Can I eat this? Probably.

December 13, 2022 8:09 AM

Expiration dates are basically bullshit
posted by jacquilynne (62 comments total)

Archived
posted by bitslayer at 8:29 AM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Can somebody please convince my kids of this?
posted by gottabefunky at 9:15 AM on December 13, 2022

See also Planet Money covering the topic in July 2022, and 99% Invisible covering the topic in early 2016, among others.
posted by cyranix at 9:16 AM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

This needs to be taught in every public school in America.
posted by saladin at 9:16 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

The other day I ate some Fritos that were a year past their best by (not expiration) date. A fascinating textural experience, I could feel how all the ingredients (oil, salt, corn) had separated.
posted by Melismata at 9:23 AM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

scraping half an inch below blue-green mold on hard cheese to safely recover the rest.

I'm literally shocked...
posted by medusa at 9:24 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Isn't the industry moving towards 'best by' dates to assist with this distinction between safe and not as tasty? Maybe not as fast as we might like....
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:26 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Put an "expiration tag" on the next toy they get and say, "Oh, no! The toy has expired."
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 9:27 AM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Safe it may be, but expired milk on cereal is absolutely disgusting.
posted by corey flood at 9:32 AM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

Also true for many popular drugs!

Most of drug expiration dates information is from the study conducted by the Food and Drug Administration at the request of the military. With a large and expensive stockpile of drugs, the military faced tossing out and replacing its drugs every few years. What they found from the study is 90% of more than 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date.

(emphasis mine)
posted by wenestvedt at 9:33 AM on December 13, 2022 [14 favorites]

My mom lives in an area in Indiana where there's a big Amish community, and they have these AMAZING stores where you can buy all of this expired food for like 95% off. I once got pulled out of the line at airport security after visiting her because I had filled my suitcase with expired Lara and Rx bars that were 10 for $1.25. Sometimes you get something that is clearly a little past its prime (taste-wise) but a lot of it is totally fine.

If anyone knows of anything remotely similar in Rhode Island or New England in general, PLEASE tell me about it. I suspect that it has to do with state regulations-- there was a store in the town I went to in college (also in Indiana) called the Bent n Dent. Similar idea, not quite as cheap. I haven't found anything like it in other places I've lived-- clearance and discount, sure, but not expired stuff.
posted by geegollygosh at 9:34 AM on December 13, 2022 [9 favorites]

For a while, New Jersey required expiration dates on bottled water. (first source I found)

That was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me in believing expiration dates.

Then, throw in the confusion of sell by, use by, best by and it's just too much to even think about.

Relatedly, I've made quite a bit of soup this year which usually means a serving or two ends up in the freezer.... never to be seen again. I am trying to get in a better habit of thawing some for a snack. I was looking online to see if there is a best practice for how long soup stays good in the freezer. On the very first google page, I saw 3, 6, 9 and 12 months or maybe even indefinitely.

So, yeah. It's pretty much guessing all around, isn't it?
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 9:38 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

The expiration date on roasted seaweed snacks is not to be ignored. Trust me.

As for hard cheeses, I mean, yeah, I'm not tossing an expensive hunk of parmesan over some surface mold. Trim, wash, dry, and refrigerate in a clean container. Good as new. Ish.
posted by 1adam12 at 9:41 AM on December 13, 2022 [8 favorites]

does it smell funny? Or at the very least, does it smell like it should?

It's probably ok.

I've had more craft beer that has skunked (bad yeast flat &/or band-aid taste) than anything else in recent memory.
posted by djseafood at 9:44 AM on December 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Obligatory Carlin
posted by stevil at 9:50 AM on December 13, 2022 [8 favorites]

I guess my thought is that without some kind of date, grocers in low-income neighborhoods (like mine) are going to move from just selling, for instance, milk near its sell-by date to selling milk that is curdled when you open it, or selling crackers that are already stale because they are from 2020, or eggs that smell like sulfur when you crack them. At least with some kind of sell-by date, I can be sure that the frozen peas haven't been sitting around freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing in a warehouse since Trump was in office until they were finally offloaded at our store.

I am perfectly willing to eat aging food, but I would like to be the one who has aged it.
posted by Frowner at 9:50 AM on December 13, 2022 [57 favorites]

I recently discovered some giant cans of "human chow" in the basement. My dad had purchased these during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm sure it's just fine.
posted by Wylie Kyoto at 10:13 AM on December 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

In 2020 I started going through my cabinets out of boredom and eating stuff that had been sitting there for years. Literally the only thing that tasted bad past expiration date were the nuts. Hell, I made cheapass biscuits and there was no issue.

