Expiration dates – what the heck do they mean when it comes to moldy, decaying food,
raw meat, and baby formula? If you're hungry for the answer, keep watching!
Expiration dates don't necessarily indicate the exact day you need to discard a product. Terms
like "best by" are not strict limits, but rather the day after which manufacturers won't guarantee
the quality of a product. CNN says that as far back as 1979, studies found that expiration dates
did not truly indicate freshness. Indeed, many foods are still good past their expiration date.
In 2019, Maryland station WTOP News reported on a man who spent a year eating food well
beyond the dates on the packaging, including year-old tortillas, six-month-old yogurt,
and meat 15 days past its expiration date. He clearly took risks, especially with the meat,
and we certainly don't recommend going to the same lengths he did.
But even terms that seem absolute, such as "do not use after," are sometimes more of a quality
issue than a safety one. WebMD uses cake mix as an example; after the listed date, the yeast in
the product may not work well even if it hasn't spoiled. Keep in mind that if the product smells
or looks off, or if you see evidence of mold, toss it no matter the date indicated.
"Doesn't expire until December next year. We have more than a year on it."
Despite the problems that dates can cause concerning food waste,
it's a myth that they are entirely meaningless. First, infant formula is federally required to
have an expiration date because it must contain specific amounts of nutrients.
Past the date, the nutrients may start to become inactive. Meanwhile,
labels on packages of raw meat advising to use or
freeze it by a certain date indicate when safety is likely to become a problem.
Even vague dates like "best if used by" have their value. It's still nice to know when something may
no longer taste as good as it should, and it's a bit worrying to bite into food when you have
no idea how old it could be. Retailers use these dates to figure out when to pull products from
shelves. The current dating system isn't perfect by any means, but it's better than nothing.
The terms used by manufacturers can mean different things to different companies,
and Vox reports that even the same type of food may have a sell-by date from one company and a
best-before date from another. It's a myth that these terms are all based on the same standards.
However, determining that date is surprisingly subjective. According to Gizmodo, manufacturers
will put food through extensive tests to see when a product starts to lose flavor and spoil,
but there's no single laboratory that tests all products. The resulting dates and time
ranges are unique to the specific brand and product being tested.
State regulations also play a role, and different limits, minimums, and meanings for terms
exist. Ultimately, the final result can change drastically across state lines. To illustrate, NPR
examined various expiration dates in July 2022 and reported that whereas pasteurized milk has to be
sold within 12 days of pasteurization in Montana, it can be sold up to 20 days after in Idaho.
It's worth noting that food products with
specific dates after which they shouldn't be consumed don't suddenly go bad at midnight.
There's no workforce of bacteria waiting to clock in, ready to infect the food.
In fact, it may have already been going bad. So, if it's 12:01 a.m. on the day
after the expiration date, you can't assume the food is either safe or unsafe. Always
inspect an item to see if the food is spoiled before eating or freezing it. As
for meat products like raw chicken or beef, it's better to throw them out just in case.
Here's where it gets interesting. The U.K. Food Standards Agency advises not
using or eating food with a use-by date past midnight of the day it supposedly expires.
Manufacturers don't make and therefore label foods with specific expiration
times for different time zones; you don't have products that expire at midnight in
New York while remaining good for three more hours in California. So why the discrepancy?
The Food Standards Agency doesn't address this, but midnight is a very easy time to remember,
making it useful for people who prefer not to take a chance or who lack a sense of smell or taste.
Some foods don't really expire at all. It's rare but true, and honey is the
best example. Honey has very little moisture and is on the acidic side of the pH scale,
meaning the conditions are not great for bacterial growth. Without the usual
driver behind decay present, honey is safe to eat for a very long time.
That being said, we're probably so used to seeing an expiration
date that finding food without any code would be alarming. Honey may never go bad,
but it's nice to have some indication of just how long it's been sitting around.
"But everything has a shelf life. So I must eat and then
replace everything that's about to expire."
Honey can still spoil even if it doesn't technically expire, according to Eating Well.
If it isn't stored correctly, moisture can get past the seal, causing the honey to develop mold,
according to Smithsonian magazine. In this instance or if the honey smells odd,
throw it out. This is not a case where you can scoop out the mold and keep eating.
While bottled water is labeled with an expiration date,
usually two years after the time it was produced, the water is still fine.
Mental Floss explains that the date is indicated because New Jersey briefly
required expiration dates of two years or less on all consumables. Bottling
plants simply added it to all the bottles they produced to simplify the manufacturing process.
It would have been possible but highly annoying to only print dates on some
bottles and keep track of what was shipped where. After the regulation was removed,
manufacturers just kept placing dates on water bottles.
There's a legal reason for the date – the label is
meant to protect the company. If someone complains about the water,
bottlers can point to the older date and avoid blame for any issues regarding quality.
