Buy wisely, store carefully and use your nose
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- March 31, 2022
- 804
A few weeks ago, I shared the problem we have at my house with consuming the food we buy before it goes bad. Like many of you, we throw away far too much food in the course of a year, and I want to try and correct that.
Landfills in the U.S are chiefly made up of discarded food, and an awful lot of it is perfectly edible. In part, we can blame our confusing food-dating system for the waste, as many just don’t understand what manufacturers mean by “sell by,” “best if eaten by” or “expires on.” I wasn’t entirely clear on some of it myself, so let’s get into the terminology and see what we can learn.
The first thing that surprised me is with the exception of baby formula, expiration dates are not required by the Food and Drug Administration. Manufacturers voluntarily use them as a guide to help consumers make informed decisions, but with one notable exception, they are just that — guidelines. You are responsible for using that information, plus your own senses, to determine when food is safe to eat and when it is not.
Food products are dated in two ways: open and closed dating. Open dating gives you a suggested calendar date by which a food item should likely be consumed or sold for best quality results. Closed dating marks a food product with the date on which it was manufactured and packaged. Neither date is an indicator of product safety or quality.
Over the past holidays, a grocery store I often visit had lamb legs priced at $80 or more and a sell-by date of Dec. 31. New Year’s Eve came and went, and all of those lovely lamb legs remained unsold.
The grocer froze them and moved them to the frozen meats section, with an unaltered sell-by date, as the Feds require. Voluntary product dating must not be untruthful or misleading.
There they languished until the store gave up and took them out of circulation. The sell-by date of Dec. 31 became frozen in time, if you will, once the meat went into a freezer, extending its consumable life for weeks if not months.
“Best if used by” is a guide for retailers to aid in such decisions and for consumers in deciding what they are willing to buy. It does not mean the food goes instantly spoiled on that date, nor is it an indicator of food safety or quality.
Manufacturers use a number of factors in determining how long a product can remain on the shelves including processing method, packaging and how long the food will be held before being offered for sale. Once the suggested date for consumption passes, one can begin to expect the quality of the food to decrease in time. You can still eat it safely for some time after the suggested date, as long as you store it properly and use your eyes and nose.
“Best if used by” means a date by which something should be consumed for maximum quality. The date bears no relationship to food safety.
“Use by” is the last approximate date you can expect a food product to be at optimum quality. If your milk is dated April 5, you can continue to drink it after that date unless your nose tells you it’s gone on to whiter pastures.
“Freeze by” is a date by which you should freeze a food product to maintain peak quality. Again, it has nothing to do with food safety.
“Expires on” should be taken more seriously. Think twice about eating something past this date as it means business.
Once these dates pass, food should still be wholesome and safe as long as it is handled and stored properly. Bacon lasts quite a while in the fridge, but you’ll know when it has gone off, as it has an odor reminiscent of a wet Beagle.
Molds, yeasts and bacteria can multiply in food and cause ultimate spoilage beyond which it is not safe to eat. Smell everything before you eat it. And remember bacteria are microscopic.
If you can see green fuzzy mold on a small part of a loaf of bread, that doesn’t mean the rest is safe. By the time such mold becomes visible, the whole loaf is teaming with it.
Buy wisely, store carefully and use your nose. There’s no reason to throw out perfectly good food that has “expired.”