December 17, 2012 • 26 mins
Tis the season for throwing away tons of food. Did you know that the federal government only mandates expiration dates on infant formula and baby food? What do the dates on food packaging really mean? Tune in to learn more about food waste.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from Houstuffworks dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and I should probably also say happy holidays, because tis
the season, Caroline for food waste. Oh yeah, this is
(00:24):
the most wasteful time of the year. Oh gosh, I
don't okay, I'm not angry. I'm not going to get angry.
But this is a report that we found over at UPI.
Americans waste three times more food than usual between Thanksgiving
and New Year's We're just throwing food away left and right. Yeah,
(00:44):
that is an extra five million tons of food. Five
million tons of food, which equates to about two hundred
and eighty two million dollars just trash. To be fair,
at least one of those tons is probably just fruitcake,
unwanted fruitcakes. Yeah, turkey carcasses. Yes, But even during the year,
(01:07):
this is no big surprise, I'm sure to any of
our listeners. Food waste is a huge problem. Yeah. This
is coming from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which estimates
that outside of the holidays, just in general, Americans trash
nearly half of our entire food supply, about forty percent
and Dana Gunders, who's a food project scientist with the
(01:30):
nr DC, says that you can imagine it like this.
It's basically like you go to the grocery store, you
get three bags worth of groceries, and on your way out,
you just drop one, yeah, in the parking lot. You're like,
I'll just leave that behind that, I won't bother picking
that up. This This council also says that the average
American family of four ends up throwing away about two
(01:50):
two hundred and seventy five dollars annually in food. Yeah,
and it's not like we have any kind of pressing
economic problems, you know, or food shortages anywhere else around
the world. Probably not. Yeah, no, no big deal. That
was sarcasm, everybody. Yeah. But one thing that food scientists
(02:11):
like Dana Gunders will point to you as a reason
why Americans are so wasteful are because we are perhaps
a little too vigilant when it comes to food expiration dates.
Now obviously, like with food born diseases and scares where
you know you have like bad peanut butter, Oh no,
(02:32):
everyone freaks out. I think maybe we we throw away
before we really need to. Yeah, Like I was just
telling Kristin about how my mother threw away a container
of orange juice three days before even at cell by date,
which we'll explain the whole difference between cell by versus
used by, et cetera, et cetera. But so, anyway, she
(02:52):
threw it away because she saw and it's clear container
that it had separated, and she's like, eh, I don't
know what that is. Well, mother, it's orange juice. You
just shake it just like a shakewaight, sally? Uh So, yeah,
my mother is a good example of maybe what is
wrong with our attitudes toward food or just our ideas
(03:14):
and our misconceptions about expiration dates. Yeah, and uh, there
really isn't a huge gendered angle to look at in
this conversation. But since it is the holiday, since we
all must live from food, I figured, you know, it's
a good opportunity to to learn some things about how
to become savvier consumers and you know, treat treat the
(03:35):
world a little a little better. So let's talk about
what exactly those dates are that we see on food,
because not everything is not every date means the same thing. Yeah,
so we have a cell by date and that is
really telling the store not you. It's telling the store
(03:55):
how long to display a product for sale. Then you
have the best if used by or before date, which
is recommended for the use of the product while at
peak quality. And that kind of touches on the whole
thing about expiration dates, which is that they are more
about quality and freshness than they are about safety. Yeah,
(04:16):
the USDA does not regulate these kinds of expiration dates.
In fact, only when it comes to infant formula and
certain baby foods are package dates ever regulated by the
federal government. A lot of this comes down to a
state by state basis, and also on manufacturers' terms. Yeah,
(04:39):
there was a great Slate story back in February twenty
ten which talked about basically just you know, kind of
ignore those expiration dates, not totally use them as a suggestion.
But the writer kind of explained why they are so conservative,
and she pointed out that manufacturers are kind of taking
into account all men of consumer. They imagine how the
(05:02):
laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and
handle their food. So if they buy a packet chicken
breast of the store, come home and leave them sitting
on the counter for three hours, whoops. So they're trying
to take into account people who might not be as
responsible with the way they handle their food. And it
makes sense because you know, they probably all these food
manufacturers also want to cover themselves in terms of any liabilities.
(05:26):
But it is good to keep in mind that when
you are looking at that date, that is stamped for
the very worst food consumer out there who just doesn't
give a hoot about it. Like Sally, she's vigilant, we're
talking about she's overly if the orange juice is curdled.
