Use By Dates

When you're preparing/eating food do you take much note of the use by dates? By that I mean are you likely to throw out something that looks fine but is past it's use by date?

Short of it smelling awful or being covered in mold I'll eat anything regardless of the date. Chucking stuff out that's just past it's use by date if it looks fine is wasteful in my opinion.

My mother tends to keep these things in date and i don't need to worry often. XD

But if something looks funny/smells off I'll obviously check the date, don't really pay much attention beyond that. If i see it's past it's date i wont eat it, doesn't matter if it's ok or not i just feel a bit grossed out by it.

I know I shouldn't but I do as well.

Disposing of food that looks fine over statistics.

I usually only check dairy products. I drink about a gallon of milk a day so ive really never had a problem of drinking bad milk, but cheese seems to go bad real easy

If it's things like meat or dairy products, we throw them out after the date expires. "Smell testing" works with milk too, if it smells off then I won't pour it in my cereal.

Pretty much everything else I'll eat even if it's past the date, unless it tastes really stale.

As Long as any of the are not expired Dairy products Cheese,Milk,Yogurt you name it. I throw that out along with the expired meat...anything else Ill eat it.

Basically everything in my house is past its expiration date. My dad and I don't really bother with throwing old food away. I mean if it looks really gross we'll throw it away, but if it goes past its expiration date without changing color, or smelling terribly bad we just keep it in the fridge. Usually because we don't realize it's expired.

So when my friends come over, they usually check the expiration date. Haha, I remember when one of my friends came over for one of the first time and she didn't know everything in my house is usually expired. Well she was putting mayonnaise on her sandwich and my other friend said to her "I'd check the expiration date if I were you.." And my other friend said something like "Eh whatever". Well after she finished putting the mayo on her sandwich she checked the expiration date, and it was 3 years old.

Pretty disgusting. You can tell my dad and I don't use mayonnaise often.

We have gotten better though, now only about half of the food is probably expired.

So yeah, unless I'm feeling particularly paranoid, I don't usually check the expiration date. If I let something go past its expiration date, that usually means I don't like it. And if I don't like it, I won't eat it, so no need to worry.

I always follow useby dates. The standards for the dates was put there for a reason so it only seems right to follow it.