SEEL-BY DATES

[venusvenus123]

^^yes, that should read SELL-BY DATES!
how much do you follow them and for which foods?

i am at my mother in law's house and she is famous for hoarding things.
last night i ate some olives which said best before 03/06 on the label.
they were past their best but they didn't make me ill.

in her fridge she has some foie gras pate with a 2001 label on it (we told
her to chuck it out) and some caviar which was supposed to be eaten in
1999.

i just found a bottle of "pouring gravy" which is solid in the bottle, and has
a price of 12p (18c?) on it. i think it's from the 70s; it seems to predate the
best before labelling of food.
rummaging through her cupboards has become quite a hobby of mine. :o

[mikizee]

milk is the big one, I throw it out as soon as it has gone past its date. Not brave to smell it.

[hitmonlee]

we have "use by" and "best before"

use by is more for meat and dairy products, i follow this pretty strictly unless its unopened sour cream or yogurt, it may just be ok (unless the lid is puffy then just bin it).

best before is for yeah tomato sauce and shit. i dont worry about that one as much.

[venusvenus123]

a lot of it is a con tho. yoghurt and cheese are usually fine even a week after their use by date.

diet coke from 2005 is very flat tho :|

[b-grrrlie]

We have, too, both sell-by and best-before -dates. For dairyproducts I'm very attentive,
hard cheese can be used later as well in gratains (or however you spell it), but milk and soft cheese and
yoghurts are chucked away if there's a chance for them to stay in my fridge too long
(which is very rarely, unless I'm away from home and my cat sitters haven't eaten them up).
I've been known to use dry products, like flour and pasta, maybe a year or even two after the sell-by date.

My mum is totally hopeless when it comes to chucking away old food.
Few years ago when she moved to a new flat I found an old, totally dried up lemon in her fridge.
It had a label when it was bought, like three years before, and she still had to bring it to the new flat!!!
I wouldn't think there'd be much juice left even to clean stains with! And, like, lemons are terribly expensive! Doh!
I threw it away and she went and picked it up again from the trash! helllooo-o!

[Guy Incognito]

I had some brown sauce that was about 3 years over sell by and it had turned green furry and a bit sparkly and i could have probably smoked it to good effect.

[Yorkshire~Rose]

I came across this very dilemma today. I was hunting through the cupboards to find some cous cous and found a pack...but the use by date was 'end July 2007'. It's still sealed, never been opened. What do you reckon?

[Guy Incognito]

I came across this very dilemma today. I was hunting through the cupboards to find some cous cous and found a pack...but the use by date was 'end July 2007'. It's still sealed, never been opened. What do you reckon?

i reckon its ok as long as no one has wheat allergies - suppose it depends on what you having it with if you can taste if its off or not

Go for it - in the interests of science

[camo]

I'm always pretty careful to check the bb dates on my food. Having a bout of really bad food poisoning a few years back can do that for you.

[jabumbo]

a lot of canned goods have dates that are so far away that its hard for me to imagine having them far past their use dates.

i'm always tossing bits of dairy products though, i never eat them fast enough

[trailerprincess]

My mum hoards stuff well past the sell by date and upon a recent clear out of my own kitchen, I fear I am heading down the same route. And like Ms Yorkshire, I had out of date cous cous, quinoa and tomato soup. Funny how it's never yummy food that sits festering in the fridge/cupboard.

[abcdefz]

I'll generally give a product a couple days after the "sell by" date unless it's obviously still good or obviously gone bad. Unless it's something
that I've frozen properly, but I usually won't buy perishables unless I know I'm going to use them up pretty quickly, anyway, so it's rarely
an issue.

[kll]

i just passed my food manager certification test and they said that dairy (milk, eggs, yogurt, etc.) is usually good up to 7-10 days after the sell by date. canned goods are usually fine if there's no bulging going on, which would indicate botulism. i wouldn't eat a canned good past a year beyond the sale date. i do get pissed though if i buy stuff that already has the expiration date well before my purchase date and i don't usually find this until long after it's been in my cupboard.

