"best before date"

'Evian' is almost an anagram for 'naiive',which is what we are for buying bottled French tap water.

The *real* record probably belongs to things she's had in her cupboards before best-before dates were introduced. She's still using a big sack of cornflour which she inherited from her own mother, who died in 1983. Until the mid-90s we used a bottle of brown sauce whose price ended in a halfpenny; we didn't finish the bottle until about 10 years after halfpennies disappeared.

(she is also the sort of person who, if things like jam or cheese start to go mouldy, will calmly scrape the mouldy bits off and eat it anyway)

With canned food tho, the manufacturers err on the side of caution big-time and there are prolly few canned foods that can't be eaten several years after their sell-by date perfectly safely. I say few - I'd imagine condensed milk is one I *wouldn't* risk.

anyway there were a few left-behind tins in the pantry, including some fray bentos corned beef: which had been canned in zimbabwe, was attested taint-free courtesy a stamp from "meat-inspection station #7", and had a "best of" date of — that magic year! — 1996

to his credit, in respect of war on all cultural chauvinism, dad wz fairly gung ho abt trying it, but we persuaded him to wait till i had gone out to buy bacon instead

as it wz not our tin to throw away, we left it in the cupboard

Hello Lara!

Here in the States, our perishables tend to expire on any day of the month they wish -- this Dr Pepper I'm drinking, e.g., would have breathed its last on FEB 21 2003 if I had not killed it prematurely.

I have here a bottle of aspirin slated to expire on 3/3/2005.

Also I believe the Times Square subway station escalator repair project will be completed on July 10, 2004 (pardon the inconvenience).

http://ebay1.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/_EBAY_c2c3790f4bd8b6d70fb6c8d74578e866/i-1.JPG

(Must by milk tomorrow!)

Vector to the totality = finding a trout in a fed-ex package five years too late

And I have 20+ year old spices that I bought to cook something that I never used since, but I guess the worst that can happen from that is stale food.

i wz just talking to mum on the phone and she said that yesterday dad asked for a piece of cake, and she said there isn't any

but then she remembered aunt penny had sent us a cake for xmas: which we had all larfed abt at the time as even still in the parcel it felt like the densest heaviest cake ever baked by ppl not born on jupiter

anyway mum got the tin out of the larder and tipped the cake out, and cut a slice and took it up to dad — warning him that it might be a bit stale, as it wz from xmas (but fruitcakes do keep well, and v.heavy surely means v.moist...)

so dad took a bite and declared it inedible (which is quite severe: he wz at school during WW2 and will eat anything!!)

when mum came back into the kitchen she saw a 'best before" date on the bottom of the cake tin: 1990!!

top present aunt penny!!

And, erm... never mind.

I can top all of you. When I cleaned out the dirt queen's kitchen, I found, like spices that had expired in 1987. Do you have any idea how long it takes spices to go off? So you can surely IMAGINE how old and nasty these things were. If you thought spices didn't go bad, well, let me tell you they get mouldy and yucky like everything else.

There was ketchup that expired in 1996 that was still in her "in use" pile. GAH!

I can't think of one conceivable instance in which this would happen any time soon, Tracer. I imagine you can get another canned water before then (!? canned water?!).

We were always finding mystery objects in my mom's fridge, things that got "hidden" in the back and you'd pull out and there was no way of telling what it formerly was before getting covered by mould and nasty. We'd try to guess but we never could. We'd usually end up throwing out the whole container with it, the tupperware. I'd tell her, there's no reason to have this much food, what are you stocking up for that you can forget that you have something so disgusting in there for god knows how long? I've still not gotten a good explanation as to why she needs to much food in her house. I think it has to do with preparing for the tilt of the axis, which is obviously coming very, very soon, like Tracer's water shortage. Maybe it had to do with mad cow disease, I can't keep track of which ridiculous thing is her new obsession.

I just found a tin of 'mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce' with a best before date of Dec 2003.

To eat or not?

Probably fine - the acidity of the spicy tomato sauce should give it a long shelf life.

i wouldn't eat those before a date

roffle. unless she likes to reenact two girls one spoon type of situation.

i feel extremely guilty: I didn't realize the milk we gave my eldest daughther had expired a month ago. :-(((((((((((((((((((((

Not tonight, but I'm going to try them sometime. The tin looks fine and I can't imagine that an extra 5 years will have done the wee fishies any damage given that they're all sealed up in the can.

