These Foods Are Safe to Eat Well Past Their 'Expiration Dates'

[Michie]

Expiration dates are largely meaningless, actually.

Expiration dates are meaningless, but there is still a feeling of unease that can come with munching down on a snack whose packaging claims it expired weeks or months ago. That’s why it’s helpful to know which foods are especially fine to consume post-expiration date—and which ones you actually should not.

How to determine a food’s freshness

Although expiration dates are largely silly (they’re just general guidelines that aren’t even mandated by the Food and Drug Administration), you may still have concerns. Milk gets sour, cheese gets moldy, meat goes bad—so it’s fair to worry that most, if not all, foods, will eventually turn on you. The FDA does, however, have a FoodKeeper appthat can help you learn more about nearly every kind of food. It’s designed to help “you understand food and beverage stories” and “maximize the freshness and quality of items.” Thus, the FDA says, “you will be able to keep items fresh longer than if they were not stored properly.”

Continued below.
These Foods Are Safe to Eat Well Past Their 'Expiration Dates'

 

[DragonFox91]

Milk seems to get bad really fast. Always have a hard time finding the perfect size to get me. Too small a jug I run out quick. The next size I always have to end up throwing out after about a week.

 

[Moral Orel]

One day, my kid and I both decided to have cereal for dinner in separate rooms. We like to take the box and bowl and spoon and jug of milk with us because one bowl just isn't enough. So he took the partial jug of milk and I took the new one. When he brought his milk back is was mostly gone, so I emptied the last bit of the old milk into the new milk.

Don't do that.

 

[Sophrosyne]

The dates on stuff are not necessarily expiration but many have "best by" dates on them. It is mainly perishables that the dates have the most meaning and those vary by brand and store as I buy bread mostly at one store because at times I don't use it for several weeks and some brands at some stores go bad in less than a month while others are good 2 months later perhaps a little less fresh and soft but you don't have smurf food.
One issue I've been coming across is stuff in plastic containers and wrapping that tastes bad because the plastic leeched into the food. You probably can't buy peanut butter in glass jars and I found a 5 year old jar of it that tasted and smelled like the plastic jar. I used to store Ritz crackers and they could be 3-4 years old and fine but I got a package I forgot about and it was a year past date and also tasted like the plastic sleeve it the crackers were packaged in. They used to use wax paper and that wouldn't deteriorate like plastic especially when you have record hot summers and the AC isn't working well and it gets into the 90s in the kitchen in the daytime. There is not a lot of food that is not packaged in plastic these days so trying to stock up on it for the future is a waste of money as I used to like having a few boxes of cereal or crackers etc they would store 5 years easily...... nope not now.
Pickles and canned good or take crackers out of the plastic and store them in sealed glass jars.