To eat or not to eat: The Truth about Food "Expiration" Dates

A few months ago, I poured my morning glass of soy milk (organic). I took a hefty swig and swallowed. Bahhhh!!!!! It was sour!! And lumpy! Ick!! I spit out what was in my mouth and rinsed with copious amounts of water. The milk had obviously gone off. How had I missed that? I mean, according to the date on the carton, the milk hadn't reached it's "Best Before" date. Urgh... don't those dates mean anything??

This morning, I came across an article that suggested we stop wasting food by throwing it out after it passes its expiry date. That lots of food is good long past the date on the package. Ummm.... what about sour soy milk?? Which makes me ask again... don't those dates mean anything?? 

I always thought the "Best Before" or expiry dates were there to protect us from food poisoning. Although, to be honesty... I've also eaten my share of moldy cheddar cheese... just cut off the moldy bits and you're good to go! Unless it's blue cheese of course... cause even that can go "off" when it starts growing non-blue mold. Oh, and I do know that moldy bread should not be eaten... even with the moldy bits cut off, cause the mold roots can spread deep into the bread, far from the obvious mold. On the other hand, I've eaten sandwiches and tasted the mold go by and lived to tell the tale. I wouldn't eat canned food that was past its expiry date but I do eat dry pasta that is past its expiry date. Is there some unwritten code for knowing when it's safe to ignore expiry dates and when we should heed them?

Yup... cooked and ate this on 11 July 2021... still alive!

So... what do we know? Well, 40% of food grown and produced in America is wasted.  Which isn't just a waste of food, but also a waste of water to grow that food. Plus the amount of stuff that ends up in the landfills (21% of landfill stuff is food). On average, each person in the USA wastes 290 lbs of food per year. These numbers are concerning. Particularly when 42 million people in the USA live with food insecurity.

And yet... we come across these expiry dates and... what's a person to do? Run the risk of botulism or food poisoning by eating food which might be bad?

It all comes down to those food labels... and the question... do those dates actually mean anything? Apparently researchers studied food "expiration" dates and concluded that while they are well-intentioned, they are haphazard and confusing. No kidding. On top of that... they rarely correspond to food actually expiring or spoiling. Ummm... yeah... tell that to the person who drank spoiled soy milk even though it hadn't reached its expiry date!

So here's the bottom line... those dates aren't food expiration dates at all. Nope. For one thing, those dates are not standardized. For another thing, they have almost nothing to do with food safety. 

One type of vegan mayo with a BestBefore date...

Another vegan mayo with a "Lot" date... in the future. Is that a BestBefore date?

When date labels first appeared after the Second World War, they were mostly for store owners. So that they would know when to rotate food stock. But given that consumers wanted to buy the freshest food possible, some people published little booklets to decipher the date codes on food. I'm surely not the only one who paws through the cartons of milk looking at the date labels and pulls a "fresher" one from the back of the pack?

Once manufacturers figured out that consumers wanted to know about the dates, they started putting month, day, year on their products. Consumers no longer needed a booklet to decode the dates on food labels. But there was no consistency between manufacturers and producers. In the US, there is no federal regulation about date labels (except  for infant formula) and regulation falls to the states. In some states, the date on milk has to be 21 days after bottling... in others the date is 14 days after bottling...

On top of that... some manufacturers use a “Best By" label on one product, a “Sell By” label on another, a “Best if used Before” label on a third and a "Use By" label on a fourth. All four of which mean very different things... but we consumers tend to treat them all as "expiration" dates. Ultimately though, the manufacturer's want their product to taste the best (flavour, texture, mouth feel) and the dates on food labels have more to do with food quality than food safety. The "Best Before" date isn't the same as a "Bad After" date! Except for things like meat... and deli products... and eggs... which, if they are past their date can really make you sick.

