How long after its expiration date will you eat something?

[MHS]

This so varies for me. Milk has to be within a day of its sell by date, and even then, if it's been open for a while I'll probably throw it out on the sell by day. Meat I'll go a couple of days past. But eggs and pudding I'll go 3-4 months past the date as long as they look and smell ok. Cottage cheese I will only buy in the single serve containers because I won't eat opened cottage cheese even before its sell-by date. Medicines and vitamins I usually don't even bother looking at the expiration date- if they are in my medicine chest, I'll take them. It strikes me as weird that I'm so careful with some things and so blase about others.

[Blackhawk]

Except in the rarest of circumstances, the date on the carton is the date they go in the trash.

[LawBeefaroni]

Depends heavily what it is. If misjudging will result in death or severe illness, I don't push it. If it will just result in bad taste or discomfort, I may.

Milk, since you mention it, I just go by smell/taste.

Eggs 3-4 months? Are they pidan or balut?

[noxiousdog]

I just smell/look at them. Though if past expiration, I defer to the side of caution.

[MHS]

Eggs 3-4 months? Are they pidan or balut?

I'll crack it open and check it, with the assumption that bad eggs are going to be really easy to tell. But yes, I am pretty sure I can remember eating eggs at least 3 months past the sell by date a couple of times. I have pretty low standards on things like that though. I think most Americans are insane with regard to germs and bacteria. This may correlate to why I'm sick a lot...

[Enough]

Many expiration dates refer to the best sold by date and not consumed by date. In my dumpster-diving days I regularly pushed the envelope but I am a bit more careful now. Fish is one thing I don't like to gamble with.

[LordMortis]

You sound about like me only I rarely throw anything, I just end up compulsively rotating foods so they don't go bad before I eat them.

Cheese needs to be crunchy or moldy for me not to eat it.

Bread needs to be crunchy or moldy.

Milk needs to pass the smell test which is usually about 2 days.

I don't buy meat and let and let is sit around. No matter the expiration date, it's getting frozen or cooked in two day. Especially chicken.

Lunch meats, however, can take weeks to get through. They must pass the smell test if the date is expired.

I don't think I've ever thrown an egg away and I've never checked expiration. So three month or more is a pretty good guess.

Canned goods (glass and plastic containerized as well)get thrown away when the date hits. Because of this I watch them closely and make sure to rotate eat everything before the day hits. This includes things like jellies and dressings, figuring that if I haven't eaten for years after I purchased them (which happens) it's no big loss.

Dry goods I keep forever and probably shouldn't.

Frozens, I'm not sure about. I know I've got some stuff in the freezer that is well past it's date that I just never got the oomph to eat and I need to just give up on and throw away.

I also learned this year, that I suspect the Flour is not so good after a year sitting around. My Christmas baking was pretty ugh using year for the first two batches of cookies this year but instantly got better once the last of it was used.

[BooTx]

I honestly rarely even look at expiration dates. Milk these days has an absurd shelf life, but the smell test is good enough to determine whether or not it has gone bad (it's been probably over a decade since I've had milk go bad, and I only use it as an ingredient). Let's see...

Sour cream - When it has mold on it.
Cheese - When it smells funky or has mold on it (when it's not supposed to).
Bread - Mold, stale, or smell.
Meat - Smells funky (this is the only thing I really check the sell by date on when it's a "gray" area).
Yogurt - This is a tough one. Generally it does not seem to mold, but it does get...tangier over time.
Eggs - I honestly have never even stopped to think what their shelf life is. It has to be upwards of a month or more what with the pasteurization, but mine rarely last a week, so it's never a concern.
Cereal - When it's stale.
Flour - Doesn't really ever go bad since I keep it in an airtight container. I use it too quickly to ever worry about it.
Peanut Butter - Takes forever to go bad, so I've never had to worry about it.
Jelly, condiments, etc... - Takes forever to go bad. If shit is starting to separate, and I have no memory of purchasing it, I'll probably toss it.

Honey - The Immortal Food Of The Gods

[El Guapo]

When I was at my parents' house a couple weeks ago my mom said to me, "This peanut butter's expiration date is November 2011, but it still looks good to me."

I passed.

[tgb]

I just smell/look at them. Though if past expiration, I defer to the side of caution.