It's really just a smell test, isn't it?

I'll keep this in my for my box of stocked up covid tests as well, because I strongly suspect those are BS dates too.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:14 AM on December 13, 2022

The best time to eat my daily driver Camembert* is absolutely 3 weeks after the "best by" date.

* "Herve Mons", imported for and sold by Whole Foods. I would rather something less Amazony, but it's by far the best I've been able to find in the US.
posted by aubilenon at 10:16 AM on December 13, 2022

I was expecting this to be the latest Chubbyemu video.
posted by kimota at 10:19 AM on December 13, 2022

For a little over a year, I lost my sense of smell and most of my sense of taste. This put me in the position of having to go by expiration dates, even though I was aware of their bullshit, because I had no backup. Sometimes there was someone around to take a sniff and tell me if a dairy product was bad, but it's a weird favor to ask even if they are.

And it's not even a foolproof test. The worst time I ever got sick from food was when I ate a week-old pasta dish that I had made myself -- no meat in it, no altered smell or taste, fresh tomatoes to start with and nearly as nice to eat as it had been the first time. I was out of condition for at least two days.

I personally would not scrape mold off food if I could possibly eat anything else. Depending on the foodstuff, it can have an invisible network of mycelium (or whatever it's called when it's fungus) that you can't see and that could still make you sick. But this doesn't apply to all foods. Certainly some cheeses have mold on purpose, and Parmesan is tough as hell. I wouldn't eat a moldy piece of, say, cheddar or mozzarella, though, and definitely not bread. (I have eaten a piece of moldy cake, though, because the lady who served it to me was a bit irascible and was standing right there. It turned out okay.)
posted by Countess Elena at 10:21 AM on December 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

The expiration date on roasted seaweed snacks is not to be ignored. Trust me.

Oh no, tell all because I have some about to expire.

I'm the stickler in our house, but I also am the inventory manager. I don't worry too much about canned goods/crackers/etc. and I'm glad to have that supported in this article.

Post-Covid, I still only have a sense of smell maybe 4/7 days a week, so the smell test has become Russian Roulette in my family unless I can ask someone else. (Also sometimes perfectly normal things smell rotten to me.) I'm really harsh on deli meats if we have them (rare these days), fish, anything pre-prepared by the store or someone else that's never been sealed, and sprouts are my nemesis - they come in both my CSA and my produce boxes.

I am also the person who looks at the dates in the store and reaches to the back. I think that's probably my larger food waste sin, because the store throws out way more than I do, but I contribute. Food systems are really complicated.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:22 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I used to teach college-level Food & Fermentation Microbiology. The one think I could . not . get . students to do was smell anything. It was all pooh phargh and fanning of faces with hands like Beau Nash having a fit of the vapours. I blame our deodorant culture where it's okay to smell of Product but not of human. otoh, my dear departed MiL, born 1930, grew up in N Nigeria without a fridge or much money and depended on her nose to keep dinner down: I learned a lot from her: that cream is fine, bugger the label etc.

Give side-eye to any article that lists E.coli but ignores the CDC on "Campylobacter bacteria. It is the most common bacterial cause of diarrheal illness in the United States. " especially if you eat chicken. We spent €1million+ of tax-payers' / consumers' money trying to find out why Campylobacter is commensal in birds but fighty in mammals.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:22 AM on December 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

I am perfectly willing to eat aging food, but I would like to be the one who has aged it.

Supermarkets in the UK have ditched best before dates on many items, but this is due to brexit related supply chain delays not from them suddenly caring about food waste.
posted by Lanark at 10:37 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

jenfullmoon: Literally the only thing that tasted bad past expiration date were the nuts.

