But why no go the whole hog, and use actual Julian dates? Or I suppose we could get away with reduced Julian dates and use only 5 digits, which would keep the people insisting on short codes happy, too.
That way, even if the year rolls over between you buying something and its expiration date, it's still just a matter of simple subtraction. If today is 54886, and a product has an expiry date of 54952, we know there's a good couple of months before it goes off, right? How could anyone object to this cunning plan?
]]>Another option is wikipedia.org
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish an he'll eat for a lifetime.
]]>Various import brands have various ways of doing things as well. Corona Reads as mm-dd-yy, and Heineken is read as the first three numbers in the code being the day of the year (1-365) with the following number being the year.
So alcohol can be pretty obscure, but expired liquor will rarely make you sick.
]]>No confusion possible with a format like that.
]]>Many foods can, yes. Most of them aren't packaged to last forever. The only reason you don't see many stories about illness is because it is typically minor (a tummyache and throwing up isn't newsworthy), and there are signs that food has gone bad (smell, taste, large green masses).
That said, a food past the expiration date isn't necessarily going to do anything to you. My stepfather once accidentally ate some months-expired mayo on a sandwich, and aside from a comment about it tasting a little funny (which led to the expiration date check), no harm was done.
The rule of thumb is "when in doubt, throw it out." In these tough economic times, however, you can safely (for SOME products, I highly recommend against eating, say, expired meat) amend that to "when in doubt, taste a very small amount and wait several hours to see if there are any ill effects." I'd probably throw out most anything refrigerated after a week-past.
Four month old mayo might not hurt you once, but we didn't exactly make another sandwich with it.
]]>It looks like the trends in date labeling can also be applied to alcohol and tobacco products, as well. Can someone confirm/correct me?
Off the top of my head, I know that Copenhagen has a "made on" date, Skoal has a "fresh until" date and Grizzly has some incomprehensible code. I haven't paid attention to the dates on cigarettes, but I haven't seen any that aren't coded in some way that makes it hard for humans to understand.
]]>@RvLeshrac: only a guess, but they might want "made on" dates in case of recalls, they could narrow down the lots or batches whatever...just a guess, don't know this for sure
]]>I *think* most bread makers have switched to expiration dates... but if not, does anyone have a current list of "twist-tie dating" codes?
For those who don't know: 'twist-tie' dating was/is how many sandwich breads are/were dated - different colors for different days of the week. That's why you'd see red twist-ties one day, and blue/white/yellow/black/orange/tan/etc the next. It made things easy on the bread delivery guy, since instead of having to pick up every loaf of bread on the shelf, he could simply look at the tie. If the tie was the same color as the ties on the new delivery, the ones already on the shelf would get thrown out (last week's bread).
]]>@coren:
You will expire several hundred, if not thousands, of years before a *properly* canned/bottled food product. Now, they won't taste particularly good by that point, but if you can get them down, they'll keep you nourished. (Imagine eating completely tasteless, likely formless, mass. Think 'mashed tofu.')
Any canned foods with "Expiration" dates aren't really "canned," they're just "packaged in a can." Lots of vegetables suffer from this malady - ostensibly, that particular packing method is used to keep them from losing more nutrients. "Best By" dates are more common on canned goods, given the eventual loss of flavor and texture.
From [www.hormelfoods.com] :
"What is the shelf life of a Hormel Foods product in an unopened can?
The processing techniques utilized by Hormel Foods makes the canned product safe for use indefinitely if the product seal remains intact, unbroken and securely attached to a can that has been well maintained. It is suggested that all canned products be stored in a cool and dry environment to keep the flavor adequately preserved. For maximum flavor it is recommended that the product be used within three years of the manufacturing date. After that period of time, the product is still safe to use however, the flavor gradually declines."
This is why, when you make an emergency shelter or prep an emergency kit, you stock cans of SPAM, pickles, etc.
]]>Since we're talking expiration dates, if you find a product that has an expiry date of pre-current-year, you bin it.
]]>As I posted earlier, I swear the calendar said "2008" and not "1408."
We have computers to handle this. They'll tell you everything up to and including from where, exactly, a pallet should be pulled in order to remove the oldest product.
And why are manufacturers printing "made on" dates instead of "expires on" dates? You don't need to do any math whatsoever when one product expires "2009-07-06" and another expires "2013-03-18." You start from the left, and whichever one has a lower number first wins.
]]>So you're suggesting that we milk our own cows, producing our own cheeses and other dairy products, slaughter our own meat, etc?
I looked at the calendar today, and I could swear it said "December 31, 2008," not "December 31, 1461."
*All* food is "processed," not all food is processed in the same way. Your apple, for instance, was likely coated with a thin layer of wax to ensure a longer shelf life.
]]>It looks like the trends in date labeling can also be applied to alcohol and tobacco products, as well. Can someone confirm/correct me?
]]>@coren: Or YYMM - I seriously doubt we've got food to last 100 years.
