A lot of this stuff isn’t becoming “unsafe” per-say but “inert”. Chemically processed components have a shelf life that deteriorate over time. So a liquid soap can congeal or lose its potency or develop a weird smell over time. Gasoline evaporates, leaving behind a gum that can clog engine parts. OTC pharmaceuticals like aspirin lose potency of their active ingredients and become what amounts to a salt pill.

A lot of these dates are simply there for the sake of liability. If you use a ten-year-old hand cream and it gives you eczema as a result, the manufacturer isn’t liable. But this stuff doesn’t magically become lethal the day after the “use by” date.

What do you think the percentage is of Americans who throws out good food (even junk food) based on the expiration date? I mean - they do so not because the food might be stale but because they believe it suddenly became possibly toxic to eat.

As someone who works in a grocery store, the answer is too damn many. “Best by”, “use by” “sell by” dates are all meaningless, and entirely vibes based.

Sell by, specifically, is only relevant to the employee stocking the shelves. But people think that the deli meat with a sell by date of tomorrow will kill them if they eat it in two days.

No honey, that was sliced today. It’ll be fine in your fridge for like, a week, as long as you take proper storage precautions.

Your Food is Lying to You

i ignore all that junk, mostly.

one time I moved into an old office that hadn’t been used in years, and the former occupant had left all manner of stuff in there. took me weeks to go through it and toss/keep material.

one late morning I find a still wrapped milk chocolate candy bar that had expired literally 15+ years earlier.

I opened it, sniffed it and looked it over. seemed ok, so I ate it. it was sweet but chalky. 2/5, would not eat again. nothing bad happened though.

I use it as a guideline - useful when cleaning the pantry, but two weeks? Hell no I’m eating them chips

But I’m also filing for a refund, because I paid for in-date chips

Eating like a vegan means paying way less attention to this kinda stuff, just sayin’. Something like vegan mayo or whatever just inherently stays fresh way longer.

Also just in general you can ignore expiration dates so long as you can smell or see when food goes bad. They don’t mean much. Also there are “best by” dates that people think are expiration dates but actually they’re just a marketing thing about the company’s claim for how long the food will be up to their standards.

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I grew up poor and we ate stale or almost stale food quite a bit.

If it’s food with a bunch of preservatives in it, I almost never check the dates. If it’s fresh produce, just check if it’s looking wilted or moldy. Even some wilt is fine imo. Sliced bread I go a few weeks past before I worry. Fresh bread is a few days after but I check for mold spots and if none, I still use it.

Back when I consumes dairy, I wold usually go by the date though. Day of or day after, maybe give it a smell? I will say, Great Value brand cheese, never trust the date even if it’s before expiration. That shit will become moldy in a heartbeat as long as it’s been opened.

I’m making a curry dish right now for lunch and my curry powder has been expired for 2 years. It’s fine, it just isn’t as strong as it used to be.

Most medications in solid form like pills, tablets, etc. practically never go bad.

It is generally safe to consume foods like chips a few days past their expiration date, as long as the bag remains sealed and undamaged. In the case of chips, the primary concern is staleness, but they’re unlikely to pose any health risks if unopened for weeks/months.

Soap, on the other hand, is a different story. The denaturing of soap, in this context, refers to its chemical composition breaking down over time. Expired soap might lose its effectiveness, potentially making it less capable of cleaning or disinfecting. So, for hygiene purposes, it’s best to use soap that’s within its date. In coffee or tea, the denaturing process becomes more critical. Caffeine content decreases over time, which might impact the expected energy boost.

It’s usually vibes based, had bagged spinach in the fridge that was like a week out of date that was still usable if you just picked some bad leaves out and washed the rest, but then there’s the bag I found a few months ago that was in there for weeks after the expiration date and was just basically sludge. I used to be a lot more of a stickler about expiration dates, especially since my first job was stocking produce shelves and they hammered it into us that anything out of date was to be immediately trashed. The soy milk cartons usually say to use within a week, but they’re fine and if I’m not sure I’ll do a sniff test and a tiny taste test to make sure. Then there are times where you’d expect something to last basically forever like rice stored in a sealed container or sesame seeds in a sealed metal canister, but oh boy several years out finding them deep in the pantry they had a strong chemical taste and were 100% inedible, even if they were safe, they tasted disgusting. But chips a couple weeks out, whatever, sometimes places will sell this stuff slightly out of date for a discounted price on stuff that’s pretty clear to be safe.

Will say that the food waste from grocers and stores will outpace the home to an ungodly degree.

Avoiding the topic at hand to drop some useless trivia: the wide adoption of expiration dates on food in the US can largely be traced to Al Capone. During the Depression he ran food shelves and soup kitchens to improve people’s opinions of him. Once, milk his organization was giving out lead many to get sick. And so some enterprising fellow in the Capone organization thought that maybe they should date the milk to avoid it in the future. They weren’t the first to use expiration dates, but they definitely helped spread their use

I’ve eaten candy bars years out of date and they tasted the same. Feel like it only matters for things like meat, dairy, eggs and shit like that

expiration dates on any dry packaged foods are horseshit

Yo, why the fuck does my distilled vinegar have an expiration date. It’s ten years out, you would think i’d be able to use it all by then, but still, it’s vinegar.

with food, I’m sure most ( 70+%) americans have at some point tossed something good because of the expiry. with non-food i bet most never see it or ignore it.

Its a good frame of reference for items that actually do go bad or for freshness generally, but its almost always too short. I used to have eggs last an almost disturbingly long time in the fridge. they may not be as good after that long but they never tasted or smelled bad or made me sick.