From what I understand, nuts are one pantry item where the date can matter, since the oils in them can go rancid / oxidize.
posted by indexy at 10:43 AM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

The only thing I thought with this article was "Of course your bread is hard if you're keeping it in the fridge."
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:47 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was just thinking about the COVID impacts on this... I'm the "it's fine!" person in the marriage and once ate ketchup that was two years expired and this brownish red color (it tasted different but not bad), but I'd probably hold off if I couldn't smell that the food wouldn't kill me.
posted by subdee at 10:58 AM on December 13, 2022

>And it's not even a foolproof test. The worst time I ever got sick from food was when I ate a week-old pasta dish that I had made myself

For what it's worth, pasta and rice can make you cereusly sick without tasting off, and I'd probably keep them 5 days max in the fridge.
posted by Easy problem of consciousness at 11:09 AM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

FREZZE THE PASTA.
5 days old pasta can and will kill you, but frozen pasta keeps forever.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 11:27 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Plenty of products can be edible, if not tasty, long past their expiration date

I’m all for reducing food waste, but they need to come up with a better marketing campaign.
posted by The Gooch at 11:40 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

cereusly

heh icwydt
posted by obfuscation at 11:49 AM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

I volunteer at a food bank. I've seen properly refrigerated milk over a month and a half past the "best by" date that was perfectly fine and not even a bit weird or sour. Unopened milk lasts a lot longer than you'd think, especially if you don't do anything weird like drink from the carton.

Same for eggs, too. And you can test eggs if they're bad by putting them in water. If they float they're probably not good. If they sink easily they're probably good. If they sink and sort of half-float on one end, well, crack one and if it passes a sniff test then they're probably good.

Our guidelines for canned food that has an intact, undented and unrusted can is something like 4-5 years past the printed expiration date, though some items like canned pasta meals or stews do tend to denature and turn to mush in or past that age range, but it's still edible. Some stuff like tomato sauce and certain veggies like canned corn can go even longer.

Cheese and butter can be frozen in a good freezer almost indefinitely, as can most packaged meats protected from freezer burn.

And some stuff like squash, apples, potatoes and other veggies can last all year without refrigeration if kept in a cool, dark place. Last year I made spaghetti squash that was picked from the garden on the land out here an entire year before I cooked it.

A couple of months ago I was going through the shelves at the house I live in, which thanks to so many people living here over the years is like this endless bounty of random stuff, and I found a couple of English muffins in sleeve bag that were over a year old that were still perfectly edible. I'm assuming that was a combination of preservatives and good storage in a cool dark place but they weren't even crunchy or stale and they toasted right up like new.

Those pantry cupboards full of random stuff have also been super handy for random dinner parties where we might need something and if you dig far enough into it there's a good chance you'll find it and not have to run to the store.

A number of times I've had a hankering to make something whether it's a nice tomato soup or maybe making some bread or making cookies and before I go to the store I go rummaging in there to make sure we don't already have it. A bit of butter from the freezer, some old oats someone forgot about, a bag of raisins, some rock hard brown sugar softened up with a bit of steam and *bam* I have oatmeal raisin cookies.

It's also been really handy for power outages or getting snowed in.

In addition to the pantries and thanks to a long life of food scarcity and being poor I keep a couple of large plastic totes full of other non-perishables, many/most of them from my local food bank as a personal food storage.

With some careful meal planning I could probably feed our whole house of -uh, counting, is it seven people right now? - for a month, and that's just my personal stash of rice, dried beans and lentils, random canned stuff, even condiments, spices, extras and more.

Every so often someone I know tells me they couldn't make it to the food bank or don't have money for food and I load up a couple of bags of non-perishables and drop them off to keep them going.

Sometimes they cry and to be honest I don't like that part because it's uncomfortable and a symptom and reaction to facing food insecurity and that bothers me, but I like the part about feeling like a good food witch.

I usually have to do some emotional labor to assure them that it is absolutely not a problem or big deal and I'm not sacrificing anything. And if anything they're doing me a favor by helping me keep my food storage stash up to date and making room for me to rotate new stuff back in.

I also try to make a habit of carrying food wherever I go on my bike. Before the pandemic the local unhoused folks knew I worked at the food bank and I almost always had a stash of something even if it was a couple of apples or some granola or energy bars or something, maybe even some instant coffee or cocoa. It's not unusual that I have a camp stove and mess kit in my bike bags to make hot tea or coffee for someone.

Thankfully this has been less of an issue because my local community has really stepped up during the pandemic and there are more options like a free food pantry outside a couple of key locations and kitchens to get a free hot meal. I haven't been getting out as much to go on adventures or be social due to dealing with long covid.


By the way, if you're cleaning your pantry out and trying to get rid of stuff that's past the best buy date - especially canned or other shelf stable stuff - please, please try to donate it to your local food bank, put it up on your local buy nothing group or give it to someone running a little free food pantry.

