Expired food

[username79]

My girlfriend and I are doing some traveling. We go to Food Lion (supermarket) tonight as we want some snacks. She buys some Kashi Tasty **************s. She is usually very attentive to expiration dates but we are in a hurry. We get back to the hotel, she eats a bunch of them, decides that they taste funny, checks the date, and it says: DEC2207.

So, I check Kashi's website, yes, that is December 22nd 2007. That makes them very old.

What is the recourse here? Return for a receipt? So far, she is not sick. These are "organic," so they have dairy products in them, unbleached what flour, and various kinds of whole wheat (e.g. with the germ, which goes bad).

I could understand a week old. Probably safe, would return for refund. But nearly seven months old? How unsafe?

 

[rxcats]

Expiration dates on food products, for the most part, are freshness dates. They are arbritrarily asighned by the manufactruing company to rotate stock. There are some exceptions, such as with infant formulas, in which a government agency mandates the expiration dates. Many products, including dairy products like milk, can be used well after their expiraitons dates if they are properly stored. Milk will sour way before that date if not refrigerated, but will last a long time at temperatures close to freezing. The risk of food poisoning is slight. I get calls all the time from frantic parents whose kid's drink milk from a sippie cup that has been under the car seat for months; it is rare that such a child has any effect at all.

 

[acidboy]

You probably won't get sick eating expired dried food like crackers if the packaging is still intact. That being said, I'd probably bring them back to where I bought them.

 

[West24]

cry me a river. wahhhh.

 

[Bird's One View]

All this talk of expired milk reminds me of the jug we found while cleaning the fridge at the end of my sophomore year of college. It was swollen up to twice its normal size. I was holding it, and my housemate and I were marvelling at its ... pendulosity ... when the building pressure (from the contents rising toward room temperature) blew the cap off and sprayed us both with rotten milk.

I wish I could remember what the "sell by" date was, but I'm sure it was several months expired.

 

[Victor123]

I would wait until I felt sick before going to see a doctor but i'm no doctor.

 

[TyCooN]

He hasn't posted again in this thread, so either everything's fine or something bad happened.

 

[GY!BE]

Oh god don't ever go to food lion! I remember when I was young my parents would take me there and it was singlehandedly the shitiest, most disgusting supermarket I have ever been to.

In 1995? they shut down all of the food lions in Texas for that exact problem, they got caught selling expired food, and they also changed the expiration stickers on meat, getting a lot of people sick.

 

[snake]

Funny, just this week on the news a woman bought a package of bacon and served it to her family. Her husband thought it tasted odd and checked out the package. The bacon expired in 2002. It was bought from wally world.

 

[Jumbie]

I've eaten a lot of expired food in my life yet somehow my colon didn't explode. This includes dairy products.

As was said before, it's a "best by" date rather than an "if you eat this after this date you will die" date.

 

[Texasmade]

Originally Posted by GY!BE

Oh god don't ever go to food lion! I remember when I was young my parents would take me there and it was singlehandedly the shitiest, most disgusting supermarket I have ever been to.

In 1995? they shut down all of the food lions in Texas for that exact problem, they got caught selling expired food, and they also changed the expiration stickers on meat, getting a lot of people sick.

I remember a long time ago 20/20 did a special on Food Lion for selling bad food. Food Lion sued 20/20 and won a settlement several years later but by that time, the damage was done and they went under.

 

[overdog]

Earlier this year I ate some peanut butter that expired in 2006 and it tasted great. It was opened, but had been sitting in my fridge all these years. Peanut butter pretty much lasts forever.

I don't like how some people will throw away food just because it's been a certain number of days without checking whether the food might still been good. I was raised not to waste any food. I have friends who will throw away leftovers if they are not eaten the next day. They call it the 1 day rule. Girls in general seem to do this more. Most of my male friends will open up the container, smell it, and then determine whether to eat or not.

 

[RedLantern]

Originally Posted by overdog

Earlier this year I ate some peanut butter that expired in 2006 and it tasted great. It was opened, but had been sitting in my fridge all these years. Peanut butter pretty much lasts forever.

I don't like how some people will throw away food just because it's been a certain number of days without checking whether the food might still been good. I was raised not to waste any food. I have friends who will throw away leftovers if they are not eaten the next day. They call it the 1 day rule. Girls in general seem to do this more. Most of my male friends will open up the container, smell it, and then determine whether to eat or not.


I agree. I use my faith in food companies' desire to avoid litigation to assure myself that recently expired food is fine... I mean it's forseeable that people will eat food that has recently expired, so food companies should set expiration dates to avoid getting sued....right?

My girlfriend is unconvinced...

 

[Margaret]

Call Kashi; they'll probably send you a coupon for a replacement package and/or for some other Kashi products.

 

[sho'nuff]

I know definitely for sure that the frozen burritos at 7Eleven are way expired.

Sometimes I buy one of those Ramona burritos and after heating it up and tasting it, it has a slight sour taste to it.

They definitely must be restickering those burritos.