This. The smell test is usually good enough for me, unless something is obviously discolored/slimy/etc. tlr, on the other hand, thinks "best if used by 1/2/24" means you will die if you consume it on 1/3/34.

[Brian]

Wife: I think this milk is bad. Here, try some.

Me: Uhhhhh......

[YellowKing]

Except in the rarest of circumstances, the date on the carton is the date they go in the trash.

Amen. I know I probably waste some good stuff, but most stuff I'll even throw away by the Sell By date. YK don't do old food. I don't care if "it wouldn't kill me." I like to consume food the way the manufacturer intended. The thought of consuming bread one day past the date on the bag literally makes me nauseous.

I am also paranoid about leftovers. 3 days, that shit goes in the trash. That is MAX. If I lived by myself without my wife intervening, anything not eaten the next day after preparation would go in the trash.

/First World Problems I know. But as long as I'm stuck in the first world with the ability to afford fresh food, I'm not eating old crap.

[Smoove_B]

Ahhh...if I had a dollar for every phone conversation regarding this very topic...

Fun fact - organisms that make food smell or taste funny are rarely human pathogens. Therefore, the infamous "sniff test" is rarely useful in determining whether or not something is safe to eat.

[Scuzz]

I will go by look and smell. So my milk will sometimes last a week past the date. My wife on the other hand will toss things almost instantly once they hit that magic date.

[coopasonic]

The correct answer is ZERO.

[redrun]

Some time ago I remember reading that the more milk a state produces, the stronger the milk lobby, the longer the period that milk is allowed to be sold. The milk lobby shows that that milk can be safe to drink for period X, and has obvious signs of being bad, thus making it safe to have a sell-by period of X (or X-1, etc.).

I suspect that most folks end up with in a mode where one bad occurance of drinking/eating is enough to put an item on the 'check the expiration date' list, and items that never have a bad occurance move into a 'ignore the sell-by date unless you remember that this item has sat in the fridge for a very long time' list.

[JSHAW]

With meat's I go by the sight and sniff test. If it looks old and smells old, out it goes.

My wife shops on a weekly basis and we work off a menu of planned dinner's that I cook. She buys the ingriedients for those meals,
so we normally use everything for the meals planned.

99% of the time things get used before the expiration dates. 1% of the time I'm throwing out items based on how long it's been in the fridge
and the sight and sniff test.

My wife is much more cautious about expiration dates than I am. I have an iron stomach. I can eat cold chinese food that's been in the fridge
for a week and be ok afterwards. She would get sick just thinking about it.

[Isgrimnur]

Oddly, the USDA has a page about it.

Except for infant formula (see below), product dating is not generally required by Federal regulations.
...
Except for "use-by" dates, product dates don't always refer to home storage and use after purchase. "Use-by" dates usually refer to best quality and are not safety dates. But even if the date expires during home storage, a product should be safe, wholesome and of good quality if handled properly and kept at 40 °F or below.
...
Use of either a "Sell-By" or "Expiration" (EXP) date is not federally required, but may be State required, as defined by the egg laws in the State where the eggs are marketed. Some State egg laws do not allow the use of a "sell-by" date.
...
Always purchase eggs before the "Sell-By" or "EXP" date on the carton. After the eggs reach home, refrigerate the eggs in their original carton and place them in the coldest part of the refrigerator, not in the door. For best quality, use eggs within 3 to 5 weeks of the date you purchase them. The "sell-by" date will usually expire during that length of time, but the eggs are perfectly safe to use.
...
If product has a "use-by" date, follow that date.
If product has a "sell-by" date or no date, cook or freeze the product by the times on the following chart.

Refrigerator Storage of Fresh or Uncooked Products

Product	Storage Times After Purchase
Poultry	1 or 2 days
Beef, Veal, Pork and Lamb	3 to 5 days
Ground Meat and Ground Poultry	1 or 2 days
Fresh Variety Meats (Liver, Tongue, Brain, Kidneys, Heart, Chitterlings)	1 or 2 days
Cured Ham, Cook-Before-Eating	5 to 7 days
Sausage from Pork, Beef or Turkey, Uncooked	1 or 2 days
Eggs	3 to 5 weeks

[El Guapo]

With milk, I so rarely eat cereal (the only occasion I have to use milk), and I've been so scarred by a couple instances of drinking bad milk that the result is that I almost never have milk.

