Oh, darn, December 4 is today. I was thinking tomorrow.

Totally depends on what it is, if it passes the smell tiny taste test. Dates mean NOTHING one has to 'test' to know if a product is good or bad!! American companies are afraid of litigation so date things so they don't get sued. Americans take these dates as the holy grail and waste waste waste soooo much.

Ok Ded - just don't laugh since you know where I worked. Between all those years as a librarian and my part time job in the supermarket during college my pantry is organized. Before putting cans or jars in the pantry I write the expiration date with a Sharpie in a visible spot and I rotate my stock - the new ones go behind the old ones. My kids tease me when they retrieve something and see the date and want to know what Dewey Decimal I've assigned to the baked beans. DH never looks at dates. I hate to even ask him to pick up a half gallon of milk or loaf of bread because he just grabs the one in front.

But he is handy to have around. He was a chemistry major in college and if I'm in doubt about a expiration date he'll tell me what chemical reaction might or might not occur. He's also good at substituting ingredients. He's perfect for spices - he'll remove the lid, smell the contents and then take a little taste and almost always say there's nothing wrong with it - just use a little more.

I still remember visiting my folks and picking up the ketchup and wondering why it was such a dark red - then I read the label and there was a contest on the back, the entry date was over a year prior.

Then this popped up this morning when I was posting.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/11/expiration-dates-food-waste-safety/672311/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Lars wrote: The less you put through your sewer pipes the better. It will save you on your sewage bill and put less strain on your local water treatment plant.

Amen! That's the sort of basic knowledge of reality that should be taught to every elementary school kid in the land! Infrastructure is not "magic", there are physical consequences to physical actions.

Maire, I was going to ask whether you use the Dewey system or LC numbers. Interesting article. Now I’m more confused than ever and feeling bad about the plum tomatoes I tossed that had an expiration date of 2015. I swear they seemed just fine when I opened them.

Too funny, but I am watching a segment of GMA and some guy is talking about decluttering your pantry and checking expiration dates. Evidently raw honey lasts forever. Lara whatshername refers to her pantry as the place food goes to die, kind of like my freezer.

I agree about food waste. Hopefully this exercise of clearing out old stuff will help me remember what I have.

Local food pantries won’t take expired food. I wish they did. There were some things that were just a little past their date but I knew I would never use.

Now to deal with about seven half used packages of chocolate chips. I say use them. I better bake cookies so they don’t go to waste.

Our food pantries are not allowed to accept expired food either -- that's probably a widespread safety law. But we have a local "buy nothing" and a neighborhood facebook group where people can offer such items for free, full disclosure of dates etc being good manners.

Here's an interesting article on honey: nationalgeographic.org ... 2015-05-honey Especially the paragraph on the mellified men (yikes!)

" Local food pantries won’t take expired food. I wish they did. "

Here many of them do, because they understand that a "best before" date is not an expiration date. It took a while to get them to understand that, though - but now they have guidelines on what a "best before" date is and what it means - and what things and how far they can go beyond it. Many will even take meat passed it's "use by" date because they know it's been frozen since before the "use by" date.

I suspect food redistribution operations don't accept expired food so that the potential plusses and minuses of doing needn't be a daily philosophical conversation and they can be more sure of distributing wholesome and safe food.

On any list of major problems communities and regions need or ought to deal with, I don't think "food waste" is one that has high interest or major potential benefits. To the extent there is food waste, it is what it is. I think there's more bang for the buck working on solutions to reduce why so many people live with food insecurity.

I have one of these in the refridgerator. It doesn’t have a ”best by” date but if it did I’m sure it would have passed years ago.

Ded, forgive this off-topic comment, but putting food down the disposal is what sends nutrients into our rivers, causing alga blooms and loss of oxygen. Better to put into trash, after draining if necessary. We never put anything down ours. Disclaimer: DH and many friends were with the EPA.

