unless the 'sell by' or 'use by' date has plenty of time left. I won't even buy cake unless it has at least three days to go. In the Publix deli/bakery, a lot of cake or cookies only have two days left as a rule.

I got 2 packages at different times, that in spite of being months ahead of expiration, were moldy. They have so much lettering on the packages, you can't really tell what you're getting. I buy blocks and shred them as needed.

I buy Kroger brand shredded cheese, but no bigger than the one pound size, Then I can go through it fast enough after opening.

Pre-shredded cheeses are sold by volume. The block is sold by weight, and an 8 oz block will produce more shreds than what's in the equivalent pre-shredded bag. It also tastes better, and melts betters since it isn't coated with silicone dioxde, potato starch or whatever they're using to keep the shreds from sticking together.

Either way, shredded hard cheese freezes nicely. I usually just put it straight in freezer, unless I'm going to use it in a day or two. Just take out what you need, and it will defrost within a few minutes. Not that you necessarily even need to defrost it, depending on what you're doing with it...

I've been grating an 8 oz. block and using a fresh bag each time. lately, I've preferred cheese to meat, but if I change my meal plan, I'll try freezing the cheese to keep it fresh longer.

The front containers are days from expiry. (Not always, but I am on my toes on this)

being a kid raised in Wisconsin you develop a keen sense of the taste of dairy freshness and when it has "been in the carton" too long. It may not smell bad but the flavor goes down increasingly during the days. Milk ends up going from having a nice, pleasing flavor with some very light almost buttery sense and then days later it is just a cold, white liquid that is thicker than water.

Same deal with cottage cheese. If you buy it too close to the expiration and open it you need to use it all right away because once it's opened and then sits in the fridge a few days past the expiration date it starts to breakdown and the liquid is separating and watery.

Ricotta cheese starts separating quickly so I just pat it with a paper towel to remove the water and it's good as new. Not sure if the same is true for cottage cheese.

curds are very soft and would probably mush but when it separates the taste also begins to degrade and even if you stir it up it is noticeable.

go through milk fast enough that the date doesn't really matter! LOL.

That the skim milk lasts way longer than full fat milk. I think it’s the milk fat that causes it to go bad faster

because I've noticed just the obvious! And I think it's the fat that preserves it!

I think our refrigerators ought to have a Zoom meeting.

I think the fat extends the shelf life somehow.

Had a rust through recently. Hairline, but gave me a botulism scare. I think I was millimeters close. Board of Health doesn't have jurisdiction on canned goods, only fresh goods that require a license.

And with botulism you sit and wait for symptoms. The instructions are fudgy. It's the toxin that causes the illness. I think poison control was telling me you might ward off a tiny amount. You might also ward off a tiny amount of actual ingested spores because it needs an anaerobic environment to grow and produce toxins, so our digestive tracts are generally inhospitable. But a tablespoon or so of live and toxic would compromise your existence rapidly.

Critical time periods were 2 and 7 days. Though some sites indicated it could still breed undetected for about 6 weeks!!

Beware. Examine your canned goods.

I rotate what's in the pantry, and discard any out of date. I changed my eating habits a few years ago. It was against my nature to toss unopened cans, but they were out of date and I bought them before I changed course

My Mom and Gram were always worried about botulism and lockjaw. Those are in my basic beware list

chemical/Biological weapons authority what was the worst agent.....Anthrax, etc etc etc.....

He told me the most deadly and potent agent known is Botulism (clostridium?) or something like that...

And to think that a diluted amount of that is being injected into women's faces across the United States....

This is a store where inventory is often found still in boxes and piled up in the aisles.

Does it help with out of date inventory? Doubt it.

Some items up to $5. Food can be $3, or $4.

But I can't find what I want, there's so much more on their website than in the store.

The big ones have more types of merch than the small ones.

You shop the website? I never thought to do that.

Some items from DT are totally worth it.