[Documad]

My mom and dad were born during the depression and they couldn't throw anything away. My dad had lots of scary food but it was usually pickled so it didn't seem to be a problem for him. I volunteered to bring food over to their house if I was eating over.

After my dad died, my mom got even worse because one person can't possibly eat food fast enough. I'd go over and secretly throw some things out of the refrigerator that I figured she wouldn't notice. I'd always bring her favorite kind of salad dressing and exchange it for her old stuff when she wasn't looking. For the things that she would notice, I'd simply lie. I'd tell mom that I could really use some sliced ham for sandwiches or I was out of pickles or something that she would happily hand over hers. I would throw the whole bag of food in the trash as soon as I got home.

Before mom's eyesight got fixed, I had a terrible time getting her to appreciate that her towels were no longer white. She would get angry with me when I'd try to bleach them at her house. So instead, I would gradually exchange them for new white towels and throw hers away. :o

[Documad]

What bothers me is all the food that goes bad before the sell by date. Like if you open some kinds of cheese, they start to mold right away. I also had a brand new clementine that got fuzzy. I don't know what was wrong with it. Perhaps I accidentally exposed it to something that made it freak out.

[milleson]

I throw out my parents expired food. I never thought of covertly replacing it, though. I'm might try that next time.

[Documad]

With two people in this house, they might thing the other one threw it away, but my mom used to get mad. My sister had fought her on the food issue for years and it only led to bad feelings, so I knew I needed to be more devious.

[marsdaddy]

It's a constant problem in the marsdaddy household. We have composting picked up every Tues am and go through the food purge every Mon pm. Guess I'm off to that, soon.

[kll]

does liquor ever go bad? i swear, we would sneak drinks out of my parent's liquor cabinet that hadn't been touched in who knows how long... not that we knew what it was supposed to taste like at the time, but...

[TurdBerglar]

im a little ocd when it comes to checking sell by dates on food im about to eat. even if it's just crackers. and what's the deal with that smell a freezer can develop? all the food in there can be fresh but every once in a while a smell develops in there that permeates all the food and gives it a fucked up tasted. it's this very stale dry taste.

[Randetica]

two days ago i had a drink that was best before 2005

guess im too tough to die :o

[abcdefz]

does liquor ever go bad?


Wine definitely can.


There was a great Arrested Development joke about this, though. What's-her-name drank an entire bottle of vodka one night because
she didn't want it to spoil.

[abcdefz]

One thing that still blows me away is soda with expiration dates.

Odder still that it does taste funky if it's older.

[venusvenus123]

i just ate a yoghurt that had 29 december as its bb date. i should have eaten it last year! i think that these dates are often added a bit arbitrarily. i remember jerry seinfeld did a stand-up piece about the idea of the cow having a stamp on its side when it was being milked. i usually just use my senses rather than the date to decide whether to eat something... that and the evidence of mould. i don't take chances with fish and meat tho.

like documad, my parents and my mother in law were all born in the 30s and had rationing during the war, so they're a bit averse to throwing food away.
i wonder if i'll ever end up doing those sneaking out the house things with my parents. i did take out the foie gras (horrible stuff!) and caviar under the orders of my husband. i bet she put them back tho. taking a walk into her pantry is like taking a walk down memory lane :p

a-z i had a soda dated august 2005 at my MIL's house this weekend. it tasted decidedly rank!

i don't know if liquor ever goes bad. i just bought a bottle of tia maria that has no expiry date on it.

[abcdefz]

Wine does indeed go bad.

I think straight alcohol is the only stuff that doesn't go bad. Liqueurs, beer, wine, etc. go bad.

[abcdefz]

Hmmm.

Did a little search.

Apparently, hard alcohol can go bad if some other agent has been introduced. Also, once the bottle is opened, the water content can
slowly evaporate and change the taste, but it's still not "bad."

Brandy, wine, rum and liqueurs have components that can oxidize. Vermouth can also go bad....