With everything else...eat unless it looks funny or the first bite tastes funny. Though my wife throws out things earlier so that becomes the default rule for the house.

[triggercut]

Never not ever.

[gameoverman]

I mostly go by the sniff method. If something smells off to me then it's garbage, and I don't care what the date says. I could have bought it yesterday and I'll still throw it out.

Next I'll look for signs something is happening. An off color, a 'thing' that shouldn't be there, a slight hardening of what should be soft or vice versa, that sort of thing.

Finally and most importantly, how hungry am I?

[ChrisGrenard]

As noted by others, this question highly depends on the product. For me, I do the following:

Use by Date - No more than 2 days after
Best if Used by Date - A week
Sell by Date - A week

[Isgrimnur]

After work, I get to go break the 6lbs of ground beef that I bought on Saturday into individual pounds for freezer storage. It's been in the fridge since then, still bright red.

The label tells me that it was processed on the 5th, use or freeze by the 8th.

[hepcat]

Oh dear god, I was just commenting the other day on my obsession with this very topic.

I will (and I kid you not) toss milk into the trash if the expiration date is ONE day prior to the time I'm pulling the carton out of the fridge for a glass.

...ah, who am i kidding. I'll toss that son of a bitch at midnight on the day it expires.

I will interrogate anyone in my immediate vicinity about the shelf life of ANYTHING in my fridge if it's been there longer than 48 hours. I'm talking Guantanamo level interrogation. Then I'll toss it out anyway.

I will spend a full 5 minutes with my nose jammed into raw hamburger that I've defrosted in the fridge for more than 24 hours, imagining that it smells off while any observers look at me like I'm nuts.

I have no idea where this obsessive/compulsive behavior about food storage came from, but I'm going to go ahead and blame my parents anyway.

...that and a KFC that made me so violently ill 4 years ago that I haven't had a single piece of food from that restaurant chain since.

[Kraken]

Fresh foods just have to pass the smell test and be free of mold. I check the date if something looks or smells marginal...otherwise it's irrelevant.

Canned and packaged foods last forever if the package isn't open. I'll occasionally consider throwing away something with a sell-by date in the previous decade.

I do pay attention to the dates on frozen foods because those are so hard to judge in any other way. If something expired a year or more ago, it's probably got too much freezer burn to be edible.

For the most part, though, we don't waste food since I took over the grocery shopping because I don't buy anything impulsively. If my wife puts yogurt or cottage cheese for a diet on the list, it's a foregone conclusion that I'll be throwing those away in a few weeks.

[Crabbs]

If it doesn't smell bad, look bad, growing things, gone chunky I will eat it. I rarely look at expiration dates.... Deli meats are probably the ones I would toss out if at all questionable. Moldy cheese, cut off the edges Left over dinner, etc - nuke the crap out of to kill anything.

Sell by /= spoil by

As far as medications, expiration dates are very flexible there (except for reconstituted liquids). Many human drugs are in such short supply, certain EMS services have had local ordinaces passed to allow using outdated meds. I might dispense outdated meds to clients, but I can't sell them. I tell them they are outdated and can have them free if desired.

[killbot737]

I throw out meat and veggies when they get nasty/black wilty/slimy (although on occasion I'll rinse off the meat if I'm going to cook it immediately). Ditto anything in a jar that starts molding - stupid applesauce, I'm looking at you! With block cheese I'll cut off the moldy part and try to eat it faster. Other than that I don't pay much attention to expiration dates. Eggs never last long enough to "go bad" even though they last forever in the fridge, same with bread on the rare occasion I have any. I also eat lots of garlic and onions, I figure that's probably what is keeping me well on the off chance I do eat something nasty.

Y'all can just call me Bruce Spence, the gyro captain.

[LordMortis]

I throw... veggies when they get nasty/black wilty/slimy.

Forgot produce. That's pretty much how it works for me. And that time comes too quick to buy much produce at a time, so as a result I don't buy much fresh produce. I need to change that habit on an ongoing basis. I get good at grocery shopping once or a week and then I slide back back into processed food that holds longer so I don't have to grocery shop but once every two weeks to a month.

[Daehawk]

Sell by , use by , best by....i look at them as all in the same. I scientifically know that stuff is good past that date but I've been food poisoned more than once more than twice and more than thrice in my life so when the date goes by the food/drink goes. No matter what I do NOT eat / drink it.

