.
- tech_ken 2y agoGuy who's about to invent wine be like
- throwup238 2y agoWait till he finds out about prison hooch.
- nightshift1 2y agoDon't forget to brush your teeth before drinking it to get all the flavours.
- astura 2y agoMy husband goes into the fridge and throws out random stuff without even reading the label or opening it saying "it's old." Drives me fucking insane. I've never thrown out food that isn't rancid/moldy.
- devilbunny 2y agoMy mother-in-law cleaned our pantry. I didn't ask her to, but she was here for a week, and just did it. She threw out salt because it was past the "best by" date. Mind you, that salt has spent millions, possibly billions, of years in the ground. I asked why. She said, if the manufacturer says that, why would they lie? I don't often find myself reaching out for facepalm memes or "SMDH", but I sure did then. I just said okay, but don't ever throw out salt again.
- yumraj 2y agoSalt has a best by date? WTF…
- adamomada 2y agoI’ve seen old kg packages of salt turn into a brick. I suppose the salt itself is still good, but you’re gonna have to grind it up
- skirmish 2y agoDoesn't that all depend on air humidity? How can the manufacturer account for that in a printed date?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- devilbunny 2y agoThey just slap a number on it. I mean, who throws away salt? My mother-in-law, that’s who. She is actually a lovely person and I enjoy her company (and you can eat off her floors), but that’s one of those tiny little things you just run into from time to time.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoMy parents own a small independent grocery store. My family ate a ton of "expired" food when I was growing-up because it made good economic sense. What you say is absolutely what we did-- throw out the items that really are bad (meat being the primary offender), cut off the bad parts of partially-rotten food, and eat the rest. Food waste is really, really offensive to me. I probably take it a little too personally and too seriously. (Wasting meat is particularly galling to me, what w/ the likely terrible life the animal had making its way to your table.)
- fitzmakes 2y agoProbably best to cut off a bit more than just the obviously bad part; mold tendrils can go deep.
- green_dee 2y agoYeah I was going to say the same. Fungi species can grow real deep, large and invisible to our senses. I understand people ITT getting offended on throwing out food with parts rotten, but honestly if it's not an exception such as banana I will probably throw out the entire piece (like bread) if there is any part rot at all.
- Doxin 2y agoBread is especially spongy, so I for sure throw that out the second it has a whiff of mold. More solid things like cheese though? mold doesn't seem to grow very deep on that.
- tech_ken 2y agoGood point, yeah I should be clear that if like half my loaf of bread is moldy I'm chucking the whole thing; I'm only saving it if it's like a few slices at one end that are moldy. Probably would have been better to say that I cut off the part which is obviously good, leaving a healthy margin and tossing if in doubt.
- toxik 2y agoWhite bread is actually super easy to colonize for mold, even a bit of mold is a near guarantee that the rest is moldy - just not with spores. My tip is to only keep a half dozen or so slices fresh and freeze the rest. Frozen toast tastes just fine.
- jonahbenton 2y agoI will eat anything that isn't in obvious danger of killing me but my wife comes from a family that treats dates as gospel, that (in accordance with FDA guidance) at events will get stressed about food being left out for more than an hour, etc. Those people exist, and in fact they are everywhere.
- tharkun__ 2y agoThis. Actually I'd ask your parent poster back: there are people that believe most people don't treat BB dates as "will turn bad exactly on this date"?
- terribleperson 2y agoHonestly, I am way more concerned about food being left out than sell-by/best by dates. The harm that can result from leaving food out is well-established. Sell-by dates? We're basically taking the manufacturer's word for it, as if they're somehow impartial here.
- tech_ken 2y agoYeah actually I’m with you on this. Not for everything, but there are definitely food items I won’t try to save after ex. putting them out for a party (like if a dairy based dip has been at room temp for more than 1-2 hours it’s not going back in my fridge).
- rayiner 2y ago> 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. I do. How am I supposed to know if the food is still good? Maybe I can't smell the problem. I trust the experts to put appropriate labels on things.
- barbazoo 2y agoThat's what they're saying, it mostly is possible to see, taste or smell if something is bad.
- kaydub 2y agoI have a pretty poor sense of smell and I've had terrible food poisoning a couple times in my life. If it's past expired I throw that shit out. I make sure to do a decent job meal planning to control waste.
- kragen 2y agoprobably people trusting experts about what to eat is how we got a worldwide pandemic of obesity and metabolic syndrome. the incentives of the experts are not always properly aligned; it was experts who formulated nestle's notorious ad campaigns to replace breast milk with formula, after all, and that sort of thinking wasn't limited to africa. nicols fox's 'spoiled' documents several late-20th-century shenanigans in the usa where expertise was deployed not to prevent foodborne illness but to evade blame for it by rendering it harder to trace taken to the extreme, trusting the experts to label things properly results in absurdities like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40324991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40324991 people have been detecting unsafe foods by smell for thousands of times longer than they've been people. (and yet foodborne infection remains a leading cause of death.)
- JohnFen 2y ago> Does anyone actually do this for real? I don't. For most foods, it's really obvious when they've become unsafe to eat. For those where it's not so obvious, my policy is "if I can't remember how long it's been in there, I'm tossing it." I can't remember the last time I actually looked at a date printed on the packaging. I've found those dates to be meaningless.
