How past the sell by date would you still eat something?

[PlightOfTheConchords]

So I’m having a bit of a clear out in the garage and I’ve found flour, raisins, sauces, bread sticks, Nutella, peanut butter, chocolate, pasta, rice and a few other miscellaneous items all dated 2019.

Would you eat them all?

What’s the longest you’ve left a sell by date and still eaten it?

I decorationed our cupcakes with 4 year old out of date icing sugar 😁

This is a relief. I’ve just had to throw out the contents of my freezer as it was accidentally left open overnight last week

You couldn't salvage any of it? I presume you're talking about an upright. (Leaving a chest freezer open all night would be a bit difficult.) But all the veg in there would have been usable and meat would have been defrosted and cookable.

Best before dates can pretty much be ignored. Use by/eat by dates I take more notice of but I trust my own judgement.

I once made a cheese sauce with flour that had flour mites. I only noticed them after the sauce was made. I ground in a lot of black pepper to camouflage them. The meal was delicious.

At the start of lockdown my mum gave me some unopened tomato purée with a best before date of 2014. I figured since the tube was sealed and hadn’t swelled or distorted it would be ok to eat. It’s all used up now and no one has suffered any ill effects.

I am relying on my very robust immune system to keep me safe during these difficult times.

Sorry to be hogging the thread but it's just occurred to me that there's one category of food that I don't eat until it has passed its use by date. Most cheese you buy in supermarkets is so under-ripe that you have to leave it mature past its 'dates' to get any kind of joy out of the stuff.

DM gave me a bumper bag of those Magic Stars chocolates for DC which was 3 years out of date as ‘chocolate never goes off’ apparently

Although I’m a bit dubious as last year I found some flour with a BBE date of May 2000 in her house. The bag of flour was a flipping adult!

Literally never eat something past it's use by date. I might not get sick but the worry would totally spoil it for me.
However, I did recently finish a pot of ground cinnamon with a best before of 2009. Dried stuff is pretty safe.

Display until/Sell by - meaningless, shops tend to be phasing this out as it leads to food waste for no reason, it's not aimed at customers anyway.

Best before - it is at its best quality before this date, but after that may degrade somewhat. It's still safe to eat, just might not taste as nice.

Use by - food safety information, should only be on products where it actually matters. Though if you one only eats plant-based food this is rarely an issue, as it's generally obvious when that's bad anyway (unlike invisibly unsafe meat etc).

I'd probably chuck the flour and the butter. Why is it all in the garage rather than the kitchen?