[noxiousdog]

Ahhh...if I had a dollar for every phone conversation regarding this very topic...

Fun fact - organisms that make food smell or taste funny are rarely human pathogens. Therefore, the infamous "sniff test" is rarely useful in determining whether or not something is safe to eat.

Define "safe" because I've got 40 years of experience that says otherwise

[Rumpy]

Dr Oz had a really interest segment recently about how bacteria spreads in food and how to tell something might be safe to eat. Basically, don't eat the moldy bread, but with a block of cheese, you can simply slice the bad bit off and still be Ok with the rest.

Also heard an interesting radio show recently where they discussed expiration dates, and it was admitted that there isn't any real science in determining when something should go bad, that it's mostly based on the production cycle.

[KKBlue]

Ha! I just ate some pre cooked chicken that expired on the 5th. Doing fine so far. I'll toss the other package but couldn't bring myself to not finish the opened one.

When it comes to others that I am cooking for, I typically use fresh ingredients. I have a few times asked my husband how X tastes or if his stomach is bothering him when I've used something a little past the self life. My general rule is, IF I'm considering calling my mom and asking her, I throw it out.

[Madmarcus]

I'll throw out milk on the day it expires and rarely will even put it on cereal the day before. Other than cereal I don't consume milk; it almost smells turned as soon as I open it.

On the other hand almost everything else gets the smell test while I ignore dates. I often plan meals to have two sets of leftovers (which means expecting to eat it at least 4 days after cooking). Sometimes 3 before the kids got older and hungrier.

[killbot737]

I should mention that I have a terrible sense of smell, so when people ask me to "smell this" I'll smell it and eat it with no trouble and everyone else will retch. So that's weird. I do smell skunks but to me it's just sour like a super-lemon and apparently not whatever everyone else perceives.

[silverjon]

It's not something I fret about a lot.

Though we did stop buying dairy milk and switch to almond because we'd rarely finish a cow carton before it soured.

[MHS]

It's not something I fret about a lot.

Though we did stop buying dairy milk and switch to almond because we'd rarely finish a cow carton before it soured.

Yeah, that's a good point. We use Lactaid and that shit's good forever.

[stimpy]

I'm pretty much a live by the expiration date guy.

What I've run up against lately is pretty perplexing.
My girlfriend made meatloaf. Cooked it for an hour and a half.
When I got home, I went to slice it and heat it up. It was red in the middle. Like raw red.
I sliced it up and threw it in the oven....for another hour.
It seemed fine. Today I took a hunk for lunch. Tossed it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
Nice and hot. Cut into it with my fork.....red in the middle.

Today I cooked the stuffed shells she prepared last night. Some were meat. Some were cheese.
Cooked the whole thing for well over an hour. Cut into one of the meat shells......red in the middle.
How can this be possible and more importantly, is it safe to eat?
The meat HAS to be cooked, unless something is seriously wrong.

[BooTx]

Go out tomorrow and buy a freaking probe thermometer.



Then you can cook it to the correct temperature and stop worrying about what color it is.

For what it's worth, meat and poultry in my experience tend to turn slightly pink after they cool, even when they're fully cooked.

Otherwise, you may look into this.

[Holman]

I also learned this year, that I suspect the Flour is not so good after a year sitting around. My Christmas baking was pretty ugh using year for the first two batches of cookies this year but instantly got better once the last of it was used.

Some flour has small amounts of oil that can go rancid. It's not enough to fail the smell test, but you'll taste it when you bake it into something.

[Holman]

I once let some quinoa sit my pantry for more than a year.

Quinoa, if you don't know it, is a kind of super healthy grain thing beloved by whole-foods fanatics. When cooked, it looks like this. Notice the little curved rings--those are normal, as they are the separation of the germ from the kernel (or vice-versa, whatever).



Quinoa is very healthy for you, and tasty when done right. I will never eat it again, however, because when I took my clear zip-lock bag of uncooked quinoa from the pantry, I realized that the germ had already separated. The little rings were everywhere. Only they weren't the germ rings, because they were moving. There were hundreds of them, and they were actually worms or grubs, writhing around inside the bag and gnawing their way in and out. The sudden snapping into focus of what I was seeing made me almost vomit, and I still can't look at well-cooked quinoa, with all those little natural healthy separated rings, without feeling it all over again.