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California bans sell-by dates

foodandwine.com

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Re: California bans sell-by dates

#211
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all oils are processed foods. Vinegar is a preservative and is a processed food. Most salts are processed and are common preservatives. Flour is a processed food. The reasons why Twinkies are so shelf stable are largely the same reasons why flour or rice or olive oil is shelf stable. Better be careful of those chemicals like sodium chloride and dihydrogen monoxide.

> Salt? Flour? Oil? Oats? Rice? Garlic? Black pepper? Most ground spices? Nuts? Beans? Honey? Vinegar? Quinoa? Sure, if you are assuming Americans are mostly eating these things daily.

Twinkies are made up almost entirely (by mass) of the things listed above. The only major thing missing is sugar.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beer certainly is an odd one! Some (craft) craft beers will age gracefully -- improving, even -- for years . Industrial lagers... not so much . I scored once with an imported (Belgian) craft beer at the local supermarket, heavily marked down price because the sell-by date was approaching. Some days later, marked down by half again because the date had passed. Needless to say, I bought all I could carry.

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…

"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."

A modern beer can, on a newer canning line, is superior to a bottle in every single way. This debate about bottles being better than cans is from years ago. Cans and especially the canning machines have come a very long way in the last 15 years. That is one of the many reasons why almost every brewery is slowly switching to cans.

In regard to aging beers, there are a many important factors. The biggest enemy in aging a beer is oxygen. Oxygen gives beer a cardboard, paper flavor or a very raisin-y flavor, eventually it makes the entire beer taste like soy sauce.

As you mentioned zero light in a can so no skunking, although brown bottles stored in a dark cool place don't experience much of this. But clear, green and other bottles do. Bottle caps slowly leak oxygen in over a very long time and is why you might see a oxygen absorbing material in the under side of some bottle caps.

On the flip side one majorly common way a can will go bad in aging is from a seal alignment issue. This is especially common in smaller breweries as automated seam inspectors are quite expensive. The seal will visually look great. But if you tear it apart and measure the folds its quite common for them to be a little bit off, which can slowly leak out carbonation and in oxygen.

I'm a huge fan of packaged on dates for beer.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. It's great! Now the supermarkets can blame us for waste. Fortunately, every supermarket does still have labels that show a coded date - so that their staff can remove products that are too old. If you search for the particular store online, you should be able…

Thanks for this. In general I'm in favour of products removing the dates so that people don't chuck out perfectly good food based on superstition/misguided obedience, but an annoying side-effect is that if we have two unopened packs of the same product it's hard to know which is older. By sheer bad luck, an old pack could hang around indefinitely and go off.

I was thinking a possible solution would be a simple numerical counter (e.g. days since 1 Jan 2000), which can't be easily decoded by eye, but allowed you to rank items easily by age.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kin…

The amount of hops in the beers from that story were about as bitter as a common blonde ale.

The modern IPA is nothing like that anymore. Also its the aroma compounds of hops that breaks down so fast, not the bittering aspects.This is why you can store a Russian imperial stout (high hop bitterness, low hop aroma, very high abv) but not normally a double/triple IPA (high hop bitterness, high hop aroma, high abv) and defiantly not age a normal IPA or session IPA (high hop aroma, low abv).

*Some overly malty double and triple IPAs will age into a nice barley wine if given enough time.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#215

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…

> As she had it in the oven ...

Cooking food typically kills off any bacteria.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kin…

The hops are somewhat antibacterial, so they can help against contamination, but the hop flavors break down over time, and light and oxidation are what "skunk" a beer.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#217
post #81
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually super curious about that too, as far as I know pathogens cant live in beer, so I don't know how it can go bad. I wonder though if local brewery's or more artigianale brewing processes are different and maybe could be a bit riskier ?

Plenty of undesirable stuff can live in beer. Brettanomyces will make your beer taste phenolic. Lactic Acid Bacteria will sour it (Lactobacillus and Pediococcus are two common contaminants). Oxygenation will gradually make the beer taste like cardboard. Hop aromatics degrade rapidly, heavily hopped beers are best within a month of brewing. Very few beers get better over time (generally sours and stouts), most are beg…

undesirable yes, but it wont be life threatening.

Also as you probably already know brett, lacto and pedio are desirable sometimes.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#218
post #128

> 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. Infant formula is required federally, so OK. Eggs are an oddly specific one, but I guess I can see it (although I'd wonder why some other products like milk, or meat m…

> But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead. Maybe a different regulatory regime applies? That's the case at the federal level. For instance: alcohol often doesn't have the typical food labels because it's regulated by the ATF [1] not the FDA, and food labels are an FDA thing: https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/w... : > TTB regulations do no…

Looking at TTB's mandatory items on labeling [1] there is nothing about any dates. Some states have different requirements, and I don't know California's, but many states do not require any kind of date coding.

[1] https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/b...

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#219
post #192
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vinegar based hot sauces, and/or hot sauces that are very high in sodium, usually yes, but not always. Particularly if the sauce includes unstrained organic bits such as garlic or onions, or includes oils - botulism (odorless, tasteless) can be a non-zero risk. At some point, that crusty $5 bottle of hot sauce you found in the back of the fridge should just get tossed out instead of taking the risk.

I don’t even keep things like soy sauce or something like Tabasco in the fridge. Much less vinegars. I suspect a lot of people are inclined to.

Tabasco is fine in the pantry or on the counter.

Tabasco in particular isn't just vinegar-based, it's nearly entirely vinegar. Its ingredients list is vinegar, salt and crushed peppers that are then strained before bottling. It is a very inhospitable environment for botulism - or anything else.

Many other types of hot sauces contain oils and/or are not strained of organic matter and/or contain blended organic matter. Such as all of your thicker or chunkier sauces for the most part[1] (which happen to be my favorites). Those should be kept in the fridge and you should discard after some time just to be on the safe side.

[1] https://thepepperplant.com/shop.html

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#220
post #63

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".

Or months plus. Flour probably gives better results for yeast breads in the weeks timeline but the average household isn’t buying a new bag of flour every couple weeks.

I do keep nuts in the freezer for the most part.

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