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What do you think the percentage is of Americans who throws out good food (even junk food) based on the expiration date? I mean - they do so not because the food might be stale but because they believe it suddenly became possibly toxic to eat.
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What's the percentage for non-food stuff like soap? The other day I noticed my liquid hand soap has an expiration date for whatever reason. I better hurry up - I only have two years left of it being safe.
I started thinking about it after I read this...
"Good thing I read the labels and dates before I opened or ate anything. I avoided potential food poisoning and/or a trip to urgent care by paying attention."
It's from an Amazon review. After they checked the label - they learned the package was delivered with an expiration date two weeks past. They are talking about a Ruffles potato chip variety pack.
It's usually vibes based, had bagged spinach in the fridge that was like a week out of date that was still usable if you just picked some bad leaves out and washed the rest, but then there's the bag I found a few months ago that was in there for weeks after the expiration date and was just basically sludge. I used to be a lot more of a stickler about expiration dates, especially since my first job was stocking produce shelves and they hammered it into us that anything out of date was to be immediately trashed. The soy milk cartons usually say to use within a week, but they're fine and if I'm not sure I'll do a sniff test and a tiny taste test to make sure. Then there are times where you'd expect something to last basically forever like rice stored in a sealed container or sesame seeds in a sealed metal canister, but oh boy several years out finding them deep in the pantry they had a strong chemical taste and were 100% inedible, even if they were safe, they tasted disgusting. But chips a couple weeks out, whatever, sometimes places will sell this stuff slightly out of date for a discounted price on stuff that's pretty clear to be safe.
Will say that the food waste from grocers and stores will outpace the home to an ungodly degree.