What's the worst that can happen? They swim away.

That or botulism, yes

(check the tin for any bulging or denting or any other artifacts of gas-pressure stuff going on)

(Also don't eat it)

Didn't stop them in Battlefield Earth and that was a lot longer than 5 years.

i wouldn't eat those before a date

-- gabbneb, Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

ha!

Government to scrap ‘best before’ dates in new labelling revolution

Good. I'm sick of having to throw perfectly good food away because my partner is completely neurotic.

So instead of "best before", products will have "use before" dates, but the dates themselves will probably be the same?

I don't know - I thought use by dates were calculated to be later than best before ones.

i think they're saying keep 'use-by', which has health implications, but junk best-before. so anything currently with a best-before date won't have any date at all.

I don't know - I thought use by dates were calculated to be later than best before ones.

Err.. sooner, I meant.

Anyway, yes, I think ledge is right about the plan. Best-before dates are currently applied to foods with long shelf-life that don't go bad, just a bit crappy. Except eggs.

http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/foodlabels/labellingterms/bestbefore/

There's something a bit desperate about the FSA's website being calle "eatwell".

do acidophilus tablets stay "alive" 2 years beyond the expiration date? i need to know

I still have the mackerel fillets, best before Dec 2003. Never did eat them. Yet.

'Evian' is almost an anagram for 'naiive',which is what we are for buying bottled French tap water.

best before 1987

ruskoline

Currently eating a very tasty packet of dried "Berry Mix" with a best before date of 20/09/07.

I'm a bit of a hoarder.

I've still got the Mackerel fillets, of course.

I can go either way. If it's perishable and it's past its best-before date, then I ditch it. Like dairy things, or stuff that grows hair in the fridge. Meat, stuff like that. Things that stink or grow mold or go bad, sure, they go out.

But other non-perishable stuff that stays perfectly fine for a long time? Like. I dunno. Peanut Butter. or unopened dried pasta. or...teabags. That stuff, I mean unless it has gone weird, who cares. For non-perishables those usebys are such a scam to me.

But I admit I grew up in a house where cutting the mold off cheese or scooping it off the top of the jam was pretty much de-rigeur.

i just used some silken tofu that was best before sometime in 2007

You know, this milk isn't bad now, but you should have had it back in January.

I've had a surprisingly bad run with trying to get through the collection of post-best before products in my cupboard and freezer. Nothing appalling or sickening, but plenty of unpleasant. Although they've probably become naturally saturated with damp due to the non-heating of my kitchen.

I didn't realise til I was a grown up that my concept of freezing was more like cryogenics, because I am always dismayed that frozen items still have some kind of shelf life. A pox on freezer burn!!

I still kind of took freezer best before dates to be fictional, but it seems I was wrong. :'(

I've been able to use milk quite a few days past its use-by before, especially if it was UHT milk, which seems to spoil less easily (after it's opened I mean - obviously while sealed it'll keep for months).

oh UHT milk, how I miss you. They don't have milk triangles here! I have seeked them high and low. I guess American are mistrustful of milk that doesn't go in the fridge? Bloody good to have for emergencies and camping though.

Milk will normally carry on good for 3 or 4 days...but if there's only a little left in the carton it will spoil pretty quickly. Milk and meat are all about the sniff test, at least for me. I like food that tells you when it's given up the ghost.

well, I don't like when it tells you, because it STINKS but I like that there's a way to tell.

Oh god yeah I hate the smell of off milk >_< it seems to linger in one's nose, ew.

So far the worst I've smelled is when potatoes go bad. a) they collapse into goo...and b) the stench. chemical warfare of the worst kind. barftastic.

I have a bad relationship with potatoes here, because the Sacramento summers are SO hot and SO long, they don't keep for more than a few days, maybe a week. But I refuse to keep them in the fridge becasue that's just retarded.

bad potatoes smell SO bad. they can sneak up on you too. if it's hot and humid potatoes that would last 2 weeks can go in days. *shudder*

oh btw refrigerating potatoes will also make them taste weird!

potatoes: classic or spud

I thought it was bad to keep potatoes in the fridge anyway.. or is that onions.

potatoes, they turn sugary or something

Yeah it screws them right up...they get really spongey and they don't cook right. Poor taters.

Rotting sprouts are also quite something.