As I said the first time but you didn't pick up on, four characters could cause ambiguity in the current two decades. Does 0809 mean September 2008 or August 2009? Six characters would avoid that in the years 2000-2016, the rough shelf life of canned or dried goods.
]]>Still, you wouldn't know how the produce looked on the inside until you bought it, took it home, and cut it open. My grandma always has problems with avocados. Half the time, she cuts them open and they're nasty inside.
Also, you can't - or you're not supposed to - open a box of cookies or crackers, or any other product, and check out how they look.
]]>Usually it's not too difficult to read the labels, but lately I have spent a lot of time turning products every which way to see what combo of numbers is the expiration date...It would also help if they PRINTED the date instead of embossing it (or whatever that's called) on the white part of a cardboard package so you have to find the right angle in order to read it...
]]>@ChristopherDavis: This is true, but there's an ISO standard format for dates for a reason. (YYYY-MM-DD, which has advantages including being able to be sorted lexically as well as being unambiguous.) Unfortunately, 10 characters is a lot of space to take up on a food label just for a date.
So what's wrong with printing six characters (YYYYMM)? Four characters might cause ambiguity for the current two decades we're in, but aside from that, four characters is within 30 days of accuracy, good enough for most packaged foods.
]]>@snowburnt: don't they do DD/MM/YYYY in Europe? Makes a lot more sense than doing MM/DD/YYYY...
Going YY/DD/MM or MM/DD/YY makes as much sense as a watch that lists time by hours/seconds/minutes.
]]>@JohnDeere: they would lose sales. if you cant read it you dont know its went bad and you buy it anyway.
Bingo. How many people are going to make the effort to take a spoilt $2 product back to the store the next time they shop? And how many of them are going to do it within the usual refund period, within 14 days of purchase? They're betting on people just throwing it out.
"You bought this three weeks ago! You should have brought it sooner, now we can't refund the money. It doesn't matter that you don't shop here that often." I've heard that load of crap once or twice, even on products that weren't past their due date but were "off" (e.g. eggs).
]]>- It makes the math easier for humans, when they're trying to figure out how old something is. Just find today's Julian date and subtract. None of this "thirty days hath September" stuff.
- It's easier for equipment to generate. Just increment once per day until you hit 365 or 366. Not such a big deal now, but once upon a time these date stamps were generated by mechanical counters, and adding logic to handle months of varying lengths would have greatly complicated things.
- It takes up less space on the label.
]]>Those amongst you that have never been in a food warehoure or shipping depot ask why dates are not standardized. I would assume that many of you have some form of college education. That is NOT the case for the workers in the warehouses (for the most part). A Julian date makes the math simpler - and STILL mistakes happen. The dates on the cans, boxes, and crates are not PRIMARILY for the consumers, but for the sorting and picking in the warehouses and depots. The guys in there try to ship out the LEAST fresh off the manufacturing lines to get it out of their inventories and into the warehouses of the stores, and then their warehouse workers try to get it onto the trucks to the stores before the expirations run out as well.
]]>@CityGuySailing:
Not only that, but you can write "Jun 27 2008" in a variety of different orders and it will always mean the exact same thing.
That and it's only one letter larger than all-numerics.
]]>12252008 and 25122008 I can understand (Dec 25th), but a Julian date? WHY?
]]>Somebody give the man a star!
]]>Egg Beaters, a staple of my breakfast, switched over to the "Use By" date. Why everyone else hasn't, beats me.
]]>Stop buying processed food.
See this apple? It's red, crisp, firm. Still edible. Soft, brown, stinky? Expired.
]]>@CityGuySailing: Different countries have different labeling requirements for food. They can get THAT right because it's mandated by law: why is it all of a sudden so hard to localize a date to an area based on this data?
]]>About dates: My point being, that even across countries, date formats vary. Corporations can hardly be faulted for having a code of their own that THEY understand (and train their personnel up to) across international boundaries. Disclaimer: I worked for a mega-large food company in the 80's.
]]>What is a Julian Date:
[aa.usno.navy.mil]
[en.wikipedia.org]
Enjoy
True, but it's still easier to tell retailers that the code is in mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy format. That way you won't need a decoder ring to figure out if your Ovaltine is expired or not.
]]>@socialSTD: they would lose sales. if you cant read it you dont know its went bad and you buy it anyway.
]]>@socialSTD: That would make too much sense/be too simple. I suppose those at the top have to justify working in an extension of the "food service" industry by making things more complex.
This just makes me wonder how much food is wasted because of these complex systems of timekeeping. It would make more sense to put the date in hexidecimal or binary than to use yet another system (that's not taught in school).
This just chaps my ass! The more I learn, the more I understand that primary and high schools don't teach but a small fraction of the shit you actually need to know when you get out in the working world! They don't even give you a good foundation (even less now than when I went to school). /rant
]]>@socialSTD: Internationally, date formats are not consistant.
]]>@OmniZero: Actually, today is 365. Thou hast forgotten about the Leap Year.
]]>Anybody know what a Julian date is though?
]]>