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Family Health: Should We Be Ignoring Expiration Dates?
November 10th, 2011
Photography from iStockphoto.com
I am not, by nature, a fan of the sniff test. I don’t trust my nose to tell me if something is still safe to eat. I follow expiration dates on foods—especially dairy products—religiously. If it says “use by” or “sell by” a certain date, I can assure you that by midnight of that night, the food is automatically rendered useless for me.
Nadia Arumugam would certainly not agree with my methods. In this article from Slate, she argues that we should be ignoring expiration dates altogether. She says that while speaking to University of Minnesota food scientist Ted Labuza, she learned that “expiration dates address quality—optimum freshness—rather than safety and are extremely conservative. To account for all manner of consumer, manufacturers imagine how the laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and handle their food, then test their products based on these criteria.”
She goes on to say that “sell by” dates and “best before” dates simply provide us with a false sense of security when, really, we should be relying on the foods to tell us when they should no longer be eaten. She says that “the onus lies with consumers to judge and maintain the freshness and edibility of their food—by checking for offensive slime, rank smells, and off colors. Perhaps, then, we should do away with dates altogether and have packages equipped with more instructive guidance on properly storing foods, and on detecting spoilage.”
If you are like me and still unsure about trusting your nose and your instincts, you can visit StillTasty.com, a fantastic resource that tells you typically how long things like eggs, milk, fish and meats will last and how to properly store them safely.
Do you pay attention to expiry dates or do you follow your nose?
—Ali, senior associate editor of CF.ca
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