It makes a huge difference. It's even better if it's cool or exotic stuff like, say, canned bamboo shoots, sauces, tinned fish or meats or things that aren't the usual boring stuff like canned corn or peas or whatever.

You should see how some people's faces light up at my food bank when they find something they really like or always wanted to try. So many times I've seen people get stupid happy over something as simple as a can of olives or pickles or a fancy jar of preserves or something because it will pair well with something they already have to complete a meal.

I've even seen people lose it over oddities like canned tamales or brown bread in a can because it reminds them of family or growing up. For every weird food out there there's someone who loves it.

I've also personally benefited this and it is a fun and rewarding form of food discovery. I've had the chance to try a lot of things I never would have bought even if I could afford it, like really good balsamic vinegar, or really fancy olive oil or other higher end food items that end up at the food bank in quantity because the local grocery stores is clearing shelves of things getting too close to due dates.
posted by loquacious at 11:51 AM on December 13, 2022 [30 favorites]

Can somebody please convince my kids of this?

Or - how about my 68-year old mother-in-law? Some people are just paranoid and do not trust their senses. Cheese - she is the worst offender for cheese - whereas I come from a European heritage that cheese is essentially just mold when you get it, and scraping a little more off once in awhile is not the end-of-all-things.
posted by rozcakj at 11:57 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

For what it's worth, pasta and rice can make you cereusly sick without tasting off, and I'd probably keep them 5 days max in the fridge.

Yeah, old cooked rice is particularly hazardous due to botulism risks with rice.

As a self-admitted dirtbag who will eat almost anything and who has been a line cook and food service worker to the point I could pass or recite an oral test for a food safety permit without studying for it - that's one I won't touch past about 8 hours after cooking.

I will also note that this is one of the things a food safety inspector will absolutely get bent out of shape over if they catch you reusing rice from the previous day if they see rice dishes on your menu. Recycling day old rice for, say, fried rice isn't safe.

Rice is really cheap. Make just enough to eat and maybe a little more, then toss it or compost the rest.

Flour is another one I'm really careful with when baking, especially if I know its been in the pantry for a while. I still have a hard time resisting eating raw cookie dough or bread dough, and if I do it at all I limit it to just licking the spoon or a small bite instead of licking the whole bowl clean.
posted by loquacious at 12:00 PM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

I have no problem eating things I’ve stored myself for a long time, but I don’t even buy nuts at Aldi anymore because I’ve been burned too many times getting a bag who’s oils have gone rancid.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 12:10 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

loquacious: I really appreciate reading that. Your first comment I just plain appreciated, but the advice about rice is important, because I've been giving my dog a bland diet for a rough tummy, and white rice makes up most of it. She's coming off of it now and doing well, but it took an unusually long time, and what if that was because I was giving her rice over a day old? I hate to think -- but I won't do that again.

Although -- well, I thought that was what fried rice was for, part of the world's many traditions of dressing up leftovers. But restaurants probably shouldn't do that for policy reasons. I'm still haunted by a "true confession" I read many years ago (blatant fiction, really) where a woman realized her spaghetti noodles were short because the restaurant was reusing leftover servings.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:41 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

The UK has been cutting down on "best before" dates, but not "use by" dates. Metro: Which supermarkets are scrapping best before dates and why?

The Grocer: Why are so many supermarkets suddenly axing best-before dates and at what cost?

Date ditching can help supermarkets reach their own environmental targets, specifically their Scope 3 emissions – which includes waste created at household level – and could become mandatory to report publicly.

Besides, there is no requirement for retailers or producers to display a best before date, which relates only to quality, not safety, unlike use-by dates.

The FSA [Food Standards Agency, UK regulator] takes a firm line on use-by dates, even warning that milk past its use-by date “should never be sniffed”. But for best before, “sensory cues” like looking for mould and feeling for staleness will suffice.

