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California bans sell-by dates

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Re: California bans sell-by dates

#81

Post by theptip »

bilekas wrote: post #69
torgoguys wrote: post #67

> 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…

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 beginning to degrade immediately and fall off a cliff within a year.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#82

Post by alwa »

brightball wrote: post #45
tivert wrote: post #41

> 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 remember seeing a sell by date on salt. It was at that moment that I started questioning the process.

Have you ever bought an old cardboard tube of salt? The last time I did was in a tropical location. Somehow over the years it had acquired the scent of wet rot, and the relentless cycles of humidity had effectively recrystalized the contents into a rock.

Luckily the packaging had started to biodegrade, too, so it was easy enough to scrape off the fiber fuzz and hammer down the inner salt rocks into something useful. Better than nothing! But I wish I’d been able to buy it by its sell-by.

(Spoken as a skeptic of deadlines of all sorts, and one who routinely ignores food safety. I still think the dates are mostly silly, but that type of instance reminds me why it’s a hard problem: even if you’re not a dastardly wastemonger, choosing the “right” date depends heavily on handling and climate and factors beyond your control—unknowable at production time.)

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#83

Post by SoftTalker »

causal wrote: post #66
SoftTalker wrote: post #58

I don't pay dates much mind. If it looks good, smells good, and tastes good I eat it. We are pretty adept at smelling and tasting spoiled food.

Botulism can be present without any smell or taste

Pretty low risk though. It requires a low-oxygen environment so mainly canned foods are the risk and overwhelmingly home-canned food that isn't heated properly/long enough.

But yeah, don't eat food from damaged cans.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#84

Post by MisterTea »

psunavy03 wrote: post #79
torgoguys wrote: post #67

> 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…

Beer is pasteurized or else full of live yeast cultures. It doesn't go "bad" per se in the sense that it will hurt you, but some beers taste bad beyond a certain point. Hoppy beers lose flavor in ~90 days or so after bottling. Mass-market beers "skunk" if they are exposed to light and the UV causes certain compounds to break down. Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in…

> Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in a cool dark place, and it smooths the flavors out.

Had a coworker who made this phenomenon into a yearly gathering. We would bring beers of our choice, bury them in his back yard, then drink and grill/smoke meats. Next year he would dig up the previous years burial and we would try to bring the same beers with us. Then we all gather around and have a tasting comparing the year long aged beer to the fresh beer. You also brought along new beers to bury. He names it Man Beer Meat because it was just guys drinking and grilling.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#85

Post by sdo72 »

vel0city wrote: post #71
sdo72 wrote: 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".

That isn't most, and I mentioned synthetic chemicals & preservatives.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#86

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #50
nfw2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding from the article is that expiry ("use by") dates will still be needed, and sell-by dates are being removed because mean something different from expiry, but consumers (myself included until now) generally misunderstand this.

> and sell-by dates are being removed Not removed. Reworded.

No, removed. "Sell by" is not the same as the now mandated "Best if used by"

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#87

Post by dawnerd »

slicktux wrote: post #51
LeFantome wrote: post #11

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.

Yes, you can safely eat food after “Best of used by” date but one has to keep in mind that there are chemical processes in place; one such example is rate of oxidation of food oils…one is literally eating highly oxidative food like chips but more so if it’s been sitting for a while. Though not obvious, but the damage it’s doing to your bodies cells can be pretty bad.

And varies by brand. For example stuff from Aldi (their house brands) don’t really last past the best but dates. Often will be spoiling before the date.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#88

Post by dawnerd »

ntlk wrote: post #30
bko wrote: post #15

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…

Not sure whether it was the removal of best before dates or Brexit, but fresh food and veg in Britain is often already rotting in supermarkets. So now instead of the store throwing out loads of produce past its best, I have to do it when I get home and realise that yet again one in each pack of 3 onions is rotted.

Been seeing that in the states too. A lot of old produce, but I blame high prices not moving it fast enough.

Re: California bans sell-by dates

#89

Post by schwartzworld »

alwa wrote: post #82
brightball wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing a sell by date on salt. It was at that moment that I started questioning the process.

Have you ever bought an old cardboard tube of salt? The last time I did was in a tropical location. Somehow over the years it had acquired the scent of wet rot, and the relentless cycles of humidity had effectively recrystalized the contents into a rock. Luckily the packaging had started to biodegrade, too, so it was easy enough to scrape off the fiber fuzz and hammer down the inner salt rocks into something useful.…

How do you know this happened as a result of the sellby, as opposed to being improperly stored? The package could get wet at any point.
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