When I open a can of tomato paste I immediately spoon the rest of the can into blobs and freeze in a container. Easy to take out 1 tbsp as needed.

It bugs me that our food banks won't take anything remotely expired. Even pasta. It's dried, how much drier can it get?? I have some pasta that's past the date, no biggie to me to eat it.

I recently used some wild rice that I had for a loooong time. It was in an airtight glass jar and was fine.

I was given a number of boxes of different flavoured teas on Freecycle. I looked at the date and they were 5 years past the date. They were basically dust.

As someone who lacks a sense of smell, and basically live alone half of the year, I am dependent on best buy dates. I can't give it a sniff test. So unless everyone has better ideas.... I'm stuck. I'm disinclined to trust reading the ingredients as the true safety marker. Too many times have I bought something that said it was "all natural", only to see that it had some stupid sucralose sort of sweetener in it. I hate that crap. Refined sugar is grown from a cane, I find that to be natural? There is no more truth in labeling anymore.

It makes sense that a food bank isn't going to be able to accept outdated foods, since they're distributing those foods to many and varied people. Laws/regulations generally come about because something bad happened. The potential for harm outweighs any impulse to 'waste not, want not'.

Food waste is a huge economic problem, when you count the cost of all that discarded food. Wouldn't it be great if everyone really 'wasted not' - and not just food?

As @Toronto Veterinarian said our local food bank also distributes food for one year after the best by date. Its a best by date, not gone bad unable to safely be eaten date.

" Food waste is a huge economic problem, when you count the cost of all that discarded food"

Not so fast, I think you may have it backward and it could be the opposite of what you've described.

Let's think about an example where 25% of food that's sold is wasted. Wave a magic wand and all of that waste disappears, all food sold is used. So,

Production of produce and other basic ingredients can be decreased 25%. Many people who have jobs in that segment will become unemployed. Some businesses will go broke.

Food processing volume will be decreased 25%. A good chuck of people with those jobs also become unemployed and some businesses go under.

The transportation needed for food distribution decreases 25%, Some percentage of people working in those jobs, including those working in administration, handling, driving trucks, and running trains, will lose their jobs.

Retail and wholesale sellers and stores will lose sales volume so some percentage of people in those jobs direct and indirect will not be needed and will be dismissed.

With lower volumes, companies along the way will get fewer and lower volume discounts and so food prices will increase.

If anything, I think millions of jobs and a lot of economic activity benefits from food being wasted.

I am in the better safe than sorry camp. I think packaging degrades.

" Let's think about an example where 25% of food that's sold is wasted. Wave a magic wand and all of that waste disappears, all food sold is used. So......Production of produce and other basic ingredients can be decreased 25%. "

No, it doesn't (and probably won't) work that way. Your example presumes that the produce wasted is purchased but unused, so that if everything purchased is used, no more will need to be purchased - but that's not how or why a lot of produce is wasted. A lot of the produce wasted are products that aren't purchased by consumers - it's produce that is produced but never makes it to retail sales, produce that is up for sale at retail locations but unpurchased, or produce that is purchased by facilities (restaurants, commercial production facilities) and goes unused.

Those odd-sized and misshapen pieces of produce won't be bought by consumers (generally speaking) and restaurants and other producers of prepared foods will always over-purchase (at least a little) to ensure they don't run out and disappoint their consumers. The odd size and misshapen pieces of produce are also never going to make the sales stream if they don't fit the equipment used by highly efficient production equipment. Hey, some producers even require chickens to be a particular size to fit into their equipment so that all their "roast chickens" that they sell in their stores and restaurant are within 10% size of one another.

The Cárdenas market that I go to in Cathedral City produces its own tortillas and tortilla chips. When the tortillas are not sold, the store turns them into tortilla chips and sells them that way. When they have ripe avocados that do not sell, they make guacamole and sell them that way.

