181–190 of 288 posts
Montana uses Sell-By dates to artificially ban out-of-state milk. They want to promote in-state business (dairy farmers). Montana purposefully has short Sell-by diary dates, because it makes it prohibitive for an out-of-state dairy to transport their milk into Montana. https://www.nrdc.org/bio/dana-gunders/how-montanas-sell-date...
When my wife and I moved in together, we had a spat about what "sell by" dates actually meant. She had been throwing away loads of perfectly good food because she misunderstood the meaning of the sell-by date. I don't remember who taught me what they actually mean, but I was able to point her to a USDA site that showed the actual meaning. I'm pretty sure that was the only time I have ever been right when she and I di…
I said, "oh, you have a Costco membership?"
"No," she said, "my ex used to."
"The guy you broke up with 2 years ago?"
I looked at the date on the mayonnaise. Expired 5 years earlier. She didn't use it very often.
Not wanting to offend her, hesitantly, I ate the tuna melt. And nothing happened. It was fine.
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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.
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I don’t personally normally buy bottled water but the alternative is probably to go back to glass which means higher consumer prices, increased fossil fuel consumption for transportation, etc.
Why not aluminum cans? There's still some plastic in there, but you can mostly recycle them, they must be fairly cheap, and they're quite light. As an added benefit they stack higher in transit with less extra packaging, at least if they're shipped like beer.
When my wife and I moved in together, we had a spat about what "sell by" dates actually meant. She had been throwing away loads of perfectly good food because she misunderstood the meaning of the sell-by date. I don't remember who taught me what they actually mean, but I was able to point her to a USDA site that showed the actual meaning. I'm pretty sure that was the only time I have ever been right when she and I di…
When I first started dating my ex, I was at her place and she asked if I was hungry. I said yes, so she made me a tuna melt with mayo. As she had it in the oven I looked in the fridge. The tub of mayo was enormous and mostly empty. It was Kirkland mayonnaise. I said, "oh, you have a Costco membership?" "No," she said, "my ex used to." "The guy you broke up with 2 years ago?" I looked at the date on the mayonnaise. Ex…
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It's not a failure. They use treatments to make the fruit look fresh and shiny even when it is near gone.
Supermarkets also use ethylene to ripen many fruits (such as bananas) just before they put it out. It is so they can be picked green (unripe) to ship.
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I pick the older one to make sure the supply chain still works well.
In the case of buttermilk, it only starts to get a good flavor some time after the date on the carton. So I will often pick the oldest one (which is easy, be cause they put the older cartons toward the front).
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…
You’re right that the dates serve other purposes. The incentives aren’t as simple as avoiding wasted product. 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 r…
This article claims that 12 million tons of food are wasted in California annually, and that this law will save 70,000 tons of food from going to waste. California's population is 39 million. Does that mean that every Californian is wasting a pound of food every day? That seems suspiciously high to me. I'm curious how they came up with those numbers. I think this law is like plastic straw bans, or mandated bag fees,…
If I see a sell-by date, I only use it to compare between individual items. If there's a shelf with bread and two items have different sell-by dates, I choose the one with the later sell-by date.
I pick the older one to make sure the supply chain still works well.