“We are also clear that businesses must make sure the right date label is applied to their products, and only when needed, to ensure that food is safe and to help people make informed choices,” explains Robin May, chief scientific adviser at the FSA.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:54 PM on December 13, 2022

Re: Seaweed snacks, it's the same as nuts. The oils go rancid and you can TELL.
posted by yeahlikethat at 1:22 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Seconding the "milk can last a really long time"-- and a key trick is not to sniff at the spout but pour a bit out and sniff it. The spout can get buildup that goes sour much before anything else and smell horrible.
posted by Galvanic at 1:32 PM on December 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

In some states, be careful about donating expired shelf stable foods to food banks bc they will be required to trash them. Put them someplace people frequent, or freecycle/buy nothing them. Or hand them out the car windows
posted by toodleydoodley at 1:51 PM on December 13, 2022

People do underestimate the food poisoning risk of grain foods, but I think claiming that any leftover rice is dangerous is… problematic. I just asked my husband about this - he is a chef and culinary arts professor who is certified as a food safety instructor, who teaches food safety to future chefs and trains them for their food handler certifications. He confirmed that while rice that has been left out for hours, or has been cooked in big batches so the center stays warm too long, is risky for bacillus cereus food poisoning, properly cooled and refrigerated rice is not a high risk food.
posted by obfuscation at 1:52 PM on December 13, 2022 [20 favorites]

As a note, the botulism in older cooked rice and pasta is Bacillus cereus, which is different than the classic bulging cans botulism. It's less dangerous but more common.
posted by Candleman at 1:56 PM on December 13, 2022

I don’t think it’s botulism at all? Botulism isn’t generic food poisoning, but specifically refers to illness from clostridium botulinum, whereas bacillus cereus is the usual culprit with grains.
posted by obfuscation at 2:00 PM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

I just had leftover rice for lunch, so I wish all the best to those of you who are going to continue living.
posted by mittens at 2:02 PM on December 13, 2022 [23 favorites]

I happily eat eggs and yogurt well past their best-buy date as long as they pass the sniff test (and, if needed, the witch test for eggs and the do-I-see-pink? test for yogurt). However, once my soy milk has been open 8-10 days, there's a definite decline in flavour, and I err on the side of caution with open cartons of egg white, again not pushing past 8 days. This is why there's masking tape and a Sharpie stored next to my fridge: all the open stuff gets a label and a date.

The article was OK, but I found the writer's lazy use of the term "expiration dates" as a broad term for all other packaging dates, especially in the title, to be a bit sloppy. Sure, there was that one sentence halfway down that explained expiration dates in a halfassed way: "The problem is that most expiration dates convey only information about an item’s quality. With the exception of infant formula, where they really do refer to expiration, dates generally represent a manufacturer’s best estimate of how long food is optimally fresh and tasty, though what this actually means varies widely, not least because there is no federal oversight over labeling. "

Health Canada gives a more comprehensive explanation:

An expiration date is not the same as a best-before date. Expiration dates are required only on certain foods that have strict compositional and nutritional specifications which might not be met after the expiration date. Expiration dates must be used on the following products: formulated liquid diets (nutritionally complete diets for people using oral or tube feeding methods); foods represented for use in a very low-energy diet (foods sold only by a pharmacist and only with a written order from a physician); meal replacements (formulated food that, by itself, can replace one or more daily meals); nutritional supplements (food sold or represented as a supplement to a diet that may be inadequate in energy and essential nutrients); human milk substitutes (infant formula).

After the expiration date, the food may not have the same nutrient content declared as on the label. Food should not be bought, sold or eaten if the expiration date has passed. It should be discarded.

And one last thing: yes, thorough cooking can kill organisms, and this is pretty relevant to properly stored food that is past its best-buy date, but it can't overcome bad storage. Leave fresh fish out on the counter for several hours before you cook it to temperature? There's a decent chance that you're in for hours or days of misery nonetheless from Scombroid food poisoning. "Unlike many types of food poisoning, scombroid form is not brought about by ingestion of a pathogen. Histidine is an amino acid that exists naturally in many types of food, including fish. At temperatures above 16 °C (60 °F), histidine is converted to the biogenic amine histamine via the enzyme histidine decarboxylase produced by symbiotic bacteria such as Morganella morganii (this is one reason why fish should be stored in the freezer). Histamine is not destroyed by normal cooking temperatures, so even properly cooked fish can still result in poisoning."
posted by maudlin at 2:09 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Obligatory Three Stooges: "Nice, juicy, ripe, fresh fish! Hey! Fresh fish! ... We've been trying to sell these fish for thirty days and haven't got rid of one."
posted by Melismata at 2:16 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh, and the line "It’s unlikely that we’ll ever return en masse to the pre-1970s idyll of purchasing food directly from farmers or growing it ourselves" better have been ironic, because the pre-1970s sure as shinola wasn't idyllic in all sorts of food-related ways and growing food for yourself is nasty, hard, and prone to starvation. There's a reason why our bodies are optimized to get every single bit of energy out of each calorie and it ain't stinginess.
posted by Galvanic at 2:32 PM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

