The meaning behind expiration dates on food #foodscience

Sep 12 11:59 PM: Perfectly safe loaf of bread. Sep 13 12:00 AM: The breadonator, destroyer of worlds, bringer of pestilence and death. Brought to you by my unrealistic anxieties

at my house it’s “did it change color? does it stink? and is there mold?”!

i really love your deadpan cursed-with-knowledge delivery

Per my nurse Mom, "Idk, smell it." 😂

As a sketch on SNL stated many years ago, "Best before does not mean bad after."

All those dates are there to protect the company from being sued.

The funniest thing is that I think the person who wrote that comment actually meant "My parents eat food past its expiration date but I think they should throw it away at that point"

I use my senses. If it looks good, smells good, and lastly tastes good then down the hatch it goes. If it fails any of those checks then in the compost it goes. Usually the compost food gets eaten by opossums

In Germany, we have two kinds of dates: The Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum (MHD, literally "minimum durability date", effectively the best by date), which says exactly that, the manufacturer guarantees that the product is in the intended quality until then. Then we have the Verbrauchsdatum (consumption date), which says that you should not consume it after that day, used for raw meat and such, where it becomes a safety issue. Many manufacturers, supermarket chains and such are part of the campaign "oft länger gut" (often good for longer) to appeal to customers to not blindly throw away the things after the best by date, but to test it, as it is often still good.

THANK YOU! Omg, the number of times i see people freak out about dates drives me a bit crazy! Now, if I'm dealing with someone vulnerable, I'm much more careful!

We need better, enforced marketing regulations.

That CA clarification regulation sounds so very helpful! This must be such a headache topic for the food scientist community.

This is good information to know, thank you

"use by" is different in the UK. It's an actual safety standard, and food should not be eaten past that date

I will be 100% honest- the store I work at made us watch a very stringent safety video explaining that, even if the contents of a package still seem fine after the given date, those are set up like that because that is the point where they assume the acidity of the contents have managed to dissolve just enough of the plastic container or inner liner of the container to become toxic- assuming it's stored in plastic. Aluminum also usually has a thin plastic inner liner.

Yes!!! And also this practice helps reduce on the millions of pounds of food we waste literally every day!!!!!

Exactly. I've eaten yogurt up to a month later. It's fine but doesn't taste as good. Your best evidence of edibility is color, odor, visible fungus or bacteria. Another thing I noticed years ago, food loses its normal aroma just before it goes bad - works especially well for meat and fish.

I have tried to explain this to my family but they keeps things well past when they should be used….

I always wondered what they meant. I never wanted to risk anything, so if it was past the date, I ditched it.

I feel like an entire conversation and Google search was condensed into a useable, memorable.... and digestible.... short video. thank you.