Using out of date food...

[LadyRussell]

Does anyone else do this?

Fresh food and meat I will smell (with the exception of chicken - I don’t mess with that) and judge.

Herbs, uncooked rice and pasta I always used years past the best before date.

I have never poisoned anyone.

I just made some oatmeal cookies with porridge oats that went out of date in Jan 2015 and half of them have already been eaten ... I never tell anyone .. am I going to hell..?

Haha! I do the same. Everyone I have fed is still alive to my knowledge...

Because most people buy their food wrapped in plastic and from a supermarket they are completely removed from what food should actually smell/look /feel like. It's sad.

A "best before" date is just that - best quality will be before the date shown. They're not a health and safety advisory, just a quality one.

Use by dates however are more to be kept an eye on as this will be the date the food will be "spoilt" by - as in gone off due to bacteria etc

:) so no; you'll never harm anyone by serving them something beyond its best before. Especially dried products such as pasta.

I used to run a kitchen

I didn’t serve outbid date food then though.

Hardly ever

I do the same

God, YANBU. I have great faith in my olfactory ability. I use milk 2 weeks past its BB date if it hasn't curdled or gone off. I never get sick.

And the same with anything else.

I even wash my chicken before cooking and have never got sick or got campylobacter. I can hear 99% of MN clutching their pearls now

If it smells ok, there's nothing growing on it then it gets eaten here.

My kids go ballistic so I just serve it - silently.

I have used mince a week past it’s date

How long can ham go over date ? Recently found one of those flat supermarket sealed packs had slipped to back of shelf and 10 days over date. Unopened and still looked fine and pink through the plastic. I binned it (fear and guilt!) but wasn't ham invented as a way of preserving meat? Would it have been ok if I'd opened it and smelt fine??

I will eat everything after a good sniff apart from chicken. BAD experience that I have no wish to repeat. The 12lb weight loss in 5 days was nice though...

Ham lasts for weeks and weeks

Cheese- I am more scared of some mould than others. Would NOT use cream cheese if looked odd (goes pinkish if open too long even if nowhere near use by date). But have cut mould off cheddar and grated the rest for cheese sauce etc many a time. Am I the only one?

Oh no I always cut mould off cheese (but would throw away mouldy cream cheese).

Blue cheese is full of mould

18 month cave aged cheddar will not go off within 10 days of the sell by date

I cut the bad bits out of potatoes too.

I think you know what there are people starving....throwing perfectly good food away seems a bit - wrong.

I do the same, I once had a year our of date yogurt and was fine
Probably should have cleared out the fridge before this point though!

Ooh yes I use out of date yoghurt all the time - months out of date 😂😂

Tins and dried goods (pasta, rice, herbs etc) I'd be happy to use years after the sell by date.

Fruit and veg - go by look, texture and smell.

chocolate - rare for it to make it past a sell by date, but I ignore any "bloom" that has developed. It's just the effect of emulsifiers wearing off and ingredients starting to separate.

Bread - we don't eat much now so it goes straight in the freezer and slices taken out when needed, but when we used to keep bread in the bread bin I've been known to cut out mouldy bits and use the good bits!

Tofu - the one thing that I will never use past the use by date. I did it once (looked and smelled fine and it was only a few days over) and dd and I had horrendous stomach ache. No d and v so I suppose it had started fermenting or something and just gave us severe trapped wind, but it was pretty painful.

This thread has reminded me that I have a camembert in the fridge that's about 2 weeks out of date. It's probably not even ripe yet.

I ate feta 8 months out of date once that I found at the back of the fridge. Looked, smelled and tasted fine.

I would never eat meat out of date. You can't smell everything that could make you seriously unwell.
Best before dates are just a guide though.

I would never eat meat out of date.

What did people do before plastic packing and use by/best before dates?

Genuine question.

Wine .. that never stays long enough to go out of date here 😂😂

notveryadventerousname
You did right. Do not ever eat out of date prepackaged processed ham.
Anything else you can judge by smell and sight. But the processed reformed meat is so rammed full of preservatives etc that it could be full of bacteria but still look and smell fine. It's the only stuff I don't trust. Other than that I use my common sense over dates.

When we cleared my late hoarder-Mum's cupboards some of the tinned and dry goods were more than a decade 'out of date'.

The tinned goods were fine.

The flour less so. I actually made bread with it and its matching dried yeast. Even the gulls wouldn't eat it, so I deem that trial a failure. To be fair it did smell a tad musty even to me and my wife advised against using it.

As my terrier died around the same time as I left home leaving my little sister behind in the 70's, I now rely on my wife to smell and taste test dubious foodstuffs. If she is happy to eat it, I'm happy to join in. She has much more sensitive smell and taste buds than I do.

I am perpetually amused by the Best Before dates on bottled water, bottled beer and tinned goods.

Years ago people would pop to the butchers and buy meat to use that day. They didn't used to buy it a week in advance and hope it would last. Plus meat was often slaughtered and butchered close to home so transit time was reduced.