Best By and Expiration Dates

[Richard Kilgore]

In the process of helping a friend reorganize her kitchen cabinets, a number of questions came up regarding how long to keep things and when to toss it: herbs and spices, canned and packaged foods in this case.

My herb and spice guidelines came from a discussion here several years ago. Whole leaf, about six months; ground, about a year. during the recession, that gets stretched to up to one year ground and two years whole leaf. And that's using high quality product such as Penzey's.

Canned goods, I get uncomfortable if they are more than a few months past the date. I don't used pre-packaged foods much at all, but think the flavor would be diminishing after a few months, even if safe to eat.

What do you all do about keeping or tossing spices and herbs? How do you decide when it is unsafe to keep canned goods? Or when the quality will make them not worth keeping? Are "best by" and expiration dates valid or are they very conservative?

[Stephanie Brim]

For fresh stuff like cheese and milk, I've been known to completely ignore dates and go by smell/taste. I can generally tell if something's off. Cheese gets the mold cut off (as long as it isn't covering the whole of the cheese; then it gets tossed). Meat tends to go by the expiration date here as I'm very cautious about that as a rule with a toddler in the house. Canned goods? As long as they're not dented and were stored in a cool area of the house, I'm okay with up to a year past date. As to boxed stuff like mac & cheese or crackers: I follow the dates. I've gotten burned before when the packet of cheese sauce in the Velveeta package tasted funny.

[ermintrude]

Best by, sell by - these are dates when it has been determined products are at their best.

Something canned in 2001 may be best before 2003 however if canned correctly should still be edible in 3003 (what it tastes like is another matter) this goes for a lot of preserves.

But when something says use by then use it by then unless you preserve it in some way (freeze etc) once it goes past this date it's risky. To be honest these dates are often a worst case scenario. E.g. From production to store (Chill chain perfect but for safety lets deduct some time), in store in the chill cabinet picked up, put back on top so not at ideal temp, After purchase was put with ambient goods in the back of a car and after other retail took four hours to get home. And if used before the used by date no problem. My gripe is often, as use by is a worst case scenario, good food is thrown out. Smelling/Taste may indicate that things are bad but often the most lethal pathogens leave no trace, so unless you know exactly what happened to your food to the current date then use by dates should be adhered to. (However myself I use some common sense - but that's up to you).

The cheese issue, I used to be a cut the mould off guy, however after talking to a microbiologist the mould is only the fruit, throughout the cheese a mycelium is spreading, and these can bad to consume even when the cheese looks ok. Most of the time cheese mould is non toxic or even beneficial but there are some vicious ones around so unless you know what mould/fungus is on your cheese then throw away.

I must admit we seem to be hyper adverse to anything these days. Some of the best foods around need bacteria, mould and fungus. Perhaps these days we insulate and protect ourselves to much - "A pinch of dirt before you die" was a quote I remember from my grandmother.

I must admit, best before or sell by dates can be stupid, I once bought malt vinegar (in a newly changed bottle so no more than with a month old) with a best before date a year later, how stupid can you get. Often manufactures, I believe, use this to increase turnover or more likely decrease the risk of legal action.

So me I ignore the dates unless it's a use buy date.

For use buy dates I use my experience to judge (At my own risk)

[Darienne]

Smelling/Taste may indicate that things are bad but often the most lethal pathogens leave no trace, so unless you know exactly what happened to your food to the current date then use by dates should be adhered to. (However myself I use some common sense - but that's up to you).

The cheese issue, I used to be a cut the mould off guy, however after talking to a microbiologist the mould is only the fruit, throughout the cheese a mycelium is spreading, and these can bad to consume even when the cheese looks ok.

Thank you for this post. I'm going to make sure Mr. Casual, my DH, reads it. I am paranoid about food going bad and now I feel a bit more vindicated.

[Fat Guy]

There's a nice piece on this in the New York Times today, by the excellent writer Bruce Feiler.

"Take Back the Trash"

[andiesenji]

I am in full agreement with the idea that most "use-by" dates have been woefully shortened in recent years.

Is it because of a fear of lawsuits? I don't think so. I think it is to encourage the discarding and replacing of canned foods that are perfectly good.

Milk products have dates that vary wildly. I use my nose and my taste to determine if milk, cream and etc., are still good. I know enough to not be a slave to arbitrary dating.

As noted in the linked article posted by FG, who decided on these times and what research was done to make them viable?

Canned goods have been kept and used for years after the "use-by" with no ill effects, AS LONG AS THE SEALS ARE INTACT, NO DENTS, ETC., and they are not high-acid foods; tomatoes, sauerkraut, pineapple, etc., that tend to have an effect on the lining of cans.

This dating of cans is a recent development. For many years all of us had cans of undated stuff in our pantries and used it without a problem.

Has the processing changed? No! The only thing that has changed is a few words in a USDA rule. Since then there has been a lot of wastage of food that is safe to consume.

The shame of this is that most food banks can no longer receive outdated cans and that is particularly annoying to me. Dumping canned food in a landfill when it could fill hungry bellies, is to me a crime.

[Chef Jonny]

There's one product I know for sure you should keep an eye on - cake and pancake mixes.... there's some cases that have come up where people get REALLY sick because they didn't notice the expiry date....

http://help.com/post/113848-warning-about-pancake-mix-and-othe

Just sayin'.

[gfweb]

Ground beef use-by/sell-by dates are critical, I think. It is just waiting to spoil.

Not so long ago I set a warm meatloaf next to some ground beef in the fridge. The next day the beef, still in its store wrapper was smelling foul...illustrating two points I guess. One, that warm food in the fridge causes a spoilage risk and two, that ground beef is meant to be used fast or frozen.

[andiesenji]

Ground beef use-by/sell-by dates are critical, I think. It is just waiting to spoil.

Not so long ago I set a warm meatloaf next to some ground beef in the fridge. The next day the beef, still in its store wrapper was smelling foul...illustrating two points I guess. One, that warm food in the fridge causes a spoilage risk and two, that ground beef is meant to be used fast or frozen.

I usually grind my own meats because I want to know what is going in there.

I do not buy supermarket ground meats.

When I don't want to grind it myself, I go to my local "real" butcher shop and have them grind the meats that I pick out.

As far as putting cooked stuff into the fridge, I NEVER put hot or even fairly warm food into the fridge. I always have some of the "blue ice" packs, (large) in the freezer and I simply wrap or cover the container, set it on one pack and top it with another.

This chills stuff rapidly.

For stocks and soups, etc., in larger amounts, I have a couple of these Rapi-Cool chillers,

one is always in the freezer, filled with water and in its own plastic bag so it is not contaminated. I immerse it in the stock or soup, if I have a large batch, I have both frozen and when the water in the first melts, I use the second.

I learned many years ago, when working in a medical laboratory, that putting warm stuff into the fridge will increase the internal temp by a significant amount, compromising vaccines and other things that have to be kept constantly chilled.

Our fridges had alarms that sounded when the temp rose above the required level.

Edited March 6, 2011 by andiesenji (log)

[ermintrude]

There's one product I know for sure you should keep an eye on - cake and pancake mixes.... there's some cases that have come up where people get REALLY sick because they didn't notice the expiry date....

http://help.com/post/113848-warning-about-pancake-mix-and-othe

Just sayin'.

If you follow on and actually read the snopes link http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/pancake.asp which I guess many will not it's only partially true. And how old it is has nothing to do with if it's dangerous, the danger is if your allergic to mould or the mix is not in it's sealed packaging, read the articles for full details.

So provided everything is in it's sealed packets don't throw it out when it's gone past the best before