Federal regulation to standardize dates on food labels has been attempted several times in the USA but always goes down in flames. Some major food associations (Consumer Brands Association and the Food Marketing Institute) managed to come up with two labels: the "Best if Used By" label is for food quality and the "Use By" label is for food safety. But they haven't caught on with all food producers.

But even if we could get to standardized regulation (and Canada has more than the US), we'd still need to shift our mindset about food that is past its prime. Lots of food is still safe to eat after the date on the label. It's not "bad" for us. This might then shift the perception that donating expired food (that is not at its peak quality) to food banks and homeless shelters is a "bad" thing. This might help with food insecurity...

The UK even came up with a slogan for food safety: "Look, Smell, Taste, Don't Waste". In other words, we should trust our senses. I would also add "Touch" to that message. If I'm cutting up a pepper that is a bit dodgy (squishy bits), I use my fingers to check for the slimy bits and cut those off... But the word "touch" doesn't really fit in the UK's rhyming slogan.

Although... the taste bit certainly worked for me with the soy milk. It tasted icky and once I had a closer look at it, I could see it was lumpy. And... the fact that it was going off before it's expiration date? That's because it had been sitting open in our fridge for days (perhaps... cough... a week or more...). Those "Best Before" dates are only good for unopened packages. Once it's been opened... all bets are off.

A Canadian Government site notes that...  "because of the potential for contamination, once a package of lunchmeat is open, for safety reasons, it should be consumed in 3-5 days. You can't tell whether food is unsafe by its smell or taste." Well... so much for the UK's slogan - "Look, Smell, Taste, Don't Waste". Sigh.

Inspections Canada has a site which offers some information about date labelling on pre-packaged foods. It would appear that foods with a durable life (related to quality) of 90 days or less, have regulations about date labelling. For foods that have a durable life of more than 90 days, there is voluntary date labelling. We are still left to navigate through Best Before, Use By, Packaged On, Expiration, Freeze By, Use By.... and figure out what they all mean.

The Canadian Government also has a page that outlines how to handle and store fresh food in the fridge and freezer. Did you know an open container of yogurt has a shelf life of 3 days? Ooops... We used to buy 4 litre buckets of yogurt from Superstore and eat them over the course of a week... or two. If we saw mold on the edge of the bucket, we'd just scrape it off and keep eating. It's amazing we didn't get seriously sick! Opened milk is only good for 3 days too. Cheese is interesting though... it's good for the date given on the packaging, whether it's opened or unopened.

But what about processed foods? Like canned foods and packages of pasta, dried beans or rice? I mean, canned foods have a date on the bottom. Isn't  that an expiry date? Nope. It's a quality date. Apparently canned foods, if they are stored correctly (no extremes of heat or moisture) and aren't damaged (leaking, dented, rusted), are good forever. They might not be top quality but... essentially... good to eat for a very, very, very long time.

So, at the end of the day... what's a person to do? Isn't there a general rule of thumb we could use? Nope... it's OK to cut mold off of hard cheeses like cheddar, but not off of soft cheeses. It's OK to drink milk past the date on the carton, as long as it doesn't smell or taste funny. But don't try that with deli meat. You can test eggs past their carton date with the float test, but there isn't any way to test meat or seafood.

I can see why people just err on the side of caution and toss anything past the labelled date! On the other hand... some foods like canned goods, pasta, dried beans and rice are much more forgiving. Usually. We have used dried beans well past the date on the package and found them to have texture issues - way too hard and virtually inedible, no longer how much we soaked or cooked them. We have also smelled rice and found it to be rancid. I guess each person/household needs to learn the rule of thumb for the stuff they buy most often.

From a can of Cream of Celery soup in our pantry...
To eat... or not to eat... that is the question...

I did learn something today about canned foods... that they are likely to be good for a very long time. It's still a good idea to check the cans and make sure they aren't dented or bulging or rusted. And we always rotate our new cans to the back of the pantry and use the older cans first.

Gone are the days of just tossing "expired" food willy nilly. This is going to require a bit  more thought and attention!