From the Stupid File - Man-Who-Eats-Expired-Food-For-A-Year Becomes Poster Child for the Eating Foods Past Code Date

An article in the Washington Post discusses shelf-life stating with the example of a guy who ate expired food for a year.  We hear this all the time -  foods beyond a Best-By Dates are safe to eat....well mostly safe.  There can be some issues once some foods get beyond the stated best-by date, depending upon the type of food product.

• Listeria risk does increase if there is presence of the organism on certain foods.  Manufacturers go to great lengths to control Listeria, but if a single organism gets onto the product, like a sliced deli meat, that risk increases the longer the product is held.
• Mold - the risk of mold growth increases in products that are drier in nature, breads or cheeses for example, as well as produce.  Many molds produce mycotoxins, which can be really harmful.  And people can have allergic reactions to food with mold present.
• Acid foods in cans can leach tin into the food - as acid foods go beyond the stated date, that  will eventually deteriorate the can and with that, tin can leach into the product.  High levels of tin are not healthy.  Further, that acid will eventually cause the container to leak.
• Oxidized fat - In foods with fats/oils, such as potato chips, the oils will go rancid as product gets beyond the stated shelf-life..that is really the limiting factor that determine shelf-life.  Oil breakdown products due to rancidity are extremely unhealthy over the long term (Link). If the level of rancidity is high, it can cause gastro-intestinal distress (link)
• And high levels of spoilage bacteria are going to produce a number of byproducts that can cause gastrointestinal distress.  Much of that is determined by not only the number of organisms but the type or organisms present.  In milk for example, homofermentive lactic acid bacteria with lactic acid as the primary byproduct is one thing, but if spoilage is due to gram-negative spoilage organisms, this is a different thing.  We do not have control over what organism decides to spoil our food.

We are all for standardized terminology for shelf-life, but the manufacturer has the right to set that date and should expect people to eat that food before it hits that date...because that is when the product will be at its best.  If people eat the food beyond that date, it will not be as tasty and that will not increase the chance that the person buys that product again.  As consumers, we should be focused on eating food in its prime.

Unfortunately, for many reading this article, the main takeaway will be that they can and probably should eat expired food regardless of what it is or how far past the date it is.  The need to for standardized terminology and understanding that terminology gets lost with narrative of someone eating expired food for a year.

Our focus should be on using food when it is at its best....that means consumers should, in some cases, buy less.  In other cases, rotate their inventory.  Eating expired foods is not really a good idea.
Unfortunately we are going to hear...go ahead and eat it, that goof ate expired foods for a year and was fine, you can just wash off that spoiled slice of bologna...are you kidding me?  (And Jared ate subs for a year and look what happened to him....just kidding.)

Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/17/this-man-ate-expired-food-year-heres-why-expiration-dates-are-practically-meaningless/?utm_term=.2d9486350125
Business
This man ate ‘expired’ food for a year. Here’s why expiration dates are practically meaningless.

Expiration dates can be really confusing. And that confusion leads to a lot of food waste. We take a look at where they came from and what they really mean. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)
By Daron Taylor
June 17 at 1:21 PM
Last year, Mom’s Organic Market founder and chief executive Scott Nash did something many of us are afraid to do: He ate a cup of yogurt months after its expiration date. Then tortillas a year past their expiration date. “I mean, I ate heavy cream I think 10 weeks past date,” Nash said, “and then meat sometimes a good month past its date. It didn’t smell bad. Rinse it off, good to go.” It was all part of his year-long experiment to test the limits of food that had passed its expiration date. In the video above, we interviewed Nash about his experiment and examined where expiration dates come from and what they really mean.

It turns out that the dates on our food labels do not have much to do with food safety. In many cases, expiration dates do not indicate when the food stops being safe to eat — rather, they tell you when the manufacturer thinks that product will stop looking and tasting its best. Some foods, such as deli meats, unpasteurized milk and cheese, and prepared foods such as potato salad that you do not reheat, probably should be tossed after their use-by dates for safety reasons.

Tossing out a perfectly edible cup of yogurt every once in a while does not seem that bad. But it adds up. According to a survey by the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and the National Consumers League, 84 percent of consumers at least occasionally throw out food because it is close to or past its package date, and over one third (37 percent) say they always or usually do so. That food waste in landfills generates carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas 28 to 36 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. And you are not just wasting calories and money. You are wasting all the resources that went into growing, packaging and transporting that food.

The FDA, researchers and the grocery manufacturing industry largely agree on an initial solution to this particular part of the food waste problem: clearer package-date labels. In 2017, the grocery industry, led by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute, announced a voluntary standard on food-date labeling. They narrowed the plethora of date-label terms down to two: “best if used by” and “use by.” “Best if used by” describes product quality, meaning the product might not taste as good past the date but is safe to eat. “Use by” is for products that are highly perishable and should be used or tossed by that date. The FDA announced in May 2019 that it “strongly supports” the GMA and FMI efforts to use the “best if used by” label to designate food quality. When it comes to food safety, the FDA said manufacturers can put whatever terminology they want to convey health risk. But while the FDA is encouraging manufacturers to use “best if used by” as a best practice, it is still not required by law. There is no federal law that requires dates on food, except for infant formula.

Emily Broad Leib, of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, says that to have an effect, these changes need to be federally mandated.

“We’re going to need the main government agencies that regulate food to be able to say: These are what these labels mean. When you see these on products, here’s what you should do, here’s how you should interpret them,” she said.
Rest of WP article - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/17/this-man-ate-expired-food-year-heres-why-expiration-dates-are-practically-meaningless/?utm_term=.2d9486350125