We live near a store that sells donated food that is close to the expiration date and gives the profit to people in need. Very fine, I visit a couple of times a week. BUT: one of my roomies gets greedy when he is down there, and buys a lot of cheap food that he can't possibly eat before it goes bad. Last week he had bought some minced fish where the package started expanding in a very worrying manner, and I threw it out before it exploded in the fridge. I think if you want to buy cheap perishable food, you need to cook it right away and freeze it down in portions. Which is a good thing to do, for many reasons.

I agree with the people in the article and here that we need more education about food and housekeeping. Specifically, I think leftovers need a renaissance. Leftovers shouldn't be about reheating stuff so it becomes a sad ghost of itself, but about remaking food so it becomes even more delicious. And householding should be about thinking ahead, to make sure you have the leftovers that will become delicacies. I imagine vitello tonnato was originally created from leftovers.

Here, the traditional New Years Eve dinner is cod. (Hardly anyone has it anymore because cod is so expensive and no-one knows how to cook it). I love it and still make it, but the New Years day lunch of cold cod mixed with leftover potatoes, mayo and strong mustard to a "salad" is to die for. I always cook extra cod and potatoes so I can make the leftover luxury. Serve it on sourdough or rye toast.

OK, I realize both these examples are luxuries, but wilted vegs make great soups and cost nearly nothing. I could eat a minestrone every single day of the year (they change with the seasons) and be happy.

I will never buy "old" eggs. But if the 12 eggs are cheaper and fresher than the 6 eggs in the local market, I'll go home and make a tortilla espagnol and that will disappear very quickly for snacks, lunches and breakfast.

Similarly with milk near the end of its life: I'll make a vegetarian lasagna, or a cauliflower gratin.
posted by mumimor at 2:56 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Mrs. Ecco and I recently came across a jar of sun dried tomatoes in oil whose best before date was 2018-04, so 4 years 9 months ago.

We sent online polls to our friends, asking it it was safe, with two heavily weighted options;

• Yes, tomatoes are tasty.
• No, botulism is odorless, tasteless and lethal.

The answers were nearly unanimously against taking the risk.

But we googled and found the WHO site on botulism, and a similar site from the food safety authority of Ireland which stated "The botulinum toxin itself is inactivated (denatured) rapidly at temperatures greater than 80C".

So we waited until Saturday, put most into the food processor, and make a pesto base for pizza, with the rest used as a topping. Four days later we're still around with no ill effects.
posted by ecco at 5:47 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

From what I understand, nuts are one pantry item where the date can matter, since the oils in them can go rancid / oxidize.

Not just nuts.. Oils in general are not to be trifled with. The effects of eating rancid oil range from skin irritation and inflammation to breathing issues, even heart problems.

The byproducts of rancidity are volatile aldehydes, hydrocarbons, esters, ethanol and other nasties.

We know How to Tell If an Oil Is Rancid (cooking oils that is).
But you can't usually tell what oils may have gone off in processed food.

So I tend to not go too far past best-before dates, because so many packaged foods have oils of some kind in them.

And sorry to say, oils can even go rancid in beauty products.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:47 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don’t think it’s botulism at all?

Correct, but it's acquired the nickname "rice botulism." Probably because they are from the same phylum and are close enough to each other to be distinguished by whether they have aerobic respiration or not, that they make people sick by the toxins they produce rather than the bacteria themselves, and that they're both types of foodborne illness.

Mrs. Ecco and I recently came across a jar of sun dried tomatoes in oil whose best before date was 2018-04, so 4 years 9 months ago . . . Four days later we're still around with no ill effects.

Simply being old wouldn't be indicative of having botulism. You're still around because the odds of getting foodborne botulism is vanishingly small (11 reported cases in the US in 2009) and because commercial canning is extremely good at destroying the spores (and at-risk foods have additional mitigations such as adding acid). Almost all cases in the US are from improperly canned home goods. Properly canned commercial goods will generally stay safe, barring a failure of the can, for many years if not decades, though, per the article, the taste and texture may not be ideal. Decades old canned goods have been safely consumed.

