"best before 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?