I had some oven chips that have been sitting in the freezer for about 18 months last night and the only adverse effect was to remind me that I fuckin hate oven chips

That's a good result.

i have never had a potato go bad.
and i have a bad habit of forgetting i even have them sometimes!

We get this Cravendale milk, it keeps for about 2 weeks. It costs more but means we buy less milk in the long run.

I'm pretty free and easy with Best Before dates though. Generally if it doesn't smell bad I'll eat it. Or with bread I just pick the green bits off.

ugh.

then again - i've cut the white fluff off cheese before and munched away.

Some scientist on telly said it was OK to eat mouldy bread anyway. BTW I only do this if it's like 1 day mouldy on the crusts, and the rest of the bread is OK.

hmm i thought i read that mold permeates like the entire loaf even though only a little is showing. could be making that up though. it's probably safe but doesn't it taste moldy? like that weird sharp taste.

i hope that's not true for cheese.

Yeah I expect that's true, but I don't notice it, I'm only talking about when it first starts getting those little green spots on the crust. Not full on patches of white & green yuck all over it, I'm not completely disgusting, just British.

What about frozen food?

I have some things from last christmas that I'm wondering whether I can eat this year...

They are actual meat & fish but have been undisturbed in my freezer for the last 12 months. Will I die if I cook myself up a feast tomorrow?

You'll live. Freezer burn is worst case scenario, I think.

My mum is very strongly saying "go for it" too. I am defrosting it slowly in the fridge for now (thinking gradual defrost would be better) and will make sure to cook it all properly tomorrow and then we'll see if things smell right/wrong/good/bad...

my dad reckons its all a con in terms of tins, like *all* of it. no canned / tinned food really goes off he says. not sure about the truth of this.

isn't there a guide inside fridge/freezer doors that says which meats can last which lenngth etc? usually with pitures of animals and whatnot?

From http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/focus_on_freezing/index.asp:

Freezer Storage Time
Because freezing keeps food safe almost indefinitely, recommended storage times are for quality only. Refer to the freezer storage chart at the end of this document, which lists optimum freezing times for best quality.

If a food is not listed on the chart, you may determine its quality after thawing. First check the odor. Some foods will develop a rancid or off odor when frozen too long and should be discarded. Some may not look picture perfect or be of high enough quality to serve alone but may be edible; use them to make soups or stews.

This time of year always get me thinking baout my crazy thrifty mom:

I discovered my mom (when I was a kid) would buy 75% off Xmas clearance candy and save it until the next xmas. Same w/Easter. So now, sad to say, fresh marshmallow peeps and licorice just taste weird and wrong to me.

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, January 5, 2007 2:40 PM (3 years ago

don't do it. meat deteriorates even if it's frozen. freezer burn def isn't the worst case scenario.

Whatever, don't be a sissy. Eat it.

It'll have gone off. The problem is that meat/fish that's been kept in the freezer for that long won't smell off in the same way fresh meat/fish smells when it goes off. The frozen stuff will just smell weird - but there'll be the same food poisoning risks.

Friend of mine (ex housemate) got some fish that had been in the freezer for 9+ months, made it into a fish curry. He was crapping himself for the next 24 hours. I remember that he got through most of a 9 pack of supermarket value bogroll.

If anything is "wrong" with it, it's because it's not well wrapped and air has gotten to it, or an automatic defrosting freezer has put the outer surface through several freeze cycles and water crystals have burst the muscle cells, making the texture a little weird, which happens to some degree whenever you freeze food. If the meat was fresh and clean when it went in the freezer, there are no food poisoning risks.

People who crap themselves might not have the most sanitary kitchen habits.

I might save myself all the worrying and take a trip to Tesco this afternoon, pick up some last-minute christmas foodstuff bargains instead...

A whole fresh pheasant for the win!

No definitely debatable frozen foodstuffs for me!

Whether or not there are any concrete health risks, meat (and poultry and fish) you should toss after 9 months to a year, if only because if it hasn't been consumed by that point, it may as well be in the bin. I do know that whole chicken keep longer than chicken parts, but even then, it's only for another 3 months or so.

Butter keeps in the freezer for half a year, I think, but again I believe that may be more a flavor issue than a health issue.

One product that literally never goes bad: honey!

I don't know - I found two jars of honey in my cupboard just last month that must have been open for several years and had to chuck them as they didn't look at all good.

