It was June 1985 and the first day of a new job. I was on the crew that would clean the high school during summer vacation and it paid more than minimum wage. We started with the cafeteria. If there was anything left we could eat it, drink it, or throw it away. Unfortunately, there was none of the famous apple crisp that was served on the last day of the school year left behind. I had hope. There was plenty of half pint sized containers of milk though and even though the date showed we were a wee bit beyond that stamp, the head custodian said it was fine and everyone should have a chocolate milk on their break.
I opened mine up, took a swig, and was introduced to something akin to chocolate cottage cheese. Typing this sentence is about making me gag a little bit.
Since that chocolate milk incident I have lived very close to the dates stamped on food packaging. I live by them. At one point in my life, before I met my husband, I wrote them with a sharpie in big, bold notification style numbers on the container when the item was purchased. I wasn’t going to mess around with another incident akin to that chocolate cottage cheese. I abandoned the practice when I moved in with my husband because I didn’t want to scare him away. But I ALWAYS keep an eye on the dates on food packaging and I usually have a running inventory of what’s what in my head.
So I went to get some orange juice this past weekend and noticed the date was nearly two weeks in the past. I brought up my concern with the family, and my husband being my husband, assured me that was the “sell by” date and not the “expiration” date. I don’t care. If there’s a date and it’s food, I’m not consuming that which exceed that date. If it’s not good enough for the shelf at the Safeway, it’s certainly not good enough for me.
I really wish there was a standardization in the date stamps containing this sort of information. “Freshest by”, “sell by”, “discard when”, and “best before” are all different things. I want one date: “discard on this date”. That’s it. Until then I’m going to treat any date as a “discard date”. I know I’m buying into a capitalism trick of forcing me to discard and buy before necessary but I’m not chancing it. Nope. I’ve seen moldy chemical cakes from Entenmann’s. I’ve been served McDanishes with ants living inside the styrofoam. I’ll eat just about anything, as long it’s dated and the date has not come to pass as of that moment.
But I really wish they’d stop using these date stamps as marketing ploys. That’s a little irritating to me.