I know a bit about this stuff and what I worry about getting food poisoning from from isn't canned or packaged goods but meat or raw vegetables (I love salads) that have been exposed to bacteria prior to me purchasing it, leftovers or opened containers that once the pasteurization's protection is ended by breaking the seal, and bacteria friendly foods sit above the refrigeration point for extended periods of time such as egg salad brought to a picnic without proper cooling or yoghurt sauces at a fast casual place that doesn't keep their food prep area in the safe zone or rotate it out often enough. I loved my college town's hole in the wall Greek place but stopped going after getting violently ill too many times.

And I'll throw in my usual statement about meat safety - simply not smelling off does not mean that meat is safe. Many of the bacteria that cause food poisoning are scentless or have a very minimal one. Most of what we associate as "the smell of bad meat" is from putrefacation, which won't necessarily make you sick the way E. coli will (though it won't be a pleasant meal) but E. coli and Salmonella can be in dangerous levels on food that smells just fine.

The effects of eating rancid oil range from skin irritation and inflammation to breathing issues, even heart problems.

Way less serious, but at least with the rancid peanut butter and nuts I've had, you'll have an extremely unpleasant and lingering taste in your mouth for 24 hours or so.
posted by Candleman at 9:28 PM on December 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

It's all fun and games till you end up in the ER shitting yourself with an IV in your arm. I think the writer had good points but wonder how many times she's felt that nearness to death that food poisoning gives you. I don't object to her raising the issue, just being blithe about it. Too many bad experiences; if it worries me, out it goes. ER visits cost more than new groceries.
posted by emjaybee at 9:29 PM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

There is nothing quite like a proper, confirmed case of e. coli or salmonella. I've had e. coli once from a burger from a local joint I'd eaten at many times -- but never after. In fact, it took 6 months for me to be able to order a burger anywhere.

The salmonella: Thanksgiving dinner at a very nice restaurant. We were at the first seating and my partner had the beef entree, I had the turkey. As I lay on the bathroom floor some hours later, the restaurant owner called to inquire after my health. I suggested he order the hearse. He was very shaken up as 13 people at the first seating had been hospitalized, others had sought treatment. I had just lain on the floor, so the health department visited me for samples. Was there no turkey left for samples? LOL

Some years later I was in a rural area and served very loosely cooked scrambled eggs -- eggs which were rejected for sale and given to my host for free. Holy cowboy! I don't eat eggs or chicken. YMMV.
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 10:09 PM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

And sorry to say, oils can even go rancid in beauty products.

That probably explains why old lipstick often smells a lot like old nuts that need to be thrown out. I expect they use the same oils. But to be honest, I keep makeup for years. I no longer live a life of great excitements, and the only makeup I really go through is lip balm, tinted or otherwise, and foundation. And that's not counting the masking factor, which makes it pointless to use much makeup. I can't say goodbye to it so quickly.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:26 AM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

He confirmed that while rice that has been left out for hours, or has been cooked in big batches so the center stays warm too long, is risky for bacillus cereus food poisoning, properly cooled and refrigerated rice is not a high risk food.

This is absolutely true.

But most people cooking at home don't have hotel pans, sheet pans and walk in freezers or refrigerators* or even bother to use a probe thermometer or timer to know for sure that it's been cooled properly and in time.

As I recall off the top of my head, the practice is to spread rice in a hotel pan or sheet no more than about 1-3" thick and cooled to less than 5 C under an hour, the faster the better.

Most people cooking rice at home don't even bother with any of this. They leave a pot of rice on the stove or clump it in a larger thermal mass in a food storage container and then they throw it in the fridge.

Now, you'd think that it would be better in a commercial kitchen with food safety training but, to be honest? No, no it's not. Not always. Because even paid line cooks with a food service safety training permit think "Oh, fuck it, it's just rice!"

It's super common for the underpaid line cooks actually doing the cooking and the dishes to not take the extra steps to rapidly cool leftover cooked rice listed above by instead throwing it into cube shaped sixpans or lexans and putting that straight into the reach in and letting it take it's sweet time to get out of 5-60 C danger zone temps instead of properly sheeting it, throwing it in a speed rack and pushing that into a walk in freezer to accelerate chilling, using a probe thermometer and time log - and then remembering to pull it back out and put it in the fridge before it freezes and gets freezer burn.

