"I Ate Expired Food For A Week And Didn't Die" Topic

"I'm wasn't sure about the peach. Purplish, squishy and days past its prime, the peach, I have to say, did not taste good.But it also didn't make me sick. Nor did anything else I ate during my weeklong attempt to consume only foods that had "expired" or were destined for the trash ¯ not the past-date chicken, not the wilted collard greens, not the aging bacon.Most of what I ate that week was not terrible, with the exception of the peach, but the bulk of it was old or had passed the "sell by," "use by" or "best before" date on the label. Sure, I tasted some unpleasant tastes once or twice and possibly lost some friends who were grossed out by the whole thing, but some of that food was downright delicious…."
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Amicalement
Armand

The "sell by" and "best before" dates are based on freshness, not food safety. If the author didn't know that, he was willfully ignorant.

You could eat two Twinkies five times a day for a week and not die. If you were fairly healthy and didn't have a specific allergy, you probably wouldn't get ill, either (diarrhea probably being the biggest risk for someone not used to eating that volume of that type of "food").

It speaks volumes for the editorial quality of media that would put an article without a hypothesis or any objective measurement in their "Science" section.

The "sell by" and "best before" dates are based on freshness

I once read they were based on marketing not even food quality.

I recently had a can of beans two years past its date: no smell, no foam or fuzz…good to go!

Freshness drives marketing. Producers don't want stale bread or slightly flat milk to be your image of their brand. I doubt most people in the First World know what unpasteurized, non-refrigerated milk tastes like.

"I doubt most people in the First World know what unpasteurized, non-refrigerated milk tastes like". Those that do have lower life expectancy. There is a reason milk is pasteurised and refrigerated!

'Sell by' and 'best by' are basically guidlines, 'use by' is usually considered to be important safety wise. But really, some things like cheese are often better when they've expired, otherwise you can generally tell when an egg or piece of fruit is no longer edible…

My brother used to drive for ARC Thrift stores. They get a fair bit of canned goods and other food donated. THey discard anything past the date stamp on the can or packages.

My brother accumulates some of the and while working on the house and wanting to lessen the clutter I started using its. My recollection wat that canned goods wad a three year shelf life past the date stamp.. When I told my sister-in-law about it she did a websearch – its 7 years these days.

And amazingly last last year those Canadian and Danish canned hams from 2010 were just fine. I did heat up a can of pears from 2012 this spring and they turned gray and had a metallic taste – those went bye bye – tin form the can lining.

Glass is better – just finished a jar of peaches last Thursday my mother canned in 1979.

The flavor was definitely not what it would have been twenty years ago and they were a bit brownish but no digestive tract problems and I've eaten worse from cans (and not 7 ear old cans).

As to the OP, smell and appearance are the guidelines on whether non-canned goods are still edible. Flavor and texture may have deteriorated, but the food can still be edible.

Heaven help the general public if there is an EMP attack or something of a similar nature occurs they won't have the experience to actually know what is edible or not.

P.S. When my niece was 5 or 6 she would hide food items she didn't wish to finish in some out of sight place. Cleaning up I once found a half eaten chicken drumstick under the buffet. Had been there long enough to mummify – air was dry enough that there was no mold or decay (of course mold isn't a particular health threat – blue cheese). I ate it without any ill effects – chicken jerky.

As long as a food item dries out quickly enough you don't get rot – takes moisture to enable decay. Some can even be re-hydrated if desired.

P.P.S. Only time I ever got food poisoning was from a seafood dish at a restaurant…

Only time I ever got food poisoning

Gave myself bacterialogic dysentery once by working outside after dealing with the composter.

Now its a hospital style scrub with antibacterial soap immediately after the job is done.

Smell and appearance are not guidelines as to whether food is edible:

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As to mold not being a health threat:

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