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

margot_ledbetter

I wouldn't risk over date meat if I wasn't totally sure where it came from and how it was stored.

I would, however, risk over date meat if it had spent the majority of its time in my fridge.

For example: I would eat rotten corner meat (there's always a few days on that before it's dangerous otherwise why would they sell it to us?) and I would eat meat I'd forgotten in the fridge for a couple of days beyond best by...

I wouldn't eat meat over date passed on by someone I didn't know.

HC_2

margot_ledbetter wrote: »

I wouldn't risk over date meat if I wasn't totally sure where it came from and how it was stored.

I would, however, risk over date meat if it had spent the majority of its time in my fridge.

For example: I would eat rotten corner meat (there's always a few days on that before it's dangerous otherwise why would they sell it to us?) and I would eat meat I'd forgotten in the fridge for a couple of days beyond best by...

I wouldn't eat meat over date passed on by someone I didn't know.

OP is talking about vacuum-packed ready meals.

What is 'rotten corner meat'?

margot_ledbetter

'rotten corner' = yellow sticker alley / discount central... where they bung the reduced items.

If it's in rotten corner it's at least got a couple of days over the shop recommended 'use by' ...

I've got to know when they reduce the meat in my local supermarket. My freezer is full of less than half price perfectly good meat.

margot_ledbetter

I reckon all ready-meals have at least 3 days over their official 'use by' date just to cover their backs. I play it safe and the latest I do is two.

HC_2

margot_ledbetter wrote: »

'rotten corner' = yellow sticker alley / discount central... where they bung the reduced items.

If it's in rotten corner it's at least got a couple of days over the shop recommended 'use by' ...

I've got to know when they reduce the meat in my local supermarket. My freezer is full of less than half price perfectly good meat.

Learn something new every day!

My daughter works at Waitrose on Saturdays and she brings home packages of free-range organic chicken etc., on their sell-by, reduced from £4 to 25p.

Never enough for a meal for 4, but my dogs eat very well!

Barefoot_Briain

I heard Martin talking about this on the Jeremy Vine program the other week and wanted to take issue with him over the meaning of "Use By".

In many cases it is nothing more than an excuse for the manufacturer to get us to throw away perfectly edible food! With the amount that is thrown away each year (according to a recent survey), the producers have to take a large part of the blame.

I regularly eat yogurts that are 4 or even 6 weeks beyond their Use By dates and have only once or twice found a mould growth on them - and that was easily removed with no other effect on the product! I also keep pate in the tubes in my fridge well betond the use by dates, often open for as much as 3 months! But today I finally finished the last of a pack of 6 chocolate mousse - dated 26th December!!!!! That's FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE USE BY DATE. There was absultely nothing wrong with it. It looked and tasted exactly the same as the previous one eaten after 4 months. I wont throw something away that still appears edible and haven't had any stomach illness since I can't remember when!

So what's the big idea of USE BY?

rach

I'm more careful about use by (though maybe I won't be after reading the above!) but I did recently feed DH and his mate some custard that it turned out was best before 1998!!! was just very tasteless!

PrinceGaz

Even with what I said in the first post in this thread, Use By must be trated with some respect- it is there for a good reason which is to minimise the chance of people eating food which is unhealthy.

You've got to take it on a case by case basis. Milk is generally in a supermarket with a Use By date of around to 7-10 days ahead of when you buy it. That assumes you keep it in a fridge at not more than the recommended fridge temperature. Supermarkets invariably keep it well below that temperature (usually close to freezing) to ensure they are never selling products that have gone off. As such, if your fridge is also kept at an optimum temperature you can easily add another quarter to the overall life- so two days or so after the Use By date, and it is still as good as what someone else bought but kept in a fridge towards the upper end of the recommended temperature range (around 5C).

The same theory applies to other yellow-ticket items, like pies, which will be perfectly fine for two or three days afterwards, at least I hope so as I have a Pork Pie in my fridge which I intend to eat in a few hours and has a Use By date of 25 May (yellow-ticket reduced from an already sale price).

Products like bread are much more iffy-- short of freezing them, you can't really extend their life though they still tend to be perfectly fine at least two days past their Use By date (which itself is usually two days past the Display Until date when you would buy it with a good discount).

Products with a Use By date many weeks or months ahead of when it is manufactured can be treated much more casually. The rule I have of Use By dates being guidelines that can be safely extended by 1/4 of the total shelf-life if stored in a fridge at a low temperature applies the same here, so something bought that should be used in two months can easily have another two weeks added to that. Of course you should ideally use it sooner than later, but if you manage to find such a product as a seriously-reduced yellow-ticket purchase, you don't have to eat it that day, or even that week.

Tinned and other products with a lifespan of several years are the total exception-- they tend to be fine at double or many times their intended life, and with tinned products could (and indeed have been) fine after many decades of storage. Tinned products in particular are safe so long as the metal doesn't corrode as the whole point of them is they are heated in the already sealed tin to a temperature which kills all bacteria, meaning the contents of the tin can last almost indefinitely.

PS: I accept no responsibility if anyone dies of food-poisoning as a result of following my totally amateur advice.

beckstrous

I will eat milk or cheese (hard cheese) without paying attention to the use by date. If the cheese has mould on it and it's only a little bit then I will cut it off. If it has a lot of mould on it I'll chuck it. With milk I just smell it or taste it; I would NEVER chuck out milk just because it was on its use by date. We go through it so quickly anyway that this never happens!

I am more cautious with meat and fish, of course. But there are other things I have grown to ignore e.g. we have some jalapeno peppers in brine in the fridge and it says that once opened you should use within 14 days. We have kept these peppers several months and they have been fine. At first I used to throw them away but then we started eating them and there was nothing wrong with them. It really annoys me that they say things like that. It is the same with anchovies...it says on a tin of anchovies to use within 3 days of opening, but if you completely cover them with oil they last ages.

dannie

Thanks all for the replies.