Guess My Expiration Date!

[Becks]

That's absolutely fascinating!!!! I mean it!!!!!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

ANOTHER FUN EXPIRATION DATE FACT!

Some products have the expiration date given as a "Julian date". A julian date is a three-digit number that tells you exactly which day of the year a particular date is.

For example, my birthday, September 9, has 252 as its julian date.

[repsac]

When I was in college (and even now some) I'd take MRE's with me to eat for lunch. Nice little things, just open the packet and stick it in your car's front window; and when lunch rolls around it's nice and warm to eat.

Most of them come with a candy bar as your dessert; though some come with other things.

While I was in college, I remember a friend of mine (ex military) telling me there was a game they used to play when they were on manuvers. They'd see when their MRE was packaged by checking the date on the candy bar.

The oldest I found was 89 or 90. Though, keep in mind this was 95 when I was checking....

[Rahmota]

repsac: yeah MREs are very flexible and get a bad rap on so much. When i would go on all day hikes I'd slide a pouch between my backpack and me and by the time we got to camp it'd be nice and warm, enough.

i never paid attention that close to the date. That is interesting though.

[Worker-Intellectual]

I've had IMPs before (Canadian equivalent of MREs). They had the date of packaging printed in big letters on the front... I don't think any of them were older than 2-3 years. I think they have a rule about expiry dates, so once a year soldiers eat them 3 meals a day to get rid of stocks that are about to expire. Some were edible, some weren't. Also they have a very liberal definition of "pie".

[Brighid45]

Our company labels carry a Gregorian calendar expiration date (for example, 1/1/2007) that is set either six or twelve months ahead, depending on the product being bottled. They also have a Julian date, which is the day the product was made and bottled. So for product bottled on January 1st 2007, the Gregorian expiration date would be 7/1/07, while the Julian bottling date would be 001.

[bean]

At one point for a short period, I was a volunteer at an AIDS resource center/food pantry. I remember one day we got a particularly large donation of food, and I started going through it.

A lot of it had expired over 10 years prior.

As for at work, well, we don't use any artificial preservatives, so the printed expiration date is something you really have to follow, much moreso than with conventional products.

[Buglady]

I just went through the kitchen cupboards (moved in with the boyfriend ) and discovered packages of noodles that had expired in 2001.

Of course, that was after I'd made spaghetti for supper.. :O

Best example I've seen - when helping my grandmother move, I found a bottle of corn syrup that had a coupon on the label for something like 5 cents off. I thought that was odd so I looked closer... and saw that the coupon expired the month before *I* was born! (in 1973!!!) That bottle had been moved, unopened, in and out of four houses over that span of time, too.

[SuperDan]

Sadly, I'm not surprised by the 2003 expiration date at all. In fact it's the most common year for me to find at my store, with 2000 and 2001 also being somewhat regular finds. I've also found products that expired in the late 90s. Mind you we moved our store from one end of the strip mall to the other on 12-26-2001.

Our night crew is notorious for not rotating and not checking dates. Both of our main suppliers will also send us out of date merchandise from time to time.

[ahanix1989]

Margarita-flavored Jell-O mix. Found four years expired, all 24 boxes from the original order.

I hate the expiration dates that get misprinted, so you just have either this crunched-together series of letters, or the top half is half an inch offset from the bottom half.

Why do they use codes? Isn't it easier to just print "JAN 06 2007" than "1607", which also makes it hard to tell if it's in a different format (mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy)

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I have some Stilton in my fridge that is horrible. I mean, it's got moldy blue, brown, and green stains spreading across it. It stinks like the funk of a thousand forgotten milk bottles. It's desicated and scary.

All in all, it's pretty good cheese.

Here's the question of the day...how do you know when Stilton goes bad? Is't cheese milk that is as bad as it's ever gonna get? And isn't Stilton cheese that has made the effort to exceed that goal? How bad does Stilton have to be before you don't want to eat it?

[tollbaby]

I have some Stilton in my fridge that is horrible. I mean, it's got moldy blue, brown, and green stains spreading across it. It stinks like the funk of a thousand forgotten milk bottles. It's desicated and scary.

All in all, it's pretty good cheese.

Here's the question of the day...how do you know when Stilton goes bad? Is't cheese milk that is as bad as it's ever gonna get? And isn't Stilton cheese that has made the effort to exceed that goal? How bad does Stilton have to be before you don't want to eat it?

I generally tend to throw out any dairy products (even Stilton) that have orange or brown mold on them. Green or blue is edible. Brown/black/orange, not so much

[Caveat Emptor]

I once got a 1/2 pint of chocolate milk from a vending machine, took a sip....and ran to the men's room to spit it out. It had seperated, the exp date was 6 months earlier. After that, I calmly went up to the cash register for the grill and asked for my money back. I had to keep myself from yelling (because I knew they were not responsible for stocking those machines)...


"I want my money back, BECAUSE YOU ALMOST POISONED ME!!!!

[Antisocial_Worker]

I've told this story here before, but it's been quite a while.

When I was helping my cousin close down his video store in 2001, we discovered a full jar of mayonnaise hidden up in the drop ceiling in the game room that had expired in either 1976 or 1973, I can't remember which.

It had sat up there for all those years undisturbed through heat and cold, and when we truly considered this, we set the jar down on the floor as carefully as we possibly could and backed slowly away, lest the vibrations cause the jar to breach and spill forth a torrent of wrath like the Ark of the Covenant in that one Indiana Jones movie.

We left it there, almost like a little building guardian, and I don't even want to think about what happened to it afterward. It was infernal, separated into three or four layers of goop, oil, and various cruds. Truly... it was the mayonnaise... of the damned.

[Writer Cath]

I was making tiramisu and sent out my best friend at the time to grab some whipped cream for me. She runs out to the corner store, proudly opens up the container and proceeds to pour it into my previously made layer of ingredients, disgusting curdles and all

Still managed to save the desert and no one was wiser.