My mum had these dried chili flakes, which were a few years past their best-by date. And honestly, I couldn’t imagine these really going bad, so long as they remain dry. I mainly tasted some before throwing it into my food to test whether it even still tasted hot. But yeah, they were good.
Never quite knew what to do with these, when I still lived there, but that made me consider buying some. I cook with more veggies now, where the chili really hits the spot.
Last week I ate a cup of applesauce that expired in 2018. It wasn’t swollen or discolored. Tasted good, didn’t get sick.
Pasta, i think it was 10 years past expiration date. Packet was sealed and stored in a dry, cool dark cupboard. Once opened, it felt normal. After cooking, you could not feel any difference. It was Barilla.
Also, cookies. Dry cookies, like crackers. Expiration date was past, how much i don’t remember (years, anyway), but the cookies where just fine.
Same kitchen.
If we’re talking about ignoring a date printed on the package, salt. Dunno why it had a date printed on it at all.
If we’re talking about something that does eventually go bad, it would be some other spice that only rarely gets used, dunno which one though.
If we’re talking about something actually considered perishable, eggs.
Same with (bottled) water. The same water that was around even before dinosaurs digested it, also has an expiration date. I assume it has to do with law: everything considered to be a food has to have an expiration date printed on it, no matter how ridiculous it seems.
I could see that having to do with the plastic bottle degrading.
Salt: in the ground for millions of years.
Mining company: dig that up and slap an expiry date on it
a pack of sausages that were 3 years expired. I got a bunch of dried stuff that’s more than a decade old but still taste fine, but I don’t count those.
There’s this brand of organic yogurt at my local shop that says “probably best before xx/xx/xxxx, but after that just lift the lid and have a sniff”
I think I remember 6 weeks as being absolutely fine once, and 3 weeks didn’t some other time.
Yogurt is always hit or miss for me, but for the most part we don’t use it that often, so I’d say my average time from open to scraping the bottom is around 4-5 weeks.
have a sniff
I just always do that instead of looking at dates on food. If it looks off, smells off, or tastes off I trash it (always checking in that order, of course). Seems fine, I eat it. Never had a problem doing that.
Well, never a food bourn illness problem. I had a big argument with a housemate about expired food. Shortly after she moved in, she promptly trashed any food that was any amount past expiration, and proudly informed me that she had cleaned out the fridge, saving me from eating pickles that were a whole 3 months past safe to eat. To be fair to her, half the things she trashed actually were bad, but the pickle jar went right back in the fridge. If you don’t want me eating pickles that have been in the trash, Amanda, then don’t throw out my perfectly good pickles! Good call on the bottle of ranch dressing though, I forgot that was in there and it looks nasty.
Stale chips. About a week or two past their best by date. They are very chewy and gross. But since I didn’t wanna waste them or go to the store, I put olive oil on them and seasoning and put them in an air fryer for a few minutes. They were bomb. Now I do this with regular salted chips. Add olive oil, seasoning Parm cheese etc.
Some middle eastern brand of juice crystal mix. It’s kind of like Tang, in mango and guava flavours, and the containers are the size of coffee tins. I think it might have been expired when I bought it. It expired 4 years ago but I still drink it occasionally and don’t notice anything wrong.
Salt. What are the chances that my 2.5 billion year old salt will actually go bad in a few months?
It was originally sea water, but a few billion years go it went bad. After that, it’s been just as bad as the day it crystalized. Fortunately though, you can fix that very easily. Just add water.
Curry paste, like maybe a year and a half past expiration date. It’s one of those things that if they are not moldy they are good, the taste just dies down. So I just made the curry with extra paste and it was yummy!
Twenty five year old beer.
Some beers get better over time. Dark beers and wild fermentation beers. There’s a upper limit though, after a while the flavor thins out, like butter spread over to much toast.
So this beer smelled excellent, yet tasted very shortly intense and then vanished. It wasn’t delicious in that way, but very interesting to taste and in that sense enjoyable.
Very few food products have an expiration date printed on them. A lot of them have a “Sell by” date, which is not an expiration date. We have a local milk producer that prints a “Sell by” date on their bottles. The rule of thumb is that if it’s stored in proper refrigeration, unopened, it’ll keep for 2 more weeks. (Plus another week to use it up.) But it’s impossible to explain that people. The disgust reflex is strong, and you can almost watch it on their faces as it overrides people’s rational faculties. (Honestly, that experience helps me understand the recent election results.) As a result, the store that I worked in would as a rule of thumb take the milk off the shelf 3 days before the “Sell by” date, even though it’d be good for another 3 weeks. Milk that didn’t sell, we had to pour down the drain.
One time when I was working there, I had to deal with an irate customer who returned some fancy cheese hors d’oeuvres that she’d received as part of her pick-up order because the package had a “Sell by” date on it that was a couple days past. I refunded the cost of the item, and when I took it back to the cheese department, our cheese monger explained that the date was really only useful for the store to keep its stock rotated. The product didn’t spoil after that date; in fact, it got better for several months as the cheese aged. But, we agreed, it’s impossible to explain that to people.
So, to the question, also while working there, I made a delivery to an elderly woman whose son ordered groceries for her. She had a number of items that she didn’t use before the “Use by” date, and asked if I’d take them. One of them was a container of plain yogurt. I don’t use a lot of yogurt, mainly as a condiment for Indian dishes, so I didn’t even open it until about a month after the “Use by” date, and finally finished it probably 3 months after. (Just don’t let it warm up, open only briefly, and always use a clean utensil to scoop it out.) It still tasted fresh and enjoyable.
I still have butter in the refrigerator with a “Use by” date in 2023, because I bought a lot of it when it was cheap (on sale and employee discount), and put it in the freezer. I have eaten canned food several years after the “Best by” date. The heuristic is easy: It it smells good, it’s edible. If it smells off, toss it. But I know that there are plenty of people out there with a hair-trigger disgust response, who are convinced that the moment the clock ticks over to the date printed on the package, the contents turn to poison. This heuristic probably grosses them out. Oh well, people aren’t rational.
In Australia we have a split of use by and best before. Best before can effectively be ignored, just might be stale. Use by is closer to accurate where 2 days out of date milk will often be disgusting, presuming it’s been opened. Anything still sealed lasts much longer than the suggested date.
I am using a chili sauce that’s about 2 years out of date.
the shop I work in lets staff take written off stuff just so it isn’t going to waste so I regularly eat food that’s past the expiry date, I think the oldest thing was a bottle of pepsi max lime that was a bit over a year out. It was still fizzy but idk if it tasted off or if I just didn’t like the flavour.
Way back when, one convenience store had milk that was stored super cold and/or was super pasteurized, it would stay good 30+ days after the expiration date. I think the longest I went was in the low 40s days after expiration and it tasted completely normal.
