AIBU?
AIBU to throw out eggs past their sell-by date?
emess · 05/05/2013 13:20
They were 5-6 weeks past their sell-by date. They belonged to PIL. MIL is unwell and housebound after a fall (and hospital stay) and has no appetite. FIL is doing his best but neither of them have eaten much for weeks. I am cooking for them when I can. We visit multiple times per day plus MIL now has carers coming in night and morning. Their ages are 85 & 89. I said it was for safety but he's annoyed with me for 'wasting' food. I'm normally happy to eat stuff that's past it's date, but eggs? For an elderly couple not in the best of health? I replaced them with fresh ones, by the way, before I threw them out so it's not like I left them with nothing to eat.
emess · 05/05/2013 13:30
Socket - yes, spot on. Cue row between them about whose fault it was they they were that old (MIL unable to get to kitchen for last 6 weeks!). Thank goodness eggs have the date on them nowadays, even if it was almost illegible. Otherwise I would not have been sure myself. They were so old even I didn't want to eat them!
cozietoesie · 05/05/2013 13:33
Older people can sometimes be a bit reluctant to throw food out - thinking that younger people are obsessed with sell by dates and wasting money. In some instances, I think they're probably right (with many cheeses for instance) but those eggs were too old and you were entirely reasonable.
Next time, sneak the discards out without telling them and put them in your own rubbish and not theirs so that they don't notice.
SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 05/05/2013 13:34
My mum would use those eggs by cracking them one at a time into a cup and sniffing them - you can tell very quickly that way if an egg is off.
To be honest, I think we are a bit too hung up on use-by dates, and I will employ the look and sniff test on food before throwing it away - but then I grew up in the days before use-by dates, when that is what you did.
cozietoesie · 05/05/2013 13:47
I think part of the issue is that there's nothing to say (if there's not much cooking being done) that the eggs may not have been there for another five or six weeks. Eggs tend just to sit there and when you're thinking of something easy to slip down an invalid's throat you grab a couple - and they might be very aged indeed by that time.
The OP would probably be advised, as she's going in a lot, to swap eggs regularly and use the discards herself as they were approaching use by. Just to be safe.
hackmum · 05/05/2013 13:53
YANBU - you had their best interests at heart.
Having said that, if eggs are rotten, you can tell when you break them open. (I've never had a rotten egg.) The other risk is salmonella, but a) all hens in the UK are now vaccinated against salmonella and b) salmonella is destroyed by cooking. So I'm not actually sure what the risk of an out-of-date egg is.
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