I’m no expert, but I did watch a minidocumentary that explained that these best by dates are mostly arbitrary aside from perishable foods.
For some products they’ll have taste testers rate the same product packaged at different times from 1-10 with 10 being factory fresh, and when it drops below an average of 7, that’s the date they put on the packaging
Yeah. I feel like they probably just pick some random bullshit, and if people get botulism they look at reducing it, and if they throw away a quarter-million dollars worth of product that expired they look at increasing it, and if neither of those happens then they don’t worry about it. I have no knowledge of it but even hearing that they do taste tests is a little surprising to me. But I am cynical.
I did know some people who were once “employed” on a sort of temp job that was excising already-passed expiration dates from a massive number of cans of fish, and then stamping new later dates on them.
Yeah a lot of the dates are just guesses that they know for a fact it will last longer. They are required to put a date but not required to actually test how long an item lasts. A lot of items last much longer than their expiration date. Salt should be good indefinitely.
I think the law is to enforce “open dating” instead of having some secret coding that hides info from the consumer. What date they put on there is totally up to the manufacturer, so unless you can match dates and experience with the optimal time to eat something, it’s only useful to make sure you got the latest product compared to the rest on the shelf at that time.
Climate Town had an excellent video on the subject. (since they’re always excellent)
I’m no expert, but I did watch a minidocumentary that explained that these best by dates are mostly arbitrary aside from perishable foods.
For some products they’ll have taste testers rate the same product packaged at different times from 1-10 with 10 being factory fresh, and when it drops below an average of 7, that’s the date they put on the packaging
Yeah but this kind of salt they only taste test every half million years or so, so the expiration dates cant be trusted to be that precise.
Yeah. I feel like they probably just pick some random bullshit, and if people get botulism they look at reducing it, and if they throw away a quarter-million dollars worth of product that expired they look at increasing it, and if neither of those happens then they don’t worry about it. I have no knowledge of it but even hearing that they do taste tests is a little surprising to me. But I am cynical.
I did know some people who were once “employed” on a sort of temp job that was excising already-passed expiration dates from a massive number of cans of fish, and then stamping new later dates on them.
☹️
Changes in texture are used for the best by dates too.
Yeah a lot of the dates are just guesses that they know for a fact it will last longer. They are required to put a date but not required to actually test how long an item lasts. A lot of items last much longer than their expiration date. Salt should be good indefinitely.
I think the law is to enforce “open dating” instead of having some secret coding that hides info from the consumer. What date they put on there is totally up to the manufacturer, so unless you can match dates and experience with the optimal time to eat something, it’s only useful to make sure you got the latest product compared to the rest on the shelf at that time.
Climate Town had an excellent video on the subject. (since they’re always excellent)