- heelix 2y agoIt was not until I was married that I found out mayo even had an expiry date. None of my roommates in the university days used enough to actually work through a jar. It somehow made it fridge to fridge through multiple leases.
- bobthepanda 2y agoMayo is one of the foods where I would be antsy about dates. That is an extremely common cause of food poisoning
- morsch 2y agoSource? I mean obviously be careful with homemade mayo made from fresh, uncooked egg, but the store bought stuff is pasteurized and seems pretty stable. https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Does-mayonnaise-cause-foodborne-illness https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Does-mayonnaise-cause-foodbor...
- martyvis 2y agoUse by dates are only relevant until the product is opened. They usually then have a "consume within" time which is often relatively short.
- kragen 2y agonot by itself generally. it's too salty and acidic, and the supermarket stuff is often full of edta to boot, so bacteria can't get iron, magnesium, or calcium. mayo diluted with boiled potato is another story also supermarket mayo is labeled as good for months, but salmonella (the usual culprit) can grow in hours. so the sell-by date wouldn't protect you there
- revlolz 2y ago>If you can cut off or pull off the parts that are bad, but the rest is good Isn't this untrue for spores and mold? I'm not making the claim, I'm genuinely unsure and remember stern warnings that unseen spores and mold are a threat with moldy bread and fruits.
- tech_ken 2y agoYeah sorry should have been clear that I was thinking about a case where like one or two blueberries in the corner of the package have just started to mold, or where it's a non-mold problem (like maybe an apple bruise has made 1/3 of it mushy, I'll probably still eat the other half). Generally stuff that has a nontrivial amount of mold I'm not trying to save.
- tharkun__ 2y agoMushy apples are fine. I wouldn't buy them like that. But picking up the half mushy apples that fell from the tree is how we got all our apple sauce made when I was a kid. Dirt cheap. Come to think of it. My mom still does this.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> In the overwhelming majority of cases it's extremely straightforward to determine if the food is safe It drives me nuts, but I have a lot of friends who will buy a bunch of bananas, let them go brown (not rot), throw them out, and then buy more bananas. Or throw out all of my store-bought kimchi, which makes no sense.
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoThat's 35 cents a week to pretend you care about eating healthy. You tell yourself you can't eat them today because they're too green. Then in a few days you can't eat them because there are spots. Too bad! I'll try again next week. I can see the reasoning.
- bavell 2y agoDamn, this describes me too accurately haha. They're so cheap! How could I not at least try!? XD
- toxik 2y agoI end up in this situation unintentionally, what I started doing is to peel and freeze them as they get overripe. Then you can use them for smoothies or banana bread some day in the future. Like in several months.
- bdw5204 2y agoIf you're finding food that is past the expiration date on a regular basis, you're probably wasting money on stuff you rarely or never actually eat. It isn't a problem anybody should be running into.
- usernamed7 2y ago> it isn't a problem anybody should be running into. This is an absurd assertion that fails to reflect the reality of food storage in refrigerators.
- xp84 2y agoIdk, I’m definitely guilty of it, a lot, but even I admit that it’s self-inflicted and I “should” just not buy so much food.
- vasco 2y agoEvery single person I know wastes food.
- objektif 2y agoWhat is the issue with cooked rice?
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoCooked rice goes bad pretty quickly even in the fridge and can make you pretty sick if you eat it.
- tedunangst 2y agoThis is not true.
- buildsjets 2y agoSure it’s true. Uncooked rice often contains the bacteria Bacillus cereus. These bacteria can form protective spores that survive the cooking process and if the rice is cooled slowly these bacteria spores can germinate, grow and produce a toxin that causes vomiting.
- fragmede 2y agoIf you’ve eaten the dish known as fried rice, the rice used there has been cooked and then chilled for 24 hours. So while what you’re saying is true, the topic is complex.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoMost web results I found say rice is good for 3-4 days in the fridge, but it’s safest if you cool it quickly after cooking. But 24 hours is fine. I just got some food poisoning from eating 5 or 6 day old rice a few times and was surprised it went bad in under a week.
- Vegemeister 2y ago
- baby 2y agoFirst, what you’re saying is not necessarily true. As you pointed out rice and meat are tough, but so are things like bread. If you spot mold you bet it’s everywhere even in the places you can’t see it. Anything spongy inside needs to be thrown if you spot mold. But what about fresh fish and meat? What about salad drenched in vinaigrette? What about broth? What about sauces? What about pickles? I’ve had stuff for years in the fridge it still looks good.
- bambax 2y agoI do the same, but my wife looks at dates and follows them, and so do my kids. That said, we eat few of-the-shelf products and cook a lot. Leftovers don't have dates! (But they spoil faster, because they don't have conservatives in them.)
- krater23 2y agoEvery once in a while, some press or commercial tells me anything for me totally weird thing, like 'people forget to drink water' or 'people throw away all the is expired without checking it', I first think this is total bullshit, and then someone in my inner circle tells me the he does exactly this. So no, you are not weird, but this people really exist, and I wouldn't wonder if they are the majority.