They have a dollar aisle, and although the choice is getting slimmer, I can still get items at DG for $1 that Dollar Tree is charging 1.25 for. I realized that Dollar Tree lost a lot of its attraction when they changed the prices. They should just call it Tree :/

that for twenty years or more.

and because it is widespread it is not just an "ooops" kind of accidental thing. It is policy. I'm seeing vacuum packed fresh salmon being sold that is 3 days past the "use or freeze by" date. I can attest to the horrible smell when you open such a package. I'm seeing trays of pre-cut fruit and vegetables being marked down and still out for sale when they are 3-4 days past the "use by" date.

The fruit tray will have blueberries, watermelon, cantaloupe and strawberries. The blueberries are all wrinkling up, the watermelon is disintegrating into mush, the cantaloupe is turned dark orange and looks mushy and the strawberries are visibly dark and sort of dry looking. But such a deal to get rotting fresh fruit for 45% off and only have to pay $12.00 for 2 1/2 pounds of it!!

This has been entirely in a pharmaceutical setting.

There was a recent publication in the Journal Environmental Science and Technology about which I posted in the E&E forum.

Based on my experience, speaking only for myself, I tend to ignore expiration dates, at least those within 5 years, at least for OTC drugs like OTC pain relievers and cold remedies and the like. The only exception would be for acetaminophen (Tylenol) which i don't take at all because of its metabolic profile.

Expired foods can lack palatability, but I don't generally pay attention to these expiration dates that much either.

There is an environmental penalty to throwing stuff away.

There are several reliable sites that list food and OTC safety after use by dates. I think I read on DU that expiration dates offer some legal protection to the companies. I don't want to buy expired items, but I'll use what I have on hand if it isn't too far out of date. The sites I use are a good guide for health and safety.

Thank you for your comments.

was a couple weeks past the best by date

i took a couple of them up to the front desk and told them they were all too old to be selling. i probably should've grabbed the entire stash

Next week, I see it back on the shelf. A week later, it got moved to a lower shelf and ignored for the next couple months. Their fridges died in between this time too, so... Wonder if they bothered clearing off any of the shelves?

The 'expiration date' is entirely made up and meaningless. Does salt expire?
You can look at a banana and see whether it is overripe.

I’m finding that stores are keeping fruits and vegetables out on display longer than they should. Just in the past week, I bought a bag of onions that were mottled brown inside and cherry tomatoes that shriveled up after a couple of days. Potatoes seem to get moldy faster now, too. Frustrating.

conservative estimates, and wasteful in the long run.

As soon as they can get all the Medicaid cuts through, why not eradicate those helpful dates on cans and milk and meat and other things?

People are just going to have to buy what they buy and hope for the best and a nice batch of botulism or salmonella entering into the guts of the general public on a regular basis is perfect to help them eradicate citizens , especially vulnerable seniors who will die very quickly without medical attention..

That's why it's important to pass all the Medicaid cuts first, so that sick people, especially us worthless, hyper-expensive-to-keep-alive elders, will have no hospital nearby, and if they're lucky enough to have a doctor, I'm sure doctors will be running their credit first before wasting time saving them.
A FICO score under 700 will be a death warrant.

Gentle Genocide.

It's coming. It's even in project 2025 somewhere around the 600 page mark or something. I remember hearing about it on progressive radio on Sirius XM.

OR IS IT?

The Trader Joe's by me has a sign that says they
donate hundred of thousands of dollars of "dated"
food a year just from that (1) store

We were instructed to toss all expired canned goods by the people in charge. I have to say I sort of agreed with them with the idea of just because someone is food insecure/poor doesn't mean they should have to eat sketchy canned goods.

