Bye, bye, bye
Don't let expiry dates force you to part ways with perfectly good food
With prices being what they are these days (that is, exorbitant) and us being a thrifty bunch, I thought it would be a good idea to look at one area of our lives that creates a great deal of waste and isn’t always fully understood: expiry dates.
Specifically, those dates that indicate you need to throw that milk out as quickly as possible because it’s now past its date and could literally spontaneously combust in your hands any second, that’s how dangerous it is.
“If I drink this even one minute past the date noted on the label, I will probably die the most horrible, painful, cringy death ever and even worse, this expired food WILL HAVE BEEN MY LAST MEAL,” is the sort of thing you might worry about.
The truth is that a lot of perfectly edible food gets wasted, which means a lot of money gets wasted. Thousands of dollars a year per family, according to one study.
So, using a variety of highly scientific tactics that include remembering conversations I’ve had with people who work in grocery stores and looking it up online, I’ve come to help you sort through the expiry date confusion. This way you can think twice before you throw out that jar of mayonnaise that is now worth $50, probably.
Best before dates only tell you the anticipated amount of time an unopened food product stored under appropriate conditions retains its freshness, taste, nutritional value, or other qualities claimed by the manufacturer (this isn’t anecdotal, it comes directly from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and doesn’t that sound exactly like something they’d write?).
Note that there’s nothing in there about safety. A product could be safe long after the best before date. All it means is that the food is going to have its highest quality before then. Chips will be their crunchiest. Orange juice will be its orange juiciest. That’s not the same thing as being safe or unsafe.
Also important to note is that there aren’t any standardized rules or guidelines for determining how to set the best before date. Manufacturers can decide for themselves how to set that date (and my uninformed guess is they choose a date that encourages consumers to toss their food and replace it more quickly than we actually need to).
Expiration dates are put on foods that have strict compositional and nutritional specifications that might not be met after the expiration date. This means that the nutrition content listed on the label might not be accurate after that date passes. (This is also from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.)
Now, here’s the thing that most people overlook. Most of the foods that we think of as having expiry dates actually have best before dates (yes, BB means best before). Milk, cheese, frozen meats all have best before dates, NOT expiry dates. Go ahead, take a look. I’ll wait (I also took a look, and thank you to my dear friend for having milk and creamer that I could look at to verify so I didn’t wind up with non-expired egg on my face after writing this). Sneakily, sometimes they write the date in very large font and the best before in small, almost invisible font.
We’re used to calling all dates on food "expiry dates” so we just assume that once that date has passed it’s no longer safe. But there are only 6 types of food that are actually required to carry expiry dates, and they are generally in the area of liquid diets, meal replacements, food substitutes, and milk substitutes (you can see the list here).
For everything else, we’re getting a best before date that tells us nothing about safety.
If the best before date on an item has passed, it might still be good. You can use your nose, eyes and tastebuds (if you’re brave enough to taste it) to figure out how good something still is.
So, before you toss that cheese away (don’t you dare throw perfectly good cheese away), here are some tips on checking whether your food is still safe or whether it has crossed a line it can’t come back from:
Bad eggs float in fresh, cold water. Fresh eggs sink. (I believe this is also how society determined which people were witches in the 1700s. I guess if it’s good for the egg, it’s good for the accused witch.)
Fresh fruit develops mushy texture, discolouration, wrinkly skin, and foul odours.
Uncooked meat becomes slimy or sticky. It also smells awful. Same with deli meat.
If there’s mold on one piece of bread, toss the whole loaf. Bread is porous and mold spreads faster through bread than rumours through a high school.
Vegetables go yellow (ignore this warning sign for those that are already yellow).
Milk gets lumpy, discoloured and sour smelling.
Yogurt gets puddles on top, curdles near the bottom and mold.
Cheese gets moldy. With a soft cheese, toss the whole thing when you see mold. With a hard cheese, you can cut off the part that’s moldy (take off a little extra so you avoid any spores).
Unopened canned items can last anywhere from 18 months to five years, depending on how acidic they are (watch for dents or bulges that develop in the cans).
Seafood smells even more fishy. It’s its most disgusting fishiness when it’s bad.
Now, armed with this information, maybe save yourself some money by double checking whether food that is past its best before date is really bad, or whether it’s just no longer living its best possible life.
Because groceries these days are too expensive to just toss.
Cheers to your financial security,
Heidi