This time of year always get me thinking baout my crazy thrifty mom:

I discovered my mom (when I was a kid) would buy 75% off Xmas clearance candy and save it until the next xmas. Same w/Easter. So now, sad to say, fresh marshmallow peeps and licorice just taste weird and wrong to me.

― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, January 5, 2007 2:40 PM (3 years ago

― Stop Non-Erotic Cabaret (Abbbottt), Friday, December 24, 2010 7:22 AM

this is awesome

We still have a turkey in the bottom of our freezer that my wife got from her work in 2002.

I worked through my accumulation of cider in the last few summer weeks and it turns out that my long-standing distaste for Magners has left me with two cans of the stuff with a Best Before date of 27/11/10, while my sudden turn away from the sweetness of Kopparberg a couple of years ago has left me with a bottle of that with a Best Before date of 13/6/11.

I have no desire to drink the Magners (takers for it are welcome!), but will probably go for the Kopparberg, running on the assumption that it is safe.

Best not to eat eel if it's six months past its expire date. Tasted funny and boy oh boy was I nauseous

beer sell by dates are a relatively new concept iirc? they didn't have them on beer cans/bottles until what.. the 90s?

I did look it up for cider alongside posting here and consensus seems to be that if it smells & tastes about normal then it should be fine.

Braving the Kopparberg with Best Before: 13 June 11!

It was actually pretty tasty. As a bonus, I'm still alive.

i ate some pre-9/11 pudding about a year or so ago. it tasted like freedom. stale, stale freedom.

I think the only difference in these couple of out of date ciders that I've noticed is a bit of extra fizziness.

Without being aware ahead of time, I would not have know that they were old from taste/smell/etc.

I still have the mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce with a best before date of December 2003, by the way.

I have a couple cans of sardines that are at least that old. The last time I opened one it was fine. Maybe two-three years ago.

I drank some beer from the 1950s at a party in 2005

Just opened some canned diced tomatoes that had a best before date from earlier this year. Bah.

I always assumed cans were sort of guidelines. I mean what would be the point of all those bomb shelters in nuclear fearing America filled with canned goods?

They were supposed to rotate their stock, so nothing was more than a few months old when they had to go in.

how long until a nuclear winter blows over though?

I think back then it was only a matter of weeks. When were Hiroshima and Nagasaki re-settled? I always wondered about the toilet facilities down there, did they use buckets? Or were they built with pumps to bring it back to sewer level?

dumbwaiter

Last Saturday I tweeted about whether or not I should eat some cheesecake that was a day past it's "use by" date (note: not "best before"). Twitter unanimously told me to eat it, so I did. It was delicious.

I always ignore best before dates. They're loose guidelines at best.

When I moved to the US I thought, what with everyone suing everyone all the time, that they would have tons of use-by dates on everything. They don't! And when they do they're really lax! I had some fresh pasta that had a far-off use-by date and it started growing mould weeks before it. I was a little unsettled but we do kind of go crazy with use-by dates in the UK.

I've never not seen a use-by date in the US. It could be that you weren't looking hard enough though. They're frequently a barely legible computerized smear in some unobtrusive place on the packaging. Are UK dates very prominent?

i refuse to eat food past its use-by date and adhere strictly to them at all times

i refuse to eat food past its use-by date and adhere strictly to them at all times

Seriously? That wastes food, dude. If it smells, looks, and tastes fine, then it is fine. Dates are by and large about turnover of stock and ergo profits.

big evil corporations know that one of the best ways to make a profit is by trying to ensure that nobody gets sick consuming your product

I consider the use-by date the date of the product's maturity. before that it's to be considered unripe

er, i'll take my coffee black in that case

i don't really care what you all ~know~ best-before dates are ~really~ about, i am not putting past-it food into my mouth

a raw foodist, I see

Surely you realize the absurdity of the idea of food just instantly going bad at some exact minute instead of a gradual process and companies being able to know exactly when that minute will be weeks/months/years into the future

Also companies have to give themselves a gap btwn best-by dates and the date that the food actually goes bad to cover their asses

There's a huge difference between 'Best Before' and 'Use By'. The latter refers to things which are highly perishable and could be a health risk if eaten after that point (although I often use my common sense if something is past this). Best Before just means something may taste a little stale for example.

Chewshabadoo OTM. I pretty much never eat anything past a use-by date, but best before is just a guideline.

