Archive:Quick Questions on food safety / sell by / use by dates

toni_

thats a really great idea! thanks, thats what happens in my fridge, things get covered up or pushed to the back and forgotten about and its not until i clean the fridge out before my big shop that i find them! now off to sort my fridge out

charlysez

lol the only time i take notice of sell/use by is on the reduced shelf in the supermarket, the near the date, the cheaper the item.... yum yum

Ballerinacaz

Sell by/display until is when the shop can sell it until
Best before means it would taste better before this date but won't harm you if you have it a few days later
Use by means it might go off if you don't use it by that date.

Well that's my take on it anyway
HTH x

newleaf

If it looks & smells ok I use it, I don't pay much attention to the dates.
(Just had a very nice pasta carbonara using up some creme fraiche that had a pre xmas use by date!).

Puddleglum

Just before Christmas DH bought some of those posh yoghurts that do your digestive tract good. Last weekend I went through the fridge and seeing them marked as use by the 27th Dec chucked them out.

Hang on to your stomach now.....

Today (Weds) I got an email at work. Where were his yoghurts? In the bin I said. Next email I got told me that he had fished them out of the bin, eaten one and put the other one back in the fridge. There are two dead birds in the bin which fell out off their tree in the cold.

He can't believe I threw out his yoghurts. I can't believe he fished them out.:eek:

He seems ok at the moment but I haven't told him how long they were in the bin for. I bet that if I did he would soon be ill!:beer:

theduchesshavoc

Haha, you won't poison your family with cream, silly! not even f it HAS gone off! Cream becomes cheese when processed correctly past it's use as a sweet dairy product

Ivrytwr3

If anything is 1 day after it's date, it goes straight in the bin.

I don't know why, but if i know something is past its date, it just doesn't taste right to me

valk_scot

I'll look at them but only as a general guide. It depends on the food. Some things you have to be pretty cautious about, like seafood, fish, chicken and any raw minced meat product, but even then sniffing them will give you a pretty good idea if it's off. Most other foods will be okay for a few days as long as you check, and there's a group of practically indestructable foods like sugar and dried foods where they might as well save the ink rather than printing a date on the packet.

tandraig

Ballerinacaz wrote: »

Sell by/display until is when the shop can sell it until
Best before means it would taste better before this date but won't harm you if you have it a few days later
Use by means it might go off if you don't use it by that date.

Well that's my take on it anyway
HTH x

thats what we were taught when I was shelf filling!
exactly right ballerinacaz.

but, consider this, the shop calculates how much time the item spends out of refrigeration (while you take it home) that home refrigerator may not be efficient and factors in a couple of days grace, then calculates the use by date!
its usually ok for a couple of days (if not more) after use by, but use your senses! if it looks ok, smells ok, and tastes ok. then it is ok!!!!
when i first got married - we didnt have use bys or sell bys. we used our eyes and nose! and common sense. to throw food out because it went off at midnight yesterday??? madness!

DrScotsman

I'm a bit more cautious than a lot of MSEers here and don't really agree with the "We shouldn't have dates" crowd. However common sense does play a part, and I only agree with use by dates done right - what really annoys me is things that have use by dates that should have best before dates!

Look at Tesco and Sainsbury's half fat mature chedder. The Sainsbury's one has a best before date (like just about every bog standard chedder cheese you can buy), but Tesco's has a use by date...? Why!?

Use by is supposed to mean "may cause a health risk after this date". Take fridge pizzas. There is no way that old cheese, tomato and bread could possibly cause you much harm other than taste bad, and even if it did cause a health risk they certainly last a lot longer than the short use by dates they come with.

Other things designed to make an unknowing consumer buy more food:
"Use within X days of opening" - the less often you'll use it the smaller X is
"Freeze on day of purchase"
"use within 1 month after freezing" - I think you'll even find some ice cream that says this!