While water itself doesn't expire, the plastic bottle it's stored in can start to decline in
quality over time. Healthline warns that you may not want to drink bottled water
that's over two years old anyway, as chemicals like bisphenol A can leach into the liquid.
When you freeze foods, they temporarily stop decaying and
stay in that state as long as they remain frozen.
The only real risk the food faces — other than a power outage that
causes it to thaw into the danger zone — is freezer burn. Healthline explains that
this occurs when frozen food dries out, deteriorating its quality. The food is
still safe to eat, but it may have a less-than-pleasant flavor or texture.
Why do foods have to be kept below 0 degrees Fahrenheit if freezing temperatures start at
32 Fahrenheit? The answer is research and convenience. According to one appliance
manufacturer, when freezers were first in use, 14 Fahrenheit was
considered a good temperature for keeping food completely frozen.
However, in the 1930s, the American Fruit and Vegetable Coalition started advocating 0
Fahrenheit as the proper freezer temperature, simply because it was easy to remember.
This proved to be a good move, though; it turns out that above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, nutrients
decay faster than they would at temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Freezing food at
colder temperatures consumes too much extra energy, so 0 degrees Fahrenheit is seen as a
good-enough temperature that's balanced between preserving nutrients and your utility bill.
Expiration dates make it sound like once a food passes this pivotal moment,
you absolutely have to throw it out. Combine a best-by date with greens that look a bit wilted,
for example, and it might seem to be the case. But even this isn't so simple. Some
deterioration is actually not a problem as long as you don't eat the decayed portion.
A great example is mold on hard cheese. According to the Mayo Clinic,
as long as you cut away the mold surrounding it,
and provided that the rest of the cheese doesn't smell bad or look suspect, it should be edible.
However, this is not the case for all moldy foods. Bustle reports that items like bread
need to be thrown out even if they only have a little bit of mold. Overripe or soft
fruit that doesn't have mold can be used for quickbreads and other cooked desserts or jams.
But again, be careful. You have to learn what, quote, "normal and safe to eat" smells, tastes,
and looks like. You see, it's not just the taste and smell but also the consistency,
texture, and even color that provide clues as to how safe a food product
is to eat. Yeah, we'd say this is a definite pass!
You'll become more experienced over time but always err on the side of caution. It's better
to throw out food you're not sure about than it is to eat something that could make you sick.
Baby formula is a special case. It's not only the sole federally mandated expiration date,
but it means something different than a date for,
say, raw meat. The product has to contain a carefully crafted formula of nutrients. As such,
the use-by date indicates the point at which these nutrients start to deteriorate.
"Other than that there's really no other food product that has a federal regulation."
Past this date, the formula is no longer guaranteed to have
the required amounts of each nutrient. The formula's quality may also change,
making it harder for the fluid to pass through a bottle nipple. The expiration
date is so important that even during the formula shortage during the pandemic,
the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services still advised against using expired formula.
Despite these measures, formula dates aren't necessarily a marker of food safety. In 2013,
NBC Connecticut investigated reports of expired baby formula on sale in
stores and found multiple bottles that should have been pulled months before.
Nicole Newman, a licensed dietitian, told the station that the expired formula might
not necessarily create immediate health problems,
although the risk of long-term health issues was a known problem. Still,
feeding expired formula to a baby whose immune system isn't yet developed sounds like a bad idea.
It wasn't until about 1970 that the dates showed up on store shelves and
they weren't yet what we use today; "sell by" wasn't a thing until 1973.
Customers became more concerned about the safety of their food.
According to a report by the National Resources Defence Council and Harvard University,
many states went ahead and created their own regulations regarding food expiration dating.
Depending on where you live, the dates might actually be required by your state government.
If you've heard rumors that expiration dates exist thanks to gangster Al Capone,
it turns out that story is unverified. The details vary, with the main characters being
anyone from Capone and his daughter to Capone's brother and the son of an associate. Who knew?
If the variety of terms and lack of concrete advice have you ready to shop for frozen foods
for the rest of your life, we hear you. So do a lot of other people who work behind
the scenes to address the problem with these dates. The solutions they've come
up with have been a mix of federal legislation, creating new systems,
and even politely forcing customers to practice using their instincts.
For example, The Guardian reported in August 2022 that four major U.K. supermarket chains
had started removing dates on certain products such as fruits, vegetables, and even milk to get
customers used to trusting their senses again. Morrisons, which removed use-by dates from its
store-brand milk, said it would leave best-before dates on the milk to indicate optimal quality.
Walmart, for example, now uses "use by" or "freeze by" for foods that are time-
or temperature-sensitive and "best if used by" for quality. In December 2021,
three U.S. representatives introduced the Food Date Labeling Act, which if
passed will make the terms "use by" and "best if used by" the national standard.
"So, this legislation makes a lot of sense because
it can help to really match the reality with what people think they're getting."