As I recall, the way we did it was this: Say if a product had an expiration date of say 09/2025. If it didn't have an exact day (e.g. July 19th, 2025) we would remove it from the stocking shelves if it was within 2 months within that date. But you won't believe how far past expired I have seen some items. I remember one time there was a Gatorade on the shelf, and I am not kidding when I say this, it was 2 years past its expiration date. Two years. But again, the Walgreens I worked at was very short staffed in the times I worked there. So I am guessing checking inventory was not good. When you do stocking/inventory, especially with food products such as candy, crackers, etc., you're supposed to put the newest ones in the back, the oldest in the front (i.e. products closest to the expiration date goes first). But again, it is not foolproof, so yes, definitely check expiration dates.

Because with lettuce and salad I will reach back there for the longer expire dates. 😀🙄

Too many Americans don't know how to shop for politicians.

(of all sorts) still on shelves. And while we're on this topic, many expiration dates are difficult to read. Also some stores put price tags right over expiration dates.

Too many illegible expiration or "Best By" dates in sketchy fonts to be accidental. It's become a game for some food producers. And after all, in this day and age of corporate supremacy, who's gonna stop them?

Disgusting.

Contact the store and the company that makes the product. I had month old yogurt when I got home, did a live chat with Kroger and got refunded, then contacted Chobani and they sent me coupons for free yogurt!

Medicines can't go bad if they're kept dry & exposed to limited light.
Absent uV exposure, they won't oxidize at any appreciable rate with an oxidizer as mild as 20% oxygen in air.
They won't hydrolyze with atmospheric moisture without a catalyst or a strong acid present.
Expiration dates on medicines are much more a legal thing than a chemistry-based imperative.
The food items are a different matter, of course. But remember, those are sell-by dates. They would likely still be good 3 to 7 days if properly stored.

about it and how many there are, and ask if they have any in stock that aren't past the expiration date so I can buy at least one. And if there aren't any employees nearby who can deal with this immediately, I'll load all the expired items into my cart and take them to customer service before someone else buys them without checking.

I commend you for that.

In my nearest Kroger you're lucky if you even see an actual employee (she said because the last remaining pint of Ben & Jerry's I wanted was on the top shelf pushed way to the back and I'm only 5'3" tall

I am a resourceful person so I went to the home goods aisle, got a broom and used the handle to bring the pint closer to the front of the shelf. Don't get in the way of me and my Ben & Jerry's!

A lot of stuff at $ Tree I check is expired.

And the grocery store is better but still find some now days. Many times I've found the stuff on sake expires the very day I'm there or a few days later. Then I consider how fast I'm going to use it and if it's " use by" or " sell by" .

National debt is only part of OUR nation's indebtedness.

Our freedom to have a spouse at home... borrowed by the work force FOR THE ECONOMY.
Our freedom to be young and schooled... borrowed by the universities so OUR ECONOMIC NUMBERS WOULD LOOK BETTER.
Our freedom to take time off work without throwing our budget into turmoil. STOLEN FOR THE ECONOMY.
... and on and on and on.

It seems like your post is about something else

One more place where our freedom to have simple easy trip to a market is lost for a few extra bucks.

That makes their profit margin look better, and the economy as a whole looks better when profits are higher. It is only borrowed for the moment while we think about taking it back to the store for a refund. So, the economy borrows our health and welfare and tries not to pay that debt.

We are overextending ourselves with too much short-term borrowing.

Expired food for sale is just one more in a long list of our borrowing.

Your post was like using Google Earth to see a spot on the map, then zooming all way out to see the whole planet. It is easy to forget how many ways corporations try to make 1 more buck.

Irritating as they sell the same brands as Wegman$ - at half the price.

I took the whole box to customer care and said - maybe if you all stash these somewhere, someone will reorder fresh ones.

They looked at me like I had 3 heads.

they'll have product within the expiration date, but if you use as described, you'll have half the tablets expire by the time the expiration date is reached.

When I find bottles like that, I segregate them and the get the employee responsible for that section and left them know what I did so they can remove them from the shelves.

Especially if the marinade is dark coloured. It's a favoured device for disguising stock that's getting a bit long in the tooth.