This is why leftover rice from a restaurant or takeout place can be extra-extra risky. There's the risks of the above happening to it before it even got to your table. There's the risks of taking it home in a takeout box, and so on in your fridge, and then you finally eat it your leftovers, oh, how many days later?

Just toss it. It's cheap.


* I've talked about this before but this is why if I ever win the lottery and find myself in the position to design my own home kitchen it's going to be directly modeled after a commercial restaurant kitchen based entirely around the hotel pan system. It's not just because it's cool or hip or something. I want to be able to throw full sized hotel sheets into an oven, freezer or fridge and stack up sixpans and inserts like lego and have them fit perfectly in a fridge or freezer in logical stacks. Commercial kitchens make home kitchens look silly.
posted by loquacious at 8:30 AM on December 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

My wife, who would launch a carton of milk into the sun without sniffing it if it had been open for more than 3 days, bought a two-pack of enormous bottles of Frank's Red Hot from Costco when we first joined. I advised her not to buy this much Frank's. We do not need nor use this much Frank's. I don't even like it. This was at the beginning of 2014.

About a month ago I finally convinced her to throw it out. It was separated to the point that no amount of shaking would make it come back together. It smelled weird. And still she insisted on eating some before I got rid of it.

But generally, I have few compunctions about expired food. When I'm about to eat something of questionable age, though, I usually say to her, "Should I expire tonight, it was the [old yogurt / cheese / chicken]."

I have, thankfully, not expired, thus far.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:37 AM on December 14, 2022

Foodsafety.gov seems like a reputable and very cautious source, and their Foodkeeper app indicates that cooked rice should be consumed within 4-6 days of purchase, with no special instructions for storage, and rice isn't mentioned at all on their quite long list of high-risk foods. With that source combined with an extensive personal history of eating rice up to a week old without any negative effects, I'm not convinced that leftover rice is particularly dangerous (assuming it's not from a restaurant that's cooking it in enormous quantities, leaving it out way too long, etc). I can understand why a restaurant would need to enforce strict rules for it though.

I was raised to ignore best before dates and it's served me well. The only foods it's really relevant for are oily things like crackers/nuts that do go rancid, but even then I'll eat them if they smell fine. The only time I ever had food poisoning it was from (freshly ordered) pizza. Food can also go bad before the BB date, particularly meat and milk, so they shouldn't be relied on as a confirmation of safety either. Yogurt, eggs and sealed cheese on the other hand will last many many months past the date - often years, for cheese. Cans and jars are fine many years past the date if not damaged. I still like having the date as a reference though and will throw things out if they pass my internal sense of "ridicuously long" - for example the yogurt that was over a year past the BB date (though it still looked and smelled totally normal, surprisingly, so maybe it was actually fine, who knows).
posted by randomnity at 10:23 AM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

He confirmed that while rice that has been left out for hours, or has been cooked in big batches so the center stays warm too long, is risky for bacillus cereus food poisoning, properly cooled and refrigerated rice is not a high risk food.

I'm glad to hear this, because I have always been told that cooled and refrigerated day-old rice is best for fried rice, and it has never worked our as well for me using fresh-cooked.
posted by Gelatin at 11:23 AM on December 14, 2022

Supermarkets in the UK have ditched best before dates on many items

I find this annoying because I no longer know the order in which to eat things. Which potato came last week and which this week?
posted by Comfy Shoes at 1:55 PM on December 14, 2022

warriorqueen, there's something about the interaction between seaweed and the oil they use for roasting it, but that stuff goes RANCID in a serious way, and once one goes, they all go. The sell-by date appears to not be speculation, but is somehow a scientific certainty.
posted by 1adam12 at 8:59 AM on December 15, 2022

What if they used the origination date and let us decide? Recommended Use By date. Some products would benefit from a temperature indicator; if milk was stored above a certain temp, it would start to change color, with more color change the longer the storage was too warm. Curdled milk has a few uses, nobody wants to buy it.

Some American foods need monitoring because egg farms and slaughterhouses are nasty, and their unions have been busted. Salmonella being common in eggs and chicken, and e.coli in beef, is unsafe and ridiculous in a technological and wealthy country.
posted by theora55 at 6:08 PM on December 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

if milk was stored above a certain temp, it would start to change color, with more color change the longer the storage was too warm. Curdled milk has a few uses, nobody wants to buy it.

Obligatory: MIT milk is 25 years old
posted by Melismata at 10:39 AM on December 21, 2022