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California bans sell-by dates

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Re: California bans sell-by dates

#201

Post by seanw444 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #181
tiffanyh wrote: post #122

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...

I hate this kind of mendacity. Wanting to protect their dairy industry is understandable, but perpetuating a fraud upon consumers is not the way to do it.

If you can't beat the competition, change the rules.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#202

Post by ninalanyon »

gandalfian wrote: post #120

This sounds perfectly sensible and uncontroversial?

That's how it has been here in Norway for years. And recently producers have started adding phrases like "ofte gode etter", "and often good after" together with See, Smell, Taste.

There will typically only be one date and it will have text specifying whether it is "Best Before End" for things that simply decline in quality such as milk and vegetables and "Use By" for things that go bad in ways that will be harmful such as meat.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#203

Post by moate »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #164
relaxing wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The washed ones last because you washed off all the hen house bacteria, and then kept it refrigerated so new bacteria wouldn’t grow. Chickens, especially commercial poultry farms, are disgusting .

I get that washing off bacteria does something good. But it also makes the egg more vulnerable to any remaining bacteria. If both types are refrigerated, I wonder which effect dominates?

If you put European eggs in the fridge, it actually DIMINISHES shelf life because it can cause condensation that begins to erode the cuticle (the thing that allows the egg to be stored at room temp w/o bacterial penetration).

Like I said, there's advantages and trade offs to BOTH, otherwise the move would just be to do one and not the other (similar to how there are advantages to the Imperial measuring system that keeps it in place, but we're not going down that trail).

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#204

Post by moate »

Tyr42 wrote: post #153
rahimnathwani wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does washing eggs extend shelf life? Let's say I have unwashed eggs and washed eggs, and I put both in the refrigerator. Won't the unwashed ones last longer, because they haven't had the natural protective coating removed?

There is also condensation to consider and I think that putting the unwashed eggs in the fridge can be unsafe if the condensation can allow stuff from the poop to move around. But I'm no eggspert.

Your eggplaination was eggactly correct.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#205

Post by zargon »

slenk wrote: post #179
zargon wrote: post #177

I prefer "packed on" dates. With "best by" dates you have no idea what the actual age of the product is. Either for comparing freshness when buying it or for deciding whether to consume it later.

Food can sit around before being packed. I don't think packed on is any more useful in 99% of situations

The "best by" period is arbitrary, so a packed on date removes ambiguity that varies from producer to producer.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#206

Post by ninalanyon »

nikolay wrote: post #174

Many foods are unregulated. It's strange that milk, for example, doesn't have any requirements for its expiration date. One brand widened their "best buy" date and I noticed their milk was souring 3 days before the "best buy" date. After contacting them several times, I told them that they gave me no option but to escalate this to authorities, they didn't seem concerned a bit, and after doing my research, I found out…

> It's strange that milk, for example, doesn't have any requirements for its expiration date.

Why should it? It won't do you any harm. Just don't buy from suppliers who lie to you. But surely if it went sour before the Best before Date then the supplier has supplied goods that were not of merchantable quality and not in accordance with the implied contract and has failed to uphold their side of the contract.

But surely your complaint should be directed against the shop that sold it to you? I would expect the shop to either refund or replace the goods.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#207

Post by sundarurfriend »

_JamesA_ wrote: post #99
psunavy03 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 never thought of it that way but IPA's always taste off to me.

> Malty strong beers age well. Hoppy beers don't because the compounds are volatile.

> IPA's always taste off to me.

That sounds contradictory to what I've heard about IPAs: that they were created because the normal beers the British had at the time wouldn't survive the journey to India, so they added a lot more hops and called it India Pale Ale. Based on that, I'd expect them to age better, not worse, than other kinds, but I'm not a beer person and this is just secondhand knowledge that I've never bothered to verify.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#208

Post by marcosdumay »

teddyh wrote: post #156
riffraff wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in Europe it's forbidden to sell washed eggs, so you're literally buying eggs covered in chicken shit, it's an interesting regulatory divergence.

If you’re buying eggs covered in excrement, that’s on you. That’s what the law is for: for the seller and producer not being able to hide the awful conditions in which the eggs were produced. If you want clean eggs, buy clean eggs , which will then necessarily have been produced in a clean environment, more healthy for the chickens, and also with less risk of contaminated eggs.

> That’s what the law is for: for the seller and producer not being able to hide the awful conditions in which the eggs were produced.

AFAIK, those laws are about eggs getting silently contaminated because their shells became porous during the wash.

But that one is a really nice side-effect.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#209

Post by ffsm8 »

heelix wrote: post #198
noduerme wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had no idea that mayo expired. I had dragged a tub of mayo through several university housing locations and two apartment moves before my new bride noticed the long expired container's date as we combined refrigerators. I'm not a mayo fan, so was a condiment for guests. Whoops.

Anything with oil in it can get rancid. Including nuts.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#210

Post by s1artibartfast »

I think it's wild how much misinformation and confusion there is about this minor change. I blame this on the legislature trying to hype up their nothing law into some major achievement, and news agencies shamelessly trying to make a story out of it.

The law is simply that you cant use various labels like "enjoy by" or "Best by" and instead, all non-safety dates must use the exact words "best if used by". It wont reduce food waste by 20% as claimed.

82001. (a) On and after January 1, 2025, a food manufacturer, processor, or retailer responsible for the labeling of food items for human consumption that chooses, or is otherwise required by law, to display a date label to communicate a quality or safety date on a food item manufactured on or after January 1, 2025, shall use one of the following uniform terms on the date label:

(1) “BEST if Used by” or “BEST if Used or Frozen by” to indicate the quality date of the food item.

(2) “USE by” or “USE by or Freeze by” to indicate the safety date of the food item.

(3) “BB” to indicate the quality date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (1).

(4) “UB” to indicate the safety date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (2).

https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB660/id/2837671

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