Food Expiry Dates & When to Take Notice

Have you ever binned a carton of milk straight from the fridge? It’s probable that you spied its expiry date and realised it was a little past its best.

But do you actually need to take notice of these dates? We’re delving into the matter here on the My Appliances blog to ensure you can make better, more cost-effective choices when it comes to the food you consume. Here are a few of your most-used kitchen ingredients and items and when to use them:

Eggs

Do you pay attention to the expiry dates on eggs? Often, you can’t even see the stamp on the egg itself. According to StillTasty.com, though, it might not matter too much.

Raw eggs will maintain their quality for a whopping three weeks after their ‘sell by’ or ‘best buy’ date. Look out for details of expiration on the carton, and on the egg itself – and unless it looks or smells funny, use an egg or two up to a few weeks past the date shown.

 

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Milk

The folks at Life Hacker reckon you might be throwing your milk out way too early. Here’s what they say:

“If you can store your milk for about five days after the sell-by date, subtract the current date from the sell-by date, add five, and you have the amount of days this milk will be good for. For example, if I buy milk today that has a sell-by date of Aug 27, it will be good for 15 days, or a little over two weeks.
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Are you going to give this tip a go from now on? We know we are!

Bread

You know how it is; the morning you fancy some toast over your trusty bowl of cereal is the morning you pick up the bread and notice it’s past its best. So, what do you do? Do you risk it, or lob it in the bin? It’s perfectly safe to eat bread a little past its ‘best by’ or expiration date. Did you know, a standard loaf of supermarket-bought bread could even last up to a week past its best by date, with bakery bread having a shorter life of just two or three days? Of course, that’s often its plus point – that it’s so fresh and tasty – but it’s only good if you’re someone who can get through a sizeable loaf in a couple of days.

Canned Items – More often than not, the expiry date on tinned food is usually around three years. But we bet you didn’t know you can actually tuck into food out of tins for another three to four years after that. Head to the Food Network site for all the details!

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Cheese

What about cheese, then – how long can you keep it for before you have to admit defeat and realise Friday Brie Nights aren’t going to be a thing until you buy some more? You’ll be surprised at how long you can get away with hanging onto your favourite savoury treat – some last close to a year! Not that you’ll have the restraint to keep cheese for that long, mind.

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Until next time…

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