Brilliant dailymail about best-before dates. The writer, Jonathan Maitland, from the Daily Mail has written an excellent article on the supposed perils of eating food past it’s best-before date. Jonathon is someone that wields a certain flexibility on “best before” dates, figuring if he is careful (usually by cooking well) then he can eat pretty much anything. His wife demurs.
So he embarked on a 14 day experiment, eating increasingly out of date food every day. Of course nothing happened.
Use by dates are a bit of a con really – erring well on the side of safety. So I agree with Jonathon’s take:
I am not suggesting everyone eats food past its Use-By date. That would be irresponsible. Children, pregnant women, ill people and pensioners may be especially susceptible to the bacteria in it. What my experiment does show, however, is that a lot of that food may be safe for the rest of us to eat.
.. we should, arguably, never waste food simply because of the Best Before date. As the FSA guidelines acknowledge, it almost certainly won’t make us ill, it just won’t taste as good. Even if it is (relatively) ancient.
Lance Wiggs 