In 2011 I was in an unfamiliar kitchen and had some porridge in the morning. I put some ground cinnamon on it that was in the cupboard and noticed that it was particularly good cinnamon, much more flavoursome than I was used to. I looked at the bottle again and it was the same brand I always use myself at home so I didn’t see why it should be so much better but I noticed that the although pretty similar the labelling seemed subtly different than I was used to. I looked at the expiry, it expired in 1986 and the label was different because they’d updated the design since. I don’t know why the 25 hear old cinnamon seemed to taste so extra good, I would have thought that if it wasn’t somehow rotten and sloiled it’d at least have lost basically all its potency but somehow it was super nice. I even had extra after this discovery.
Was it a certain brand? If nothing bad happened due to eating cinnamon older than I am, that’s amazing.
Maybe I should do this for my 25th birthday next month, celebrate with 25-year-old cinnamon that may have been born when I was.
Yeh it was Masterfoods ground cinnamon if I recall. It really defies intuition because things like nice aromatic spices should get progressively weaker flavoured over time. I feel compelled to say this may have been a freak occurrence and it’s probably unwise to seek out 25 year old spice.
Buttermilk always seems to have like a one week expiration, but always seems to be fine up to maybe 2 months surprisingly
I’ve eaten pasta from a sealed, unopened bag that was 4 years past the date. The only difference I noticed was a few pieces breaking apart after cooking and it maybe cooked a tad faster.
Imagine a bag of minute pasta saying “warning, after expiration, pasta may cook in 59 seconds”.
I think a lot of people are confusing the “best by” or “sell by” etc. dates on foods (in the USA anyway) with an “expiration” date. The only foods in the US that actually have expiration dates are infant formula. NO foods expire exactly on some arbitrary date stamped on the packaging. The dates are listed to give consumers an idea of when they should think about consuming the product, many with a large amount of useable time after the date printed.
Don’t believe me? Here is the USDA’s FSIS explanation of their own regulations.I have some spices that are probably pushing 15 years that are just fine.
I don’t press my luck with expired foods. It’s on me if I don’t eat something and I’ve had so long of a time to eat that food by. Like canned foods that go all the way out an entire year or even two. I just don’t want to ever experience botulism or food poisoning of any kind.
Maybe a day by accident at most.
i ate a pound of pistachios that were 30 years old, and couldnt stop eating them, so delicious.
Unless stored in some unusual way, the nut oils would almost certainly have been rancid. Not very healthy for you, but wouldn’t give you food poisoning. Salt can hide the taste of rancid oils.
That’s older than I am. That’s nuts.
There’s some mayonnaise in the fridge a couple years old I’ll use on sandwiches. After family holiday get togethers there’s always leftover ham or turkey, that’s about the only time I’ll use mayonnaise. Every year I’ll pull it out, look at the expiration date and make a choice. Go get a new jar that will only get a third used or live life on the edge and slather on the old stuff. I call it refrigerator roulette
Some brands of mayo actually say on the jar that you don’t need to refrigerate them. In the fridge, I’d probably keep that 2 or 3 times longer then the jar claims it should last.
That moment when mayonnaise is an instrument.
Actual food? Probably yogurt at like one or two months. It had been sealed up until then.
I’ve had table syrup that was at least 4 years past the expiration (it actually still had the aunt Jemima on the bottle is how old it was).
A few days ago I finished some baking powder and my partner brought a big bottle home and I was like “oh it’s okay that stuff doesn’t expire!” Then I looked at the previous container I had and found out it had, in fact, expired in 2017. Don’t think it affected my baking though.
I mostly just eat stuff without looking at the dates unless it smells bad or is moldy.
Syrup I always thought was like honey. It comes from tree sap and that can even be fermented.
Aunt Jemima be like “I’m still here, critics!”
Vinegar based hot sauces are basically immortal; I’ve had Tabasco that was like 10 years old before
Isn’t it ten years old by default?
Does it lose any of its hotness?
I think heat typically intensifies over time: anecdotally, leftover hot food is always hotter a couple of days after it was freshly made
It separated out to half clear vinegar and half… Red
You had to shake it back together but if anything it was even hotter than usual. It was wild
In Europe we use expiration and best before dates.
With exp. dates, don’t push it: they mean after that date, the food could spoil and there’s biological risk on eating it. One day? Ok. 3 days… only if you have to and after looking closely for signs of spoiling. Cook it thoroughly.
With BBF dates, there is no risk unless evident contamination, meaning that after that date, the food will be edible but might have a different taste. Obviously, look for mold if the product was open, bwt it’s generally safe to eat even after years. Except fresh uncooked food, almost everything else falls in this category here.
Edit: typo
Very good explanation! The wording varies, in Czech and German it’s like “consume by” and “can be stored at minimum until”.
A store in my country once had an apology sign on display saying something along the lines of:
Some products in [this section] on sale [this year] were labeled with a “Sell By” date. According to [this EU directive], such a date is identical to the “Best Before” date. This has been fixed and we apologize for any confusion."
I have no idea how the “mistake” happened (normally, no food items share packaging between Europe and other continents) but I’m glad they got it sorted. The “Sell By” bullshit causes industrial-scale food waste by US supermarkets. Here, items about to pass BB are marked down by about 30% instead, and mom-and-pop stores usually have a discount shelf dedicated to past-BB items at 50% or higher discounts.
Do things that have a BBF date expire if you wait years?
If well stored and with undamaged packaging, it can go for years without trouble. With bff products i generally go to groceries stores and look for a section dedicated to these products. They sell them cheaper and are completely safe. Good way to save money and fight food waste.
As they said, generally no, they may just not taste as good.
For example - a pot of chilli powder probably will be fine after 5 years unopened in a cupboard, but probably won’t be as spicy as it used to be.
Rice, 10 years. Beef, hmmmmmmm 2 months? Mushrooms at least a year. Got to let them be fun guys.
The kind of mushrooms from the grocery store or the kind of mushrooms likely secretly sold under the grocery store?
Pasta, 12 years. Yoghurt, 1 month.
I’m impressed in a way that anything could be good up to twelve years past the expiration date.
Dry and sealed, it can last decades. Honey can last centuries but will usually expire after 1 year for legal reasons.
I believe they have recovered honey from Egyptian tombs that was thousands of years old and still edible. From recollection the syrup is too viscous for bacteria to colonise.
I understand in some cases it may be wasteful, but I’m super strict about expiration dates. Food poisoning is truly awful, and I don’t fuck around. All that barfing, shidding, and farding.
It is wasteful, the expiration date is very conservative. You can push it 20% or more for sealed, correctly stored items. Just check for signs of rot or mold.
Which is cheaper — composting food after its expiration date, or the copay at the doctors office when you get food poisoning?
You go to the doctor for food poisoning? What are they gonna do besides tell you that you have food poisoning and send you home?
Depends on a lot of factors. When I consider grocery prices in the Czech Republic, our food safety standards, sick leave conditions and healthcare costs, I’d say I might get food poisoning 0-2 times in my life for $25 each while saving at least $30 per year.
No thanks.
The risk is worth it, I will probably never get food poisoning (as long as I’m careful when foraging) and I’m healthy overall so my body would take it well. I can’t imagine store-bought food pushed to less than +50% of its shelf life with no signs of decay will do permanent harm. I guess a week off work can be a problem if you’re in America? I feed old food to chickens instead if it goes stale or unappetizing so I never really waste any anyway.
I’m not discouraging you or any one else to be more flexible about them, I’m just saying I have my limitations on the matter.