I've never not seen a use-by date in the US. It could be that you weren't looking hard enough though. They're frequently a barely legible computerized smear in some unobtrusive place on the packaging. Are UK dates very prominent?

Yes, this is what Americans kept telling me and I was looking out for them, thank you. We have them on *everything* in the UK. Maybe it was just shopping at Whole Foods, idk.

Most of the dates in the US are sell-by dates on fresher items, and on canned goods it typically says "best by" not "use by".

Surely you realize the absurdity of the idea of food just instantly going bad at some exact minute instead of a gradual process and companies being able to know exactly when that minute will be weeks/months/years into the future

― bell biv devo (Stevie D(eux)), Saturday, September 29, 2012 8:50 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

of course people know it doesn't turn into a pumpkin at midnight on the date stamped on the side, you don't have to think that to use that date as some kind of guideline as far as when you don't feel like taking your chances

Guideline is the keyword. It's sorta zany to say "I will not think twice abt eating this the day before the date and I will not think twice about throwing it away 24h later"

I mean obv milk and steak are one thing but like some chips or cereal or something are going to be completely fine.

yeah things that merely get a little hardened and stale are flat are more a matter of how much you care about those things.

tbh i had a really terrible ordeal with giving my infant son some similac mix that had been sitting in the cupboard too long so these days i'm a little like man it's not like there are NEVER consequences to these things.

I grew up eating expired food and idk if it was actually safe or if 19 years of exposure just game me the kind of garbage can stomach of iron usually found in dogs.

I mean obv milk and steak are one thing

but milk and meat are two of the easiest things to tell when they've gone bad.
when I was a kid I would never consume anything past the lil date on the label. then I realized microbes do not wear watches or check calendars.

i don't trust myself to be able to tell when food is unsafe, basically

I still have the mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce with a best before date of December 2003, by the way.

I do that sometimes, especially with fish. Like frozen dinners they don't sell anymore, they're like a collector's item!

I was just thinking I think I've seen more consequential past it's besthoods than the label date with people still thinking things are ok since it is within date. Like yoghurt pots with foil top bulging out or the like, but still on shelf cos within date.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this but not 100%

Will be eating a prawn sandwich today with a use-by date of yesterday. Wish me luck.

http://festivaloffootball.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/roy-keane.jpg

It's actually a wrap tbh

literally a wrap

Working my way through 5-year-old jam.

Phish?

Phish was on hiatus 5 years ago.

sorry. you made a great joke and I came back at you with bullshit jamrock pedantry.

loool it's okay it made me laugh

I was going to make a recipe involving a small amount of root ginger but none of the local shops had any.

I have a jar of ginger in vinegary water in the fridge but it is way older than the "12 weeks after opening" the label says to consume by, like maybe a year at least (yeah, I am not good at turning things out). If I use a teaspoon of it will bad things happen?

you'll be fine. vinegar is some strong shit.

that's good, thanks! it's only a little and I'm not going anywhere tomorrow so fingers crossed.

also threw out some dried herbs/spices lately which were past their "best before" and felt bad about it because it doesn't seem like dried herbs/spices go off, but I needed to clear cupboard space somehow

herbs & spices won't spoil, they will just lose their potency

yeah, long out of date herbs mostly just don't taste of anything

Clearing out a kitchen cupboard leaves me with 3 christmas puddings and 2 christmas cakes with best before dates of either 2009 or 2011. Anything to be done with these? I feel sure they'd be edible, but as evidenced by my having them all that long, I'm not the person to eat them, even if they weren't hideously out of date. Will birds eat them safely?

I also still have the mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce with a best before date of December 2003, I hear it was a good vintage.

Will birds eat them safely?

birds pay no attention to "best before" dates. they habitually evaluate potential food using their senses, including smell. if it is unsafe, they'll ignore it.

I guess. I wasn't sure if all the sugar or other ingredients might be bad for them.

Googling suggest it's perfectly fine - birds are going to love me! http://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/rspb-news/news/387421-get-stuffed-how-to-feed-your-garden-birds-this-christmas

I just had some roast broccoli that is 2 weeks out of date. It was very green and firm and tasted and smelled good. In fact it was much better than some of that ropey produce Abel & Cole used to send at a not very reasonable price. I was reading graphic descriptions of hunger and struggling to subsist on rotten potatoes in the Klemperer dairies earlier and feel like sell by dates are pure decadence.

expired or no, barely discernible as broccoli is terrible anyway

:D

finally outdid myself lol (1995)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eic-oUmXgAEV7yA?format=jpg&name=900x900

as, discovered in a weird little cupboard in the block cellar being cleared out

"the long 90s"

let us know how it tastes

I made wild rice at my folks house a few years ago, and added a chicken bullion cube. The rice ended up tasting like pee and I think it was because the bullion had expired in 1975. I still give my stepmom a hard time about it.