" No, it doesn't (and probably won't) work that way. "

Indeed it does. Better to stick to subjects you know and understand, this doesn't seem to be one of them.

Do NOT put anything down the garbage disposal...put it in the trash can. ie: My MIL put a bag of cornmeal down the drain, because it had bugs in it. A plumber is expensive! I do not eat expired food. Even spices your supposed to throw out after a year or the flavor degrades.

Years ago.....there was a local store that sold damaged or expired food....and I'd check in there to buy lumpy white sugar for the hummingbirds. He apparently couldn't stay in business.....

" Indeed it does. Better to stick to subjects you know and understand, this doesn't seem to be one of them. "

It is one of them - I've been involved with a food rescue group for over 10 years, helping to redistribute food that would otherwise be wasted. I've gone to the produce depots picking up odd shaped/sized produce that is rejected by stores and restaurants, and to manufacturing sites picking up the food that is too small for their equipment, or that was accidentally mislabeled or made without some seasoning, and so would otherwise be thrown out because it can't be sold.

What is it you do in the food rescue world that makes you an expert on reducing food waste?

Nicole, the guidance I remember hearing is that if you can feed it to a baby, you can put it down the garbage disposal. That includes most cooked fruits and veggies without peels and that aren't stringy or fibrous. It excludes meats and starchy or greasy foods that may pass through the mechanism okay but can build up in the pipes.

I think in old structures, the often found small diameters of drain pipes may make any garbage disposal use a bad idea.

" What is it you do ..."

This is my last response to your desperate attempts to simply be argumentative. I was talking about supply chains, something I had a long and very successful career managing and consulting in. When volumes drop, employment drops. It doesn't matter what outlet products and services exit from, whether retail, wholesale, institutional, or governmental. Stick to what you understand, you're not in that zone with this.

I think that it is a gift to be able to peacefully discuss different points of view. It encourages participation.

I think food safety is vitally important, but I would venture to guess that more people die of starvation every year in the world than drop dead from botulism in canned food. But there are a lot of miles between those two scenarios.

lucille, a saying that is ascribed, wrongly I think, to the Hippocratic Oath, is the concept that when attempting to do good, first be sure to do no harm. Many food banks are staffed by volunteers and others perhaps not knowledgeable or trained in dietary/food safety sciences.

Just as places like Goodwill don't want people to treat them as a proxy for the local dump, so they try not to accept items of no further use or value, I suspect there are people who try to dispose of spoiled food at a Food Bank and fool themselves into thinking they've done some good with what otherwise similarly belongs at the dump. Lowest common denominator as a policy to minimize problems would be to reject offers of obviously spoiled or post-use date food.

I find it confusing that a person would consider a foodstuff unsafe to eat for herself, yet offer it to people in need. Food Banks are not composting operations. I don't know about others, but just because people are in financial distress it does not mean they are less worthy of respect than people who are not.

I agree, one should NEVER donate suspected unsafe food.. But as was discussed earlier in the thread, a 'best by' date is not always an indicator of unsafe food. A store might want to donate cases of food that might be good but which are past the best by date. How should that be handled?

I don't think stores "donate" expired food. For two reasons - the more important, retail stores (not the smaller ones) are in the drivers seat when it comes to their relationships with suppliers. I believe most suppliers will credit its store customers for expired food items. Such items in my experience (decades ago) was disposed of. Not donated for liability reasons, it was an unncessary risk to the store. Stores, after all, are in business to sell products and make money, not to lead humanitarian or charitable efforts other than what's done visibly for PR purposes.

Here is how our best local food bank does it: https://www.philabundance.org/get-involved/donate-food/. For example:

Grocers Against Hunger (GAH) is a program that connects local, regional and national grocery retailers with Philabundance agencies in their area to reduce food waste and get safe, high-quality food to our neighbors in need.

Stringent industry food safety guidelines call for grocery stores to discard items even though they are nutritious and completely safe to eat.

