"best before date"

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!