Still, useful to know that if you're short of wee, old chicken bouillon provides a ready substitute.

there was that case where scientists tested tins from a 19th century shipwreck for microbial growth and they were declared safe for consumption.

tbf "deliciously rich" is an all-time all-purpose slogan

Honey makes a mockery out of vacuum sealed tinned food. Just put it in a ceramic vase and it'll be reet 3000 years later.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/07/21/11/drink-bones.jpg

https://www.innit.com/public/products/images/00037600000048-mOceuyyMH1imIw-0_s500.jpg

Okay, serious question: I have two 2.5 ounce jars.. one is "Best by" 12/05/18, the other is 01/17/19. Visually the meat inside the jars looks fine, and they've been stored in a cool, dark cupboard. What's the collective opinion?

edible

deliciously rich

also post the outcome

the five year best by date is a part of the excessive consumption and waste of the modern era, as long as the seal is intact it should be good for 30-40 years at least! But tbh I'm completely fronting here and get a bit uneasy when my tinned goods are a couple of months past the BBE date.

I once had a tin of tomatoes that exploded and painted my kitchen wall when I opened it. And this had another year on its BBE date.

I don't crave dried beef, and see it almost as part of my long-term survival cache should we have an earthquake or something. I think desperation will season the meat quite nicely.

Going purely by what a corporation decided to print on a label years ago seems like insufficient data. The main thing is the food item itself, which can be consulted easily enough by opening it, sniffing it, inspecting it for mold or discoloration, and tasting a small sample, if you are still unsure.

Bacteria or mold can render food toxic but they'd normally be really obvious. Oxidation is more subtle and more likely, but would normally just make the food unpalatable rather than toxic.

I stayed at a house in the Cotswolds late last year and it was like the family had simply abandoned the place: fusty clothes in the wardrobes, photographs everywhere, a stupendously complete collection of Wisdens. The scullery was magnificent; my favourite find being a tin of clams, best before November 1986. I wasn't brave enough to open it.

How can you tell if food has botulism?
You cannot see, smell, or taste botulinum toxin – but taking even a small taste of food containing this toxin can be deadly.

the aimless project has always been to wipe out the rest of ilx by this precise and fiendish method, years in the planning and now at last come to serendipitous fruition

theoretically, botulism could be present in tinned food well within its 'best by' date, but happily the food safety regulations required for commercially tinned food make botulism basically non-existent. It still happens occasionally in home-canned foods.

I remember when a jar of one of those pointless Lloyd Grossman sauces gave somebody botulism and I imagined the doctor talking to the patient in a L G voice!

"who dies in a hospital like this?"

yeah the best by date has nothing to do with botulism. heat kills botulism during the canning process so if a can is properly sealed it won't be there, and going a few years past the date is not going to cause the can to unseal. the date is more for quality than for safety imo. nutrients break down, etc.

there is some chain grocery store that sells food past the date but i forgot what it's called. i wish i had one near me tbh.

Last week i spied some half-price brie. I looked to see what the date on it was. It promised one on the side of the box but there was none. I bought it, of course.

I used to habitually drink out of date beer as my friend's dad was a landlord and we took the cans that were too old to sell

instructions on tin of standard issue Brit early 20th century army emergency ration tinned beef that is still probably edible: "Concentrated beef, 4 ounces. Remove lid. The beef can be eaten dry, with or without biscuits. Dump a quarter of this tin into boiling water and it will make make one pint of excellent beef tea."

"beef tea" is not good on any date

there is some chain grocery store that sells food past the date but i forgot what it's called. i wish i had one near me tbh.

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Monday, September 21, 2020 9:54 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ooh I bet we could come up with a name.

Better Best Forgotten
Eat By, Schmeat By
Vintage Victuals
Expirations

My bravery is very food dependent. Like why does rice have an expiration date?

But on other items, I adhere pretty close to the best before date, like with yogurt, while my wife will easily do a week past the date if there are no other signs of spoilage.

