Best before dates

[Alaric]

The Daily Mail has a piece about a proposal to abolish "Best before" dates, retaining only "use by" dates for food safety reasons.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... abels.html

I suggest they are missing something, which is that "best before" dates are a check that shops and supermarkets aren't trying to palm off stock that's been on their shelves for ages at a premium price. Some European countries include a packaged/made/picked/harvested date. You see it from time to time in supermarkets such as Lidl who source products from European suppliers. If you didn't have "best before", that would be necessary along with estimated shelf life.

Once upon a time, there weren't dates. It was Marks & Spencer, I believe, who first introduced them with a marketing campaign promoting the idea that it proved St Michael branded food was always fresh.

[Slarti]

We need best before dates to see if the shop staff are fronting up to older stuff when restocking the shelves, otherwise if staff are lazy, you end up with the stock at the back being ancient.

Doesn't matter that much with some things, but it can for others.


Also, I wouldn't like to see them disappear as I am one of those annoying people who tries to buy stuff with the longest date on.

Slarti

[Pipsmum]

I don't take much notice of dates except to buy the latest one if I'm not eating whatever it is immediately. I use my eyes and my nose and the freezer.

I've bought 'within date' chicken thrice before from the same local shop (at completely different times over a long period), and it was seriously minging. The first time I just threw it, clocked it as a genuine error and did nothing. The second time I just told them about it, and said their fridges must be faulty, but the third time I couldn't believe it was possible to happen again to the same person, and was so cross that I jumped back in the car with the minging meat and waved the stinking stuff at the counter staff who immediately refunded me at arms length. I didn't take the offer of any more and never buy meat from there now...

Use your senses first and dates second.

[UncleEbenezer]

Saturday evening, I used some food with a "best before" date in 2012. Older fennel seed worked perfectly well in a stir-fry.

There are foods where it matters a lot, others where it matters a tiny bit (or only after a very long time), and then there's food that can outlast the jar they sell it in (honey).

Perhaps the wine and whisky folks have it right? They'll tell you a vintage, and sometimes advise on matters like optimal age.

[johnstevens77]

Perhaps the wine and whisky folks have it right? They'll tell you a vintage, and sometimes advise on matters like optimal age.

I was executive chef in the InterCon in Amman when import restrictions were introduced on items without expiry dates. The first thing to be refused entry was a shipment of scotch! No expiry date. I had a problem importing live lobsters, they arrived without an expiry date and were left on the tarmac for several hours in mid July before they were released to us! As they arrived at the hotel dead, we had to bin them.
In Bahrain during the 1970's it was not unusual to find blown cans on the cold store* shelves, expiry dates were made madatory because people were getting food poisoning.
* There were no supermarkets at that time, 1976, a cold store just meant that the shop had air conditioning.

john

[Pipsmum]

Even recently when using some flour.... upon closer examination on a brighter day than normal, there appeared to be small black bits in it. We sieved them out to find they were small creatures... realising it wasn't wholemeal, then decided to look at the date.... 2006 and we'd been using it perfectly happily with the extra protein addition before then. They'd only been eating flour after all so that is what they tasted of!!!! We're a bit hardy around here. It's been demoted from culinary use to outside for play dough or paper maché.

[UncleEbenezer]

Even recently when using some flour.... upon closer examination on a brighter day than normal, there appeared to be small black bits in it. We sieved them out to find they were small creatures... realising it wasn't wholemeal, then decided to look at the date.... 2006 and we'd been using it perfectly happily with the extra protein addition before then. They'd only been eating flour after all so that is what they tasted of!!!! We're a bit hardy around here. It's been demoted from culinary use to outside for play dough or paper maché.

First-world problems there.

Critters such as weevils in your dry food (rice, corn, wheat, nuts, etc) have historically been the norm, and I suspect still are in most of the world.

[johnstevens77]

Critters such as weevils in your dry food (rice, corn, wheat, nuts, etc) have historically been the norm, and I suspect still are in most of the world.