We step in before this happens and redirect surplus product to our agency network.

Elmer....NOTHING should be put down a garbage disposal if the pipes are old....is that better. grin I own 3 houses that have cast iron drain pipes...they have joints in them and "stuff" gets stuck on the joint where the two pipes are joined.

NEVER put something down the drain that you can throw out into a garbage can.

Robb, upthread you mentioned not being able to do "the smell test". I briefly lost my sense of smell this fall, and it was scary. I *always* sniff a package of meat before cooking it. Very rarely do I detect anything bad, but it does happen even when it looks and feels okay. Yikes.

Welp, this has turned into a rollicking ( and occasionally rude) thread. My pipes are not old, all replaced when the kitchen was remodeled and the main drain from the house is new as well.

I usually limit the stuff I put down the disposal , in fact I may never use it again after this thread. I will also keep all canned goods until they explode.

Bookwoman, Philabundance is a great organizatiom. Thanks for mentioning them. I sometimes take non- expired items to Eldernet.

" NEVER put something down the drain that you can throw out into a garbage can. "

A new state law effective the beginning of this year and being phased in prohibits putting food waste into "garbage cans" destined for a landfill without further processing. In some areas, collection of what they call "mixed" refuse is permitted and the food contents is removed in processing done after collection. Friends of ours who live over in Santa Cruz said they were notified there is no separation done of what's put into the regular trash bins and so their food waste now has to be put in with garden clippings in the recycling bin. It's a mess to handle and collect.

The concept of composting is fine and dandy but for many, the lack of space or the lack of interest to do so makes what should be easy, difficult.

I suspect such laws may spread to other states. Without serious enforcement, the rules won't be followed. In other cases, inexperienced and inattentive folks who make half-hearted efforts to try to compost will be putting out food for unwanted pests and the population of such animals in inhabited areas may grow.

^^^^You don't have a green bin system?? Many cities and municipalities utilize it.

Our food wastes; cooked, raw, bones etc go into green containers with a lid that locks. It gets picked up weekly along with the recycling. Actual garbage.....things that aren't recyclable and non-organic matter get picked up bi-weekly.

The green bin waste gets composted at the city waste site and the compost is offered free of charge to residents. People pick it up by the truckload, take garbage cans to fill etc.

Jasdip, my words and descriptions were sloppy, sorry. What's common in my area (though there are many different and adjacent municipalities, and not all have the same practices) is a three can pick up system - 1) general refuse destined for a landfill, 2) recycling, that includes paper, cardboard, glass and cans and 3) yard clippings, to include grass, small branches, leaves, etc. It's this last category, the yard waste that's "recycled" (the term I use) into compost and is the one where apparently now food waste is supposed to be put. In areas where the first category (general refuse) isn't "processed" to remove food items.

Our friends said that they weren't complying with the new rule, finding it too inconvenient.

I worked on a commercial promoting the idea that milk is good for 7 days past the date. Yeah, I'll say it. But I won't drink it.

I live by the maxim, "When in doubt, throw it out."

After my mom died, my brother and I cleaned out my mom's pantry. We threw out canned foods that were rusted on the outside. I don't remember what the expiration dates were on some of those things but vaguely remember decades old.

I googled a month or so ago, how long red wine could be kept after opening. I had a bottle, used for making sauce, and it was like 2 or 3 days. I was shocked. I don't make sauce that often so I've been recorking it and the next month or two use it again.

How times change -- 50 years ago, my grandparents had a compost pile. Grandpa would use it in his vegetable garden. Grandma would toss vegetable food scraps onto the pile, but never bones or fat. They had to stop because someone (the city? a neighbor? who knows?) said it would attract vermin. Their pile attracted plenty of worms we dug for fishing, but we never saw rats, mice, or other critters.

Yes, there will always be a few people who don't know what to do. But there are more people who do understand and practice a good way of composting and that benefits us all. Why not teach the ones who are trying to do good?