Ooh I bet we could come up with a name.

xp. have had brown rice go smelly and weird after a year in the cupboard. I much prefer white rice and so sometimes if I have brown rice for one particular dish it tends to languish between uses. I believe white rice keeps longer as I have found old bags of white rice in the back of cupboards while moving that have been edible despite years of sitting - open - and uneaten.

My old Swedish grandmother used to set aside a little milk to let it go bad... as a special treat. Apparently she enjoyed spoiled milk.

“beef tea” sounds like a celebrity feud podcast

white rice goes stale but very, very slowly. brown rice retains the germ, which has oils, so brown rice can and will go rancid on you.

"I can and will go rancid on you" – Liam Ricin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjExPRUBkA&ab_channel=NewEnglandWildlife%26More

opening old tinned foods

even tins from the 50's/60's can have bled dangerous amounts of lead into the food contents.

this is extremely my shit

Huh, I eat mostly white rice, so I've never realized brown rice went bad quicker.

so does whole wheat flour for the same reason. and walnuts if you forget about them in the cabinet for too long. they all get that same smell!

In unopened containers of yogurt I feel like the bacteria that are supposed to be there help fight off the ones that aren’t. Though opened containers that have started to turn pink are definite throwaways. Also butter that has been in the fridge past its date is fine as long as it smells okay.

many xps: andy the grasshopper's old swedish grandmother sounds like she was making [swedish name for] JUNKET, which my grandmother also often made, according to my mum (who i think never made it but she didn't have a sweet tooth and didn't bake or make puddings at all)

junket went out of fashion when they invented angel delight the processes of delivering milk to the doorstep -- inc.pateurisation and levels of decreaming and dilution -- meant that milk, no longer raw, generally lacked the (good) bacteria to set nicely. i very dimly recall having it as a child once, but not finding it especially exciting. you ate it with ground nutmeg.

or else the swedish version of clabber

I'm still haunted by the can of creamed corn from 1934 I saw opened on YouTube last night.

creamed corn is bad enough when its fresh tbrr

pain and sorrow

yes, creamed corn is already cursed enough. But exhumed corpse of creamed corn spilling out of 85 yr old rusted vessel is the stuff of nightmares.

I used to habitually drink out of date beer as my friend's dad was a landlord and we took the cans that were too old to sell

I have a best before 2008 limited edition bottle from Fullers that say 'thanks to the government we have to put a best before on but beer doesn't go off and in fact only gets better, no rly'. I also have a bottle of smirnoff moscow mule that's probably about 25 years old.

I once got some bottles of ale off the reductions shelf in my local co-op and their IT system wouldn't let me buy them because they were a few days out of date. I told them bottled ale is good for decades, but the system had the last word.

An update on my Best Before Dec 2003 tin of 'Mackerel Fillets in Spicy Tomato Sauce' since we have a revive... I'm still hoarding them.

It's been a tough year, so there were moments, but I reckon I can hold out for the two decade mark and make it to 2023 with them intact now.

thread very much in character lol

i unearthed a tin of M&S "curiously strong" mints "best before" 01 oct 2013

they are fine they are made almost entirely of different types of sugar (w/some beef gelatin)

i remembered why i didn't finish them at the time, "curiously" is no substitute for "extra" in the strong mints game

time for krakow to eat those mackerel fillets btw

Three years on I still have them, The two decade anniversary passed me and the mackerel fillets by. They live (or die) for another day/decade now.

I live on a diet of mainly salt, crystallised honey and distilled alcoholic beverages so I can absorb the preternaturally long shelf life they possess. It's working well for me so far!

The two decade anniversary passed me and the mackerel fillets by.

Not so fast, krakow!

An update on my Best Before Dec 2003 tin of 'Mackerel Fillets in Spicy Tomato Sauce'

According to my flawless calculation, Dec 2003 + 20 years = Dec 2023. I don't know what calendar you consulted, but that's next month. No takebacks allowed!

My mistake, sorry, I was reading the posting date. Maybe I have time to get them a cake or a card or something before December appears.

Okay, I have two jars in my pantry, and they look fine. One expires 12/05/18, the other 1/17/19. I think I was gonna make chipped beef gravy over toast, not sure

If ILX says they're safe, I'll eat them.. they look fine and the seals are intact

https://i5.peapod.com/c/3L/3LK7X.jpg

Open and take a deep sniff, if it smells OK take a small nibble. If that's OK, dried beef party time!

