Do you follow Use by and Sell by Dates, and other food safety issues

ilovegreatdanes

ohs really into dates and chucks everything.keep telling him, how can tinned stuff go off???they found tins from the war and opened them and they were fine.hes got ds into the date thig now.last week they desimated my larder and theres nothing left!!

jezza2412

More risky than checking then eating food that is slightly past its use-by date is blindly assuming that anything *within* its use-by date is safe. Poor storage or just bad luck in the batch you bought might mean you have food that has gone off even before its use-by date.

So basically, I use the date as a rough guide but ultimately rely on my own judgment.

funnybird

Hey, I'll eat anything that's not walking by itself! The vast majority of foods will last long past their dates-well, I'm not dead yet! My top tip would be to rely on your nose-if it smells dodgy, give it a miss. And cut off the green furry bits! I can't resist a bargain-I scour the clearance sections in supermarkets, & then freeze the lot! Every penny counts!

Farway

ashfan83 wrote: »

I work for Dogs Trust and we rely on donations of tinned food, not only dog food but we feed them stuff like Spam and tuna, meatballs etc etc. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago someone was sorting through the donations and there was a bag of tins from the 80s!! I mean come on, we aren't going to feed dogs stuff we wouldn't touch ourselves with a barge pole!:rotfl:

Why on earth would you not fed dogs tins stamped in th 80s? the contents will be fine for dogs, as you know dogs are scavengers and will eat all & sundry which is how they & us have survived for thousands of years, and these tins if unopened would be fine IMO

madison's_mum

I got some great 21 day matured steak in Tescos a while ago, should have been £11 for 5, reduced to £5.50 as they were on the BB date. I took them home & froze them, just finished the last one & they were delicious. I figured if they had been matured for that long one more day shouldn't make too much of a difference!

iBlob

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

I have several bags of flour dated July 2006, you reckon I can still use them?

You won't get ill but you might find that as the flour degrades with age, taste is impaired. I've used old flour in the past and found it tasted musty.

Generally, I take particular care of products that contain eggs or are shellfish based; and of course poultry. But one's bugle is probably the best designed 'use by' indicator you'll ever find. After all, what did Grandma do in her early days?

Incidentally, I've found that Sainsbury's fresh and cured produce is probably amongst the most 'long dated' stuff you can buy. By that I mean, it goes beyond its shelf-life more than that can be bought elsewhere.

gb57

Hear hear, StuStu92 and Errata and all the sensible others who don't give a d*** about "use by" dates - load of nonsense. If it smells/looks alright, eat it. That smoked salmon is preserved - i.e. SMOKED, and edible long after some daft arbitrary "use by" date. As people say flour can be used for years (as long as there are no weevils), as can many other things. As for throwing away apples because of a use by date:rotfl: ! Apples keep for a whole winter if properly stored, and you can see if they have gone mouldy, same goes for most things

What happened to commonsense? All you "money-savers" who throw loads of food away should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves. Only buy the food you need, for starters. Storage cupboard stuff in tins & jars is fine for years, in my experience. My Golden Syrup is ancient - still tastes nice on Pancake Day, though!

End of rant:rolleyes:

cali2794

I think use by dates can be irrelevant sometimes. I've bought yoghurts and milk before that have gone off long before their best before date and same again that have lasted long past - though I've never eaten a yoghurt a week over it's date just in case.

MandyJ_3

While I don't think food manufacturers are actively trying to deceive us and make us throw food away, thereby making us go out and buy more, I do think they err on the side of safety.
As far as I am concerned "best before" doesn't mean "cr*p after" and I think it is quite ridiculous to throw away perfectly good food. In fact I think it is immoral!! When I was young, there were no such things as sell-by dates. You judged whether something was off if it looked or smelled "off". Whilst agreeing you should take care with certain foods, to throw something away without good reason is appalling. I rarely check sell-by dates, and we are never ill. I even cut mould off cheese and so on.
Makes me cross - as you can probably tell!
BTW I regularly eat yogourts that are sometimes weeks out of date and I've never been ill because of it. Same goes for a lot of other foods. And nor were my children ever ill. They never got stomach upsets or anything - and still don't
I think we need a bit of common sense here

SkintAgain

Hi folks..... I will usually eat anythingand everything so long as it stays still and doesn't whiff !!!!!
A good test would be - Drop it on the floor --- if the dog doesnt eat it , then you know not too !!!