Sell By Dates?

[Goldstandard]

What do you think of the obsession with sell by dates? On tinned food? It lasts for ever doesn't it? I remember the time when if it smelled OK it was OK. If meat was a bit off you rubbed some vinegar on it. If it was fly blown you scraped the eggs off rubbed some vinegar on it and ate it. I don't know of anyone who got food poisoning. Perhaps our systems were more robust in those days.

[rockyracoon]

I'm in the 'if it looks and smells alright I'll eat it' camp but, I draw the line at eating meat that has flies eggs in it. Ewwwwww!

[gingejbee]

Tinned food does NOT have sell-by date on it...it's a best-before date. Quite different.

[ChillDoubt]

Sell-by dates are for other people, certainly not me.

If it looks and smells ok, I'll eat it.

This was posted on the BBC site just the other day:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-24305902

I also recall this story:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1509920/Chicken-tastes-supreme-after-50-years-in-a-tin.html

Ok, after 50 years even I would be sceptical, but it obviously caused no harm!

[Old_Geezer]

Sell by is surely for the shop.
Best before is for the consumer.
But a little deterioration isn't an issue. I'm drinking juice with last year's best before date on it. Well I sure ain't slinging them.

[Tilly2]

You can not be serious about eating fly blown meat. What good does the vinegar do?

[Graham-W]

With tinned stuff, as long as the tin isn't "blown" I'll eat it.
Anything else, if it looks ok and smells ok and tastes ok, I'll eat it.
In my opinion, kids being brought up in a sterile environment never build up a resistance to mild bug attacks like people did in the past..

[gingejbee]

Sell-by is for short-life perishables....best-before is for long-life non-perishables - like tins and packets for ambient storage.

[gingejbee]

In fact, hasn't the sell-by date on perishables been replaced by a "use before" anyway?

[Goldstandard]

I'm not a scientist but I believe that food poisoning is caused by a bacterium not by the food deteriorating.

[razza]

Meat with fly eggs on is perfectly ok if cooked properly,have you ever had pheasant in a restaurant,they are hung till crawling with maggots,I know it sounds gross to some people but all meats are ok if cooked properly.

[Goldstandard]

Sell by, use by, smooze by, you know what I mean.

[rockyracoon]

I'd poke my eyes out before I ate maggot infested meat.

[Grandpaw]

I remember those days well and sometimes they still occur with us having to cut around the creature burrows to the untainted food and then getting stuck in as the rest is okay. We have grown to be soft namby pambies and what's worse is that we're teaching our kids and grandkids that the world is an overly dangerous place and so we must cover it and it's inhabitants with cotton wool but many people don't realise that 99% of the food that they eat has at some point came into contact with rats, mice, roaches or some other creature. I've travelled the world and have eaten maggots, witchety grubs, snakes spiders, rats, balut, live baby octopuses, dogs, cats and the list goes on and on and i can never even remember and upset stomach, why in fact in the war we had to lay in trenches and eat rotten food that had been in the same water as rotting corpses! What's happened to the moxy, guts and bravado of the yesteryear man?

[starone]

I agree - I well remember during the war if you dropped anything on the floor you would pick it up and rinse it off. You were well aware that you would not get a replacement. I still do not waste any food - force of habit I suppose!

[boxtops]

I'm still eating yoghurt that's BB July 2013.

[paddywak]

Ten years in the food industry opened my eye to the dating system.One of my first jobs was supervising the repackaging of a load of Rum Babas, the packaging they were in where was for what the company had been called several years earlier.When I questioned the QC girl about it she showed me the relevent parts of the current regs which showed that provided they were stored correctly they had a virtually unlimited shelf life.The product was only labled and dated as it went through the packing department immediatly prior to dispatch.Too be fair the vast majority of produce donuts,eclairs etc was dispatched the same day it was made but large cakes,pies and gateaux were made in bulk and stored so the customer might be buying something they think is freshly made but has actually been in the freezer months.

[Old_Geezer]

In fairness there are thing you will do out of necessity when there is no real option that you'd not wish to stomach in normal times.

[boxtops]

I Must admit (although it's not food) I threw away a jar of Vaseline from the medicine chest dated Sept 2006.... it would probably have been fine, but I wasn't sure.