Good advice... a deep whiff of five year old meat

okay, actually the older one has some funky white stuff, I'll give it to the raccoons in the vacant lot outside my kitchen window

OK, start small with the whiffing.

Speaking of canned fish ...

I still have the mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce with a best before date of December 2003, by the way.

― NWOFHM! Overlord (krakow), Friday, September 28, 2012 3:30 PM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a couple cans of sardines that are at least that old. The last time I opened one it was fine. Maybe two-three years ago.

― nickn, Friday, September 28, 2012 4:05 PM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think I opened another one a few years after this, and though it didn't smell bad, it didn't smell fresh either. I used it in a meal and when I was done eating I said to myself, "OK, you don't have to do this" and threw the remaining can or two away.

lol

And apparently I never posted this here, but I have plastic bottles of bloody mary mix from a party I went to in Sept 2001 (the weekend before 9/11). I keep them in the fridge, and have sniffed now and then and they smell (OK, and taste) fine. It's more of a science experiment at this point, since I really don't make bloodys at home, nor ever think to drink tomato juice. I hate throwing away "perfectly good" food.

I remember reading a few years back where they found some intact bottles of British ale from like 1904 in a shipwreck... they tried a little bit and said it tasted like ham

I've seen reports that honey has been found in Egyptian tombs, and it's still edible.

Also a few years ago some liquor (whiskey, I presume) was found in a shipwreck that was sold at a premium. It won't go bad as long as the cork remains intact.

there's some wine writer I was reading who tried a bottle of 1542 german reisling.. he said it wasn't all that great but it was fun to 'taste the sunshine' from 600 years ago

And apparently I never posted this here, but I have plastic bottles of bloody mary mix from a party I went to in Sept 2001 (the weekend before 9/11). I keep them in the fridge, and have sniffed now and then and they smell (OK, and taste) fine. It's more of a science experiment at this point, since I really don't make bloodys at home, nor ever think to drink tomato juice. I hate throwing away "perfectly good" food.

lol i get "throwing away perfectly good food", but 20+ year old plastic bottles, may very well *not* be perfectly good and safe IMHO. honey wasn't in plastic bottles so it prolly poses zero threat of adulteration

Yeah, it's entirely "science experiment" at this point.

I tried a 1961 German white (maybe even a Reisling) at least 40 yrs after it was bottled. Not good, and after a few sips I dumped it. My father had bought it and stored it in a closet in our non-air conditioned So Cal home.

istr in Jane Grigson's Fish Book she talks about laying down tinned sardines like wine. you have to rotate them occasionally.

honey is a literally preservative, above all of itself (turns time into a flat circle)

it's where i store my crimson sarcophagus juice

can you go on a best before date with someone?

on the other side of things i bought a thing of tamari when i went gluten free earlier this summer... it has a best before date of february 11, 2026... if it's not gone by then, am i really going to notice it's expired? and is it _actually_ ever going to expire, or does it have an expiration date because all food products here are legally required to?

honestly a lot of the stuff i have in my pantry is there as a prophylactic. do i have any chinese five-spice? good, all is well with the world. have i ever actually used chinese five-spice in my cooking? no but goddamn i COULD IF I WANTED TO. unless i check it and find out it expired five years ago.

my knowledge of wine aging is limited to "day of the tentacle", where at some point you need a bottle of vinegar. the solution, of course, is to travel back in time to the late 18th century and put a bottle of wine where nobody else will find it.

i couldn't ever figure that solution out, myself. steven moffat probably had the solution within five seconds.

Egg Thread Noodles, best before 2018. yes, or no?

probably fine, you're gonna boil them anyway

they look like the dictionary definition of inert.

am more surprised i hadn't thought to use them in 6 years.

I'm saying yes

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/cheese-dating-back-3-600-years-found-in-chinese-tomb-researchers-say-13222530

How much they asking for it?

Need to poll “would you eat 3600yo old cheese?”

I can't cite the original, but a while back I read the phrase "cheese is milk's bid for immortality". This discovery backs that up in a literal sense.

California Just Became the First State to Ban Sell-By Dates

On September 28, California became the first state to ban “sell-by” dates, as Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation aimed at combating food waste. The law prohibits the use of consumer-facing sell-by dates, and also requires standardized language for date labels.