AIBU to wish more people knew the difference between

[SolidSnake]

use by dates and before before dates? My Mum chucks so many items away just because their past their best before date. I keep telling her but she always says "Better be safe than sorry". Makes me sad to see good and edible food being chucked out

YANBU.

YANBU I hate to see usable food thrown out, it is such a crazy waste !

Sorry, holding hand up here, but I am a bit of a chucker awayer! I think its a reaction to finding picallily that was from roughly pre-ww2 in my mum's cupboards when I was younger, not to mention the stuff in the fridge that apparently "lasts for years" (after its been opened).... shudder!

I do, however, try to eat everything before we get to any dates anyway in my defence.

YANBU

I'm a bit of a stickler for dates, because I know if I try to eat it past it's date, I will convince myself it "tastes funny" and chuck it anyway. I am emetophobic and terrified of becoming ill, especially as I am self-employed and really can't take any time off to actually be ill!

My dad is one for not taking any notice of dates, and he made himself horribly ill for 3d with out of date orange juice. Bleurgh.

YANBU.

Although I have the opposite problem with my parents who will quite happily eat food with mould on.

YANBU, I hate people wasting food like that

A girl I once worked with threw away a yoghurt, early one morning, because it had gone out of date the day before, when I pointed out that she'd have happily eaten it at 11.30pm the night before, she realised how ridiculous that was

I go by the 'smells ok, looks ok' version of food control, it's mostly common sense

YANBU - but I am the same as fuzzpig - my parents would never throw any food out, they are incredibly generous ie: think nothing of taking us out for a very expensive restuaurant meal but will serve weeks old crackers with cheese that are horribly soggy . They wouldn't dream of chucking an old bit of bread out, every last crumb has to be eaten.

I am always very mildly irritated by the numerous threads on mumsnet 'should I throw this out, its a day past its sell by date?' What's happened to using your own common sense?

I err towards caution but the commonsense bit of me knows how nonsensical some "use by" dates are. Especially since I remember my childhood when meat that had been roasted on Sunday was then kept in our marbled shelved larder for at least 3 more days. Basically, to test whether food was edible you looked and smelled it. I also think that sell-by/use by dates are ludicrous on vegetables. They are either OK or clearly not.

YANBU to wish people knew the difference between "sell by" and "use by" though. Your parents sound extreme. Although in fairness, I probably know more people who are horrifically cavalier about using food that's clearly long gone past the point of no return. Strangely, they often wonder why they suffer from so many stomach upsets.

I follow Terry Wogans advice and observe the "dead by" date.

Drives me mad!! The others in this house won't eat anything on its used by date or beyond "just in case", the amount of food that goes in the bin is shamful

Me, I take the "if it looks okay and smells okay its probably okay" approach....never been sick so far touch wood.

YANBU. Wasn't there talk about abolishing the 'best before' dates and only having 'use by' dates, or have I dreamt that?

Also at use by dates on things that are actually intended to last more or less forever. Tinned goods. Bottled water. Preserves (the clue is in the name). As long as they are intact I would just use them pretty much ad infinitum.

I once made a withdrawal from a bottle bank.
Went to dump my empties and saw six cases of stubbies that - it turned out - were one month out of date. So Stella it was at my party that weekend.
More fool the person who did not realise that Alcohol does not go off.

YANBU.

I am pretty blase about sell by and use by dates - I go by the old-fashioned method of using my senses to tell if something's gone off. If it looks or smells funny then bin it, regardless of what someone has printed on the packaging. After all some food is inedible prior to any dates!

I ate a yoghurt the other day that 'expired' at the end of December. It smelled just fine and hadn't separated or anything; after all yoghurt is just gone-off milk with lots of sugar in, which acts as a preservative!

TalkinPeace2 I discovered that despite the alcohol content Baileys can go off! (Bleurgh)

And cheap cheddar gets better after a couple of weeks with the wrapper off as it starts to mature.

Also at use by dates on things that are actually intended to last more or less forever. Tinned goods. Bottled water. Preserves

but i bet they have 'best before' dates, not 'use by' dates - i think that's the point OP is making - the diff between the two.

BB just means it will be at it's absolute best before that date. NOT that it will do you any harm after it.

Use by - that means that after that date is might actually do you harm.

Best before = after this date, it may have gone a bit soft if it's supposed to be crispy, or crisp if it's supposed to be soft - if it hasn't, or it has and you don't mind, feel free to eat it, unless there are things growing on it.
Use by = do not eat after this date (in reality, apply sniff test)

One of the advantages of being in primary control of food in a house is ignoring such dates as you see fit. DH, for instance, would probably have chucked out the hoisin sauce I used on Saturday - open, 'use within six weeks of opening', use by date in 2011. It passed the sniff test, it got used.

but when my Mum stirs the green bits into the Philadelphia and serves it, that's a different matter.

I am a bit too obsessive about use by dates (not so bothered by best before) but I know it's because of aforementioned parents - gave me a few issues growing up like that. I won't eat at their house, in fact I barely set foot in the kitchen

I don't take any notice of dates. Eggs pass the float test, fine. Anything else gets eaten if it looks or smells ok. I'm self-employed and haven't had a day off work ill since 2002, and that was for a reaction to prescribed medication.

My neighbours, on the other hand, chuck things on the dot of midnight. They very kindly put their veg peelings in our compost bin - the other day there were some perfectly lovely-looking whole mushrooms in there. I didn't know mushrooms had a date until I saw the neighbour! I'd have had them out if the slugs hadn't got there first. :(

YANBU. I have to hold my hand up and say that mould was found on some items of mine in the fridge where I used to work, so I couldn't really object to them being thrown out.
However I was f*ing livid when I came back on a Tuesday (from having a long weekend) to find food I had bought the previous week had been chucked in the bin. A woman I worked apparently had OCD with best before dates. They were only out of date on Friday. I could have bloody throttled her....

I tend to ignore most BB dates and use the sniff/poke/taste test instead, with two exceptions.

I don't use out of date raising agents (bicard, yeast etc) or flour, basically because I can't tell if they are no good and would risk wasting all my other ingredients.

If a tin has been in my cupboard long enough to expire, I'm not likely to want it in the near future so I may as well chuck it to make room for my latest favourite.

I have a bottle of Cointreau in my drinks cabinet that XH insisted we needed the first Xmas we hosted together, 14 years ago, it has moved house with me 4 times and still has had no more than one measure out of it. I might chuck it out next time I move as I think it's unlikely to 'come in handy'.

I don't even throw away most use by, if it's a small amount of time overdue.

Also, yogurts are already spoilt milk. :o Unless they have mould on, they're fine.

I would happily abolish all dates and get people to use common sense. I am another who has a mum who ignores them (and they didn't exist when I was a child anyway) and I have only had food poisoning once from a hotel!
We eat most food as long as it looks ok except meat where I am a bit more careful but would still eat it a few days later!