Most vermin are nocturnal and are good at avoiding detection where concealment and hiding areas are available. That none were sighted isn't surprising if the results of their activity could be seen.

Just one sloppy, half-hearted compost novice in a neighborhood could cause a population explosion of rodents and other unwanted living things. At least in my area, the number of folks who are active, hands-on garden hobbyists is limited (even though so much can be grown year-round). I think removing food waste from what has long been an effective and sanitary disposal stream is dumb, dumb, dumb.

As someone who lives in a town with curbside composting buckets, ewwww. There has been an explosion of all manner of nasty creatures since we began this kind of recycling. I doubt there is much benefit when weighed against whatever vector control people have to do to keep the univited guests out of our homes and gardens.

And if the "results of their activity" were NOT seen, wouldn't that indicate there was not a problem? LOL.

Hmmm, if people are going crazy trying to control pests that weren't there before, that could well be a problem. Sounds like a good issue for your town's public works department to look into.

" wouldn't that indicate there was not a problem? "

Not necessarily.

Do you think it's relevant that areas now inhabited were once animal habitat before humans arrived? I don't, especially insofar as pests, vermin and other animals dangerous to people are concerned.

Did you see the video a few days ago where a coyote tried to drag away a toddler, in what appeared to be a regular neighborhood in Woodland Hills (part of Los Angeles but adjacent to undeveloped hills)? Had that been your child or grandchild, would you want a search to be conducted to trap and relocate the coyote away from inhabited areas or would your attitude be "live and let live"?

Here's a link to the video

Weren't we talking compost? Or are we still (the other kind of compost Grandpa used!) .... lol.

" I don't think stores "donate" expired food. "

But they do donate food that has past its "best before" date. They are not the same thing, in spite of people using the terms interchangeably all over this thread. Second Harvest picks up thousands of pounds of it a day., and US food rescue organizations do the same.

Interestingly, which grocery stores (including WalMart and Costco) provide most is decided more by the manager than anyone else, even though all managers are given the go-ahead by corporate -- if they are willing to donate the dock time and staff loading of skids, then they do it. Some see the value in it (including the value of having less to throw out, because they pay for garbage by volume- less garbage means more savings).

Both the US and Canada have laws protecting donors of food from liability, if donated in good faith.

Stick to what you have some knowledge of, clearly not this topic.

Says who?

There is a difference between "Best by" and "expire" or "sell by" dates.

I work in a store: I can speak....

We CANNOT donate expired food. Nope. Nada! We recently were just allowed (in the past 2 or 3 months) to donate food CLOSE to expiry date. BUT: we mark that down waaaaaaaayyyyy below cost and sell it before it expires. We do miss some expiries because let's face it: we sell a lot of different food and we are human and miss some dates. Those items that expired are damaged out (literally, we open boxes and crush the food, or pour out liquids down the drain) then throw out the packaging. And yes: we CAN get sued if we throw something in our garbage bin and someone takes it out, eats it and gets sick. Which is why we try to destroy it as much as we can. Quite often, we don't throw out canned food (we don't open canned soups or veggies) until we hear the garbage truck roll up. that way it goes straight to the dump.

I shop in stores and know the rules, so I can also speak. There are no Laws limiting the sale or donation of food product based on the "best by date" or "freeze by date", only POLICY of the Manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer in possession of the old food. POLICY of the organization willing to accept as a donation, or buy for a fee the old food also comes to play but nothing to do with any laws.

With exception to infant formula the federal government doesn't have any laws or regulations about the expiration dating of food products.

" We CANNOT donate expired food. Nope. Nada! "

There's no such thing as "expired" food -- it's food past it's "best buy" or "use by" date. And that's your store policy, not the law.

" And yes: we CAN get sued if we throw something in our garbage bin and someone takes it out, eats it and gets sick. "

Nobody claimed otherwise -- the liability discussion was about food donations, not trash.