Best Before

This afternoon the mindreading goblins who decide which ad goes at the top of yer Gmail ceased their Cougar obsession for long enough to point me to a site called “Openanduseb4″. This turned out to be a place which sells pre-printed labels which you can put on things you’ve opened so you don’t forget to use them before they go off. I am of course a great fan of entrepreneurial innovations but it does strike me that in this case the basic idea is really quite replicable to, well, anyone with stickers and a pen.

But really I was just annoyed because of what I hoped the site was: a food science exploration into whether or not a given use-by date actually means it. As I understand use-by dates, they’re enormous bet-hedges: what they mean is “if you eat this before this date it won’t be horrible” not “if you eat this after this date it WILL be horrible” - but the gap between horrible and non-horrible after the date passes varies hugely by foodstuff. I am always deeply wary of post-UBD milk, bread is also a danger zone, but other dairy products (cheese, butter, etc.) are fine for a good while after, and convenience food, weirdly enough, seems very conservative on its use-bys. (This post was prompted by a tub of chilled four cheese pasta sauce, forgotten about until 10 days after use-by and then ate largely to punish myself for buying the wretched thing in the first place - but it was fine! (i.e. tasted as bland as it always would have - the four cheeses are in there to NEGATE one another not enhance!)).

Where the UBDs really go into “help!” territory is meat - there is clearly some wiggle room but how much? Since moving house we’re now within striking distance of a good and trustworthy butcher, so hurrah nom nom tasty meat but also no use by dates. What, oh readers, are your policies on use-by dates?

(I am open to persuasion that UBDs in general are a huge conspiracy by supermarkets to get us to buy more stuff, but of course for the individual punter they’re also a good way to get extra discounts, especially at Waitrose in my experience.)

1. a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on February 10th, 2008

   i: on one hand my sister and i were brought up ounder the threat of the loch maree hotel/picnic BOTULISM EVENT (bad duck pate = 8 dead in 1922)
   ii: on the other hand, the structure of our kitchen cupboards (low-down, shallowly spaced, far to the back) combined with the structure of mum’s stoical must-make-do war-baby mind meant that sell-by was treated with family in-joke hilarity (the best bit of the joke being “oh dad will eat it” bcz he NEARLY ALWAYS DID*) (mum eg argued that furry mould on jam was PROOF that the REST of the jam underneath the mould MUST BE FINE) (or it wd be mouldy too!) (which to be fair is the principle that cheese rind works on)
   iii: as a result i long ago got in to the habit of ALWAYS EATING CHEESE RIND and declaring it the BEST PART (cf oude goude AND babybel plus)
   iv: mum’s mum in the early 90s made up a rhyme to protest her only daughter’s approach to sell-by (i’m sure i’ve published this on the interwebs several time noes)
   if i should die
   think only this of me
   the yoghurt was outdated
   it said 1983

   *one particular holiday in wales in c.2003 we arrived quite late there was no meat in the house — which we rented off relatives — EXCEPT for some corned beef canned at “zimbabwe packing plant no.7″ with a sell-by of 1996 —> dad was very gung-ho for this and only dissuuded (despite full-on reference to the 1922 BOTULISM EVENT) when someone drove off to buy some bacon at a nearby garage, which he likes a lot more than corned beef

2. Kat but logged out innit on February 10th, 2008

   If it had said “rhodesia packing plant no.7″ with a sell-by date of 1996 then it’d probably be good for another 7000 years at least…

3. a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on February 10th, 2008

   i think if it had been found in king tut’s tomb dad would be ok about trying it — he is a war-baby also

   (i didn’t particularly mean to imply that 7-year out-of-date zimbabwean corned beef is actually an obviously risker option than 7-year out-of-date corned beef from anywhere else — though i think we maybe DID make this argument to dad when trying to dissuade him)

   (completely irrationally however i do somehow sort of find i feel that corned beef from “canning plant no.7″is going to be a risker option than say corned beef from “canning plant no.587″, whatever the country of origin… as if no.7, being built earlier, would have less well-appointed machinery, i don’t know)