91–100 of 288 posts
> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety. "Use by" is dumb, it's too close to "Best if Used By." If there's a safety issue, the term should be "expires", "expires on", or something like that.
I find food in the US contains too much toxin that harms the body. They have a lot of synthetic chemicals and preservatives. Many of which have very bad long term damages to the body. Even with these labels, sometimes it doesn't really tell the whole story about the ingredients. Most of the food that sits on the shelf for weeks shouldn't be consumed.
> Most of the food that sits on the shelf for weeks shouldn't be consumed. Salt? Flour? Oil? Oats? Rice? Garlic? Black pepper? Most ground spices? Nuts? Beans? Honey? Vinegar? Quinoa? All of these can reasonably sit on a shelf for weeks. I guess none of these are safe to be consumed, all just "toxins".
I consider them crazies in the same vein as vegetarians who judge whether something is a vegetable based on how cute it looks.
Won't the producers just leave the same date in, but change the wording before it?
As the article says, many people misunderstand "sell by" to mean "only safe if used by".
> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety. "Use by" is dumb, it's too close to "Best if Used By." If there's a safety issue, the term should be "expires", "expires on", or something like that.
> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety. "Use by" is dumb, it's too close to "Best if Used By." If there's a safety issue, the term should be "expires", "expires on", or something like that.
This all makes massive sense to me. The people in my life treat any date on food as an expiry date and throw out massive amounts of perfectly edible food. Also, people do not seem to have any concept about the rate at which different food products spoil. Some things can be used way past the dates I see. Others really are going off by then.
Meanwhile we have gotten rid of expiry dates here in the UK. And I have bought fruits and vegetables that all look fine on the outside but inside are rotten. Not only frustrating this then wastes my time and my money. Items do need expiry dates, sugar does not, fresh produce and vegetables do. However, educating that your food isn't instantly bad when it's gone pass would encourage people to waste less food.
If there's a date then frankly I don't want to waste brain cycles thinking if something in the fridge or freezer has gone bad, unless it's so obvious I don't have to think much about it. If it's past, out it goes. I have enough crap to worry about already.
If it means I waste money, that means I'm buying too much and that can be easily resolved.
You know who hates food waste more than Gavin Newsom? Every greedy supermarket market executive that throws away 30% of their inventory. Especially when their profit margins are often in the low single digits. The article says there is no mandates on any types of dates. So I imagine these dates serve some purpose, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Laws like this often sound like they're helping but since no one is fo…
Shelf space is valuable. Food that expires is inventory that’s not selling for some reason, or it wouldn’t be on the shelf long enough to expire. It’s taking up space that could instead be used for other inventory that does sell well. So even inventory that doesn’t expire at all will get put on the discount rack to get rid of it, or finally thrown out if doesn’t sell even at a cheap price.
The best way to avoid waste is to only buy food that actually sells, the quicker the better. Easier said than done, though.
Also, even greedy supermarket execs need to worry about their store’s reputation if they sell people food that doesn’t taste right too often.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something I have idly wondered. Where does the expired food go? Both “literally rotting” and “canned good safe for a decade, but we toss it after 12 months”. Landfill? Animal feed? Some amount of charity for the salvageable items? A typical grocery store could produce an incredible amount of daily waste.
We were college students; we ate it ourselves. We also had access to a commercial kitchen, and anything getting close to going bad we’d make into prepared food, which always sold really fast. We couldn’t do that with our milk vendor though, because they would only give us credit for unsold AND unconsumed milk. We had to let the milk go bad, which was a huge waste. I also used to dumpster dive, and yes, grocery stores…
But you haven't "stood in the other man's shoes" and seen it from his/her perspective.
Businesses are strictly regulated. They are required by law to dispose of certain old/damaged/discarded foodstuff and are not allowed to sell it for human consumption. Likely a second company (and possibly a third, since storage and hauling may be done separately) was hired to store the food in a container and to haul the food away as trash. The company signed a contract stating so.
Now you
1. entered his property (trespassed),
2. entered a dumpster (a second trespass possibly of a second business),
3. removed goods (theft), and then
4. passed/sold them to others (violating untold food laws)
and then are surprised someone tries to stop you!
Worst of all, consider if, while dumpster diving, you hurt yourself or even died? The food business would be sued and his insurance company would likely pay. You would have nothing to say about the decision to sue: your insurers and/or medical providers would pursue litigation against the food vendor even were you to oppose their actions.
As you can see, in this interpretation there is no particular question of what one or another person "deserves". Rather it is a question of law, property rights and civic responsibility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a tricky one, because at some point you need to think about the integrity of the product's packaging, and how well it's been stored. Craft beer *in a can* will not age gracefully. Even in a bottle, while it will probably be fine, how much light exposure are the bottle getting, have they been left out in the sun at any point etc. Best before dates, hard expiry dates (if required), and ideally including a packa…
It depends on the beer type as well. Malty strong beers age well. Hoppy beers don't because the compounds are volatile. Malty beers benefit in flavor from continued breakdown of their chemical compounds, hoppy beers don't.
I'm pretty sure that was the only time I have ever been right when she and I disagreed about something kitchen-related, by the way.
I think the ban makes sense when you consider that CA still has a provision for a "best by" date. Some more education is still necessary, though. Certain foods can go months or years past their "best by" date and still be perfectly safe - even if they might taste a little funky.