Eating Expired Food Products

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TallPaul

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Cleaned out the pantry and found a load of expired fruit leather packets. Some '08, many '07, and one 26 Apr 06. I ate the 26 Apr 06 yesterday with no ill effects, well I am a bit loose today, but that is not totally unusual. It had a slightly off taste but all in all was not bad. I'll keep eating these starting with the oldest dates. I did throw out a couple that had liquidy residue in the packet and one where the packet seemed to be slightly inflated. Yum!
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Expired is different from best by dates.

Food Storage rules are first in = first out. If the expired date is passed, sadly throw it away and go to the next. Best by depending how it is stored you can go quite a bit longer before its not good to go.

I've been at work and seen yogurt with expired dates 6 months ago... Opened one up and WOW!

I'm sure I violated some EPA rule by throwing it in the normal trash....
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Bill
 
Most perishables (e.g. milk, yogurt, some juices) have expiry dating that assumes a specific storage condition (e.g. refrigeration) and a stability timeframe. Milk just cannot make it past that point, because it starts out with a small amount of bioburden or microbes. They grow to a meaningful amount at or near the expiry date. By meaningful, I mean that the amounts exceed what the FDA uses as criteria for food products, with respect to the four critical pathogens:

e. coli
salmonella
pseudomonas
staph. aureus

For nonperishables, you are basically dealing with things that have preservatives added that not only inhibit bacteria and yeast/molds, but also keep thing fresh.

BHA and BHT are antioxidants
The paraben family are preservatives, as are potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, etc.

For non-perishables, the basic danger is that the food will not taste as good past its use by date. The other basic criteria that ANYONE can use is how much water something contains will likely mean how much bacteria and/or yeast &molds it can support. things with a low percentage of water, or more importantly, a low water activity DO NOT support microbial growth. Peanut butter, for example, will not spontaneously develop bacterial growth, bec. it has a low water activity. That does not mean that it could not have been adulterated during processing or manufacture. Bacteriostatic and Bacteriocidal are different. The recent peanut butter scare deals with completely unsanitary processing conditions. The peanut butter itself is not capable of 'killing' the salmonella, but salmonella growth would really not be supported on it.
 
Unless something is obviously bad, you can't really know. I look at being past the expiration date as needing to check more closely. I have a pretty stout immune system, so I take the view that what doesn't kill me will make me stronger.

Others may not have the same immunity, so they are advised to not even LOOK upon expired food as merely seeing it may make them ill.

I suspect the dates are set for most things to keep the majority safe.

But even the current system is not fool proof, as the things we hear about making folks sick are likely well within their "use by" date.
 
Most issues with foods making folks sick are the result of DIRECT ADULTERATION during processing or manufacture, or blatantly ignoring an expiry of a perishable like milk. That one's a no brainer. That said, I ate one of those [censored] PowerBars the other day that was over two years old. They taste like [censored] the day they are made and five years after they are made. They have perservatives out the wazoo. Will not harm you at all, but you may gag on the taste.
 
We found fruit cake from last winters ice fishing adventures in a backpack on a shelf this fall. We made it ourselves, no mold on it, and I think it tastes even better this year, and we will finish it off this season. It had lots of rum soaked into it and probably a fairly low moisture content although rum is 60% water... Lots of sugar helps too in preserving.
Fruit leathers should last a very long time but if it doesn't look/smell right then I would toss it too.
 
Good science there!! You just hit nail on the head. It is not water content, but water activity that is important. Something could have a lot of water, but if its activity is held in check by something like high percentage of a sugar or other humectant, that is fine.

As for the rum/alcohol thing, yes, alcohol is a preservative, although if the fruit cake was not covered, much of the alcohol has long since evaporated.

Case in point are the Neoral cylcosporin capsules. They are made with about 10-15% ethanol in the liquid inside the capsule, THEY MUST be stored in a foil/foil blister to prevent evaporation of the alcohol and destabilization of the microemulsion formulation.
 
Originally Posted By: Pablo
Expired and contaminated food. The new roughage.


Also the new diet food (i.e., you'll lose 5 pounds from the colonoscopy prep type action it will give you). I think I've already lost a couple pounds this morning.
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If I don't post later today, you'll know it got a lot worse.
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I like to keep a pantry (and freezer!) and actually get a bunch of my food at walmart. I figure by rotating my personal stock so I'm always eating something a few weeks old, if there's something widespread like bad hamburger or the peanut scare, someone else will get sick before I get to eating it. Also walmart's lot sizes are so big and they're so negatively portrayed in the media it helps my odds of knowing about and avoiding problems.

It's the same way with me & cars, I buy well used ones so the statistical duds get picked out by someone else.
 
Well I am feeling a lot better this afternoon, so tomorrow I'll eat an April 07 dated fruit leather. I shouldn't have said expired, though it adds drama, as they really say "best by."
 
For me it depends on the type of food which is beyond the expiry date, and it's still on a case-by-case basis. If it looks good and smells reasonably OK, then I'd probably eat it, assuming the date wasn't ridiculous like April 1960.
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again - don't knock the potted meat. It tastes good, but as Carl in 'Slingblade' said about it, "It smells kinda loud, don't it.... MMMMMMmmmmHHHHHmmmmm."

However, I've never eaten it beyond the expiration date. That's just beyond the pale.
 
Just add some chili pepper sauce and it will kill off any bacteria good or bad. Unless it is dairy product then you probably should not eat anything near the expiration date.
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Just add some chili pepper sauce and it will kill off any bacteria good or bad.


You CAN take it with you when you go.

(Please interpret this at least three ways)
 
Originally Posted By: Camu Mahubah
What is this "fruit leather"?

Its this stuff. Basically concentrated fruit packed in a flat sheet like a piece of leather. Keeps a long time. There are many brands out there.
 
my mum made some worchestershire sauce

i used the last bottle in late 2000

the bottles were dated 1974

just got better with age

still here typing ...
 
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