I refuse to eat, drink, or otherwise consume any product once it has passed the date stamped on the package (that would make Budweiser’s “Born On Dating” a big problem for me, if I drank beer).

My wife hopped online and searched for “sell by dates” and found this post. Thanks for being the voice of reason! My wife thinks I’m a nut when it comes to Expiration/Sell-by Dates. To me they both mean the same thing: throw it away.

She also found a page at About.com that says milk should be good for “at least a week” after the sell-by date if kept properly refrigerated. Again, too vague for me. I think I’ll continue to think of it for what it was when I was a child: an Expiration (Do Not Drink After) date.

Joe

After that date you would be taking your nose into your own hands.

And he chided me about my blogging yesterday. Piffle.

Mike: I got busy! Sue me. I’ll try to even it out, schedule things better. But you know how it goes.

Mal (again): good point! Mike is consistent — one post every 3 months! That’s not a blog, that’s a ghost town

The idea of a “sell by” baffles me. I mean…doesn’t an expiration date tell the seller enough? Doesn’t it, then, do what it needs to do for both the consumer and the salespeople? Because if there is an expiration date, doesn’t that mean that the people in our neighborhood Kroger, Tom Thumb, or wherever can throw out a carton of milk (or ten) just the same way that the rest of us with our little refrigerators full of going-bad food can?

What possible purpose could a sell-by date serve? If the sell-by isn’t the same as the expiration, then it’s unnecessary. Concrete example, wherein the sell-by date is, as you stated, three days before the expiration: a jug of milk has a sell-by date of August 15 and an expiration date (printed or otherwise) of August 18. WHY, if the milk won’t go bad until August 18, does it matter if the seller foists the milk off on a consumer on August 16 or 17? Why does the seller have to get rid of a jug of milk three days before it will expire, if we are all to understand that the 18th is the expiration date, anyway? Why can’t the seller have another couple of days to hawk his product–and maybe someone who has to bake a bunch of cakes from scratch or eat three packs of Oreos or WHATEVER will come in, see a jug of milk that expires in a day, and say, “Hell, I don’t need twenty-four hours to finish this milk! I can take care of it in less than five!” And then no milk is wasted, the seller still makes money, and the consumer still gets his/her milk.

It makes no sense, I tell you. An expiration date does all the work.