I'm alive!

I’m alive! The yogurt I ate yesterday that was past its use-by date didn’t kill me! It didn’t even render me poorly or in pain. So from that I think I’m going to deduce that use-by and sell-by dates should be taken with a pinch of salt.

I did I bit of research online and found some quite conflicting opinions on the dates on food packaging. I found one piece by a doctor saying that yogurt can certainly be eaten after it’s passed the use-by date on the packaging, as long as it doesn’t smell sour or look a funny colour.

But I also found a piece on the NHS Choices website warning consumers not to gamble with use-by dates.

The Food Standards Agency ran a campaign last summer as part of its Food Safety Week warning consumers of the risk of food poisoning from using food that is past its use-by date.

But it also said that best-before dates simply indicate the freshness of food.
The problem is that there are several different labels in use - sell-by, use-by and best-before, and they all mean slightly different things.

The FSA said that use-by dates appear on foods that go off quickly and indicate the last date when it is safe to eat the food. So apparently these are the ones that should be taken most seriously. And if you open food on its use-by date it should be eaten or thrown away on that date - rather than saved for the following day. The FSA warned that bugs like E. coli and salmonella don’t cause food to smell off, even when they may have grown to dangerous levels. So food could look and smell fine but still be harmful.

Best-before or sell-by dates appear on food that have a longer shelf life and indicate that the food will be at its freshest until that date, but should probably be okay to eat for two or three days after.

And sell-by or display-until dates are not required by law, and are often just used by stores for stock control purposes.

The FSA also recommends people should store leftovers in the fridge, cool them first as quickly as possible, cover them when they’re in the fridge and eat them within two days. So there goes my colleague’s five-day rule!

This is all very well and good, but personally I still think these dates can be taken with a pinch of salt and common sense. The yogurt I ate yesterday was over its use-by date (or “safe until” date) and I survived.

And as I pointed out yesterday, my grandma is still in robust health at 93, despite gratuitously flaunting all the above rules for decades.