I wrote once before about my experience as chef instructor on the Hilton Nile cruise ships, Isis and Osiris. Weevils? You ain't seen nothin! The flour could have walked to the scales by itself! In Mombassa in 1970, buffet tables were set up with their legs in a small cans of water to stop ants invading the table.
Back to cans, most cans of tomato paste that I came across in those days were blown, we used them just the same. They weren't lined as they are now.

john

[voelkels]

FWIW, whenever I buy flour, corn meal, rice, beans, etc. I store it in my deep freeze for a week or so to kill any eggs of whatever critters that normally infest these products before putting into the cupboard. I made the mistake one year of buying a box of spice mixture (“crab boil”) and putting it on the shelf without freezing it first. A tiny beetle hatched out and now infests my kitchen & cupboard. I can’t seem to be able to completely eradicate them using bug sprays & traps.
;-(
The moshttps://www.lemonfool.co.uk/posting. ... 2&t=6339#t ridiculous best buy date I have seen is on a box of table salt from Walmart. They mine the salt along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico about 120 miles southwest of here. The salt was laid down during the Jurassic Period around 175 or 150 million years ago. I checked my salt in the cupboard and on the bottom of the package in tiny letters it said ”BEST BY 09222021”.

[vrdiver]

The most ridiculous best buy date I have seen is on a box of table salt from Walmart. They mine the salt along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico about 120 miles southwest of here. The salt was laid down during the Jurassic Period around 175 or 150 million years ago. I checked my salt in the cupboard and on the bottom of the package in tiny letters it said ”BEST BY 09222021”.

I appreciate the sentiment but suspect the real reason is that the salt is hydrophilic and will absorb water vapour once opened, which will change its pouring and sprinkling characteristics. The annoying thing is that the salt will still be useable (e.g. to put in a pan of water for cooking) just not for table use if the "dry salt" characteristics are important to you. Just a shame that they condense all that into a BB date

BB dates are advisory. Use by dates are much riskier to ignore (e.g. use by will be on raw chicken, with BB on e.g. salt etc.)

[UncleEbenezer]

I appreciate the sentiment but suspect the real reason is that the salt is hydrophilic and will absorb water vapour once opened,

Even when the lid is firmly on.

I bought a big tub of table salt for the kitchen when I returned to Blighty, expecting it to last a very long time.. Threw the remainder away when I moved house. After several years in my kitchen, the salt was damp but usable, but the packaging (classic Saxa tub) looked too soggy to survive the move. Despite the lid always being properly on, the salt had very gradually attracted water.

[DiamondEcho]

In Bahrain during the 1970's it was not unusual to find blown cans on the cold store* shelves, expiry dates were made mandatory because people were getting food poisoning. john

Coincidentally I had a student job in a small export business back in the late 70s, air-freighting food to the Middle East. I worked in the warehouse, driving the forklift but also working the date-stamp machine. We used to wipe off the expiry dates from products and then re-stamp them with 'Date of production'/'Date of expiry', what ever the owner suggested we applied from the various printing plates we had. Ski brand yoghurts, Mattisons brand sliced meats. Oh and lot's of fresh fruit but we had to check every individual piece to take the (Israeli) Jaffa lables off, as any remaining at destination would get you a SEVERE bollocking if not sack.

Your anecdote doesn't surprise me, not least since we had no refrigeration in the warehouse.

[Rhyd6]

I still have a tin of red salmon my mother acquired during the war - it's now regarded as the family heirloom and we treat it like dwarf bread, as long as we've got the salmon we'll always have something to eat

R6

[JMN2]

I still have a tin of red salmon my mother acquired during the war - it's now regarded as the family heirloom and we treat it like dwarf bread, as long as we've got the salmon we'll always have something to eat

R6

One of these youtube survivalist war time ration reviewers will pay big bucks for your tin.