That is what the expiration dates are there for. And
(05:49):
also in that Slate article, Nadia Roumagom talks about the
evolution of these expiration dates and she cites Consumer Reports
as one of the major reasons why they exist. Basically,
we have the urbanization from farms to cities and towns,
(06:09):
and in the nineteen thirties, she writes the magazine Consumer
Reports argue that Americans increasingly look to expiration dates as
an indication of freshness and quality. And then in the
nineteen seventies we have more supermarkets and food chains implementing
their own dating systems, and she says, despite the fact
that in the seventies and the eighties, consumer groups and
the processors held hearings to establish a federally regulated system.
(06:34):
Nothing came of them. So these dates are just They're
not out of thin air, but they are. They're more
for the manufacturer than really for the user, it sounds like.
And speaking of grocery stores and supermarkets, they are certainly
not innocent of food waste. There's massive food waste that
(06:57):
just goes on before it even re our cupboards. Right well,
I mean, just think about all of the food at
grocery stores, like what the heck happens to it? And
I felt much better reading a Forbes story that explained
this was according to supermarket consultant David J. Livingston, who
said that fresh vegetables and meats are often cooked up
(07:20):
for in store deli and salad counters before they spoil.
So that's good, that's one place that they go. Now,
a portion of it is inevitably thrown into the garbage
and ends up in landfills, but some of it is
given away to food banks, sold to salvage stores, and
the rest is taken by people who they say, scrounge
outside supermarket freagans. So talking about freagins, there's an article
(07:45):
on how stuff works if you aren't familiar with Freaganism,
called how Freagans work, and basically they will. I remember
in college I knew some they weren't Freagans, but they
were a little more. They were a little more of
the punk rock DIY group, and they would go to
the Dunkin Donuts in town and they figured out the
time when they would toss out all of the old
(08:06):
donuts and the bagels, which were perfectly fine. I did
have a dumpster dobed divin bagel in my day, and
they would they would go and and scoop up all
of these all of these donuts and bagels. I just
I just picture that Portlandia sketch it. Yeah, it's very
it is very Portlandia. But yeah, it is good to
(08:27):
know that that not all the food just goes directly
to that, because I think about it now, like how
common in large supermarkets that all the ready made food
that they now have, and there's no way I'll go
in there, you know, later on at night to pick
up something and there's still so much food out there. Yeah.
And also there was a two thousand and five FMI
Supermarkets and Food Bank study that found that more than
(08:49):
half of the eight thousand, three hundred and sixty supermarket
surveyed donated to food banks one hundred thousand pounds of
food that they could not sell. And this was usually
like out of seasoned products or damaged like dented cans
and things like that. Yeah, and I didn't think about
either before reading this Forbes article about how there is
that down market. Kind of in the same way that
(09:10):
we have with fashion of it, the of clothing trickling down,
you also have those a lot of those discount stores now,
especially with you know, the economy the way it is.
And Forbes talked to one owner of one of these
discount grocery stores that takes expired food. They never know
what they're going to get necessarily, and they said when
(09:32):
they first opened, people were very hesitant and would buy
a couple of cans of things or like some expired
granola bars, and you know, because they were nervous about
it because those expiration dates freak us out so much.
But once people become more comfortable, business is doing really
well because they realized that, you know, this food is
perfectly fine. Yeah, yeah, most of it is exactly well.
(09:54):
It did also make me feel better because of this
quote from Gene Schwabs. She was interviewed by NPR and
she is a senior analyst in the EPA's waste division.
She said that food waste is now the number one
material that goes into landfills and incinerators, and this is
part of a big There were a couple articles about
restaurant food waste, in particular about how many pounds of
(10:16):
food waste restaurants generate, and she said that food waste
from restaurants makes up fifteen percent of all the food
that ends up in landfills. Right, because there are all
of those the laws that prevent restaurants from being able
to give that leftover food of the in the night
directly to say soup kitchens or food banks. Yeah, which
(10:37):
is unfortunate, But again I feel like a lot of
this is a product of entities covering themselves. Yeah. Well,
you don't want to make anybody sick, and you don't
want to get in trouble for making anybody sick. Right,
But we should point out though, with the package dates,
because I'm sure some people are thinking, no, these package
dates are important. They are keeping us healthy. What about
(11:01):
bad spinach and bad peanut butter. No, actually, package dates
are not designed to protect the public from food born illness,
like they don't those dates are already packaged. They don't
know whether or not. Hopefully it's assumed that it's equal
life free, so that it has nothing to do with
keeping us safe in that way. Food safety is much
more dependent though, on temperature than age. So when it
(11:25):
comes to determining whether or not food is still good,
how long you can keep it in your fridge, keep
it in your cupboard, it's more temperature you need to
think about than how long it's been sitting there, right, Yeah.
Going back to that Slate article, the writer points out that,
you know, most consumers are not aware that their fridges
aren't actually cold enough for raw meat because think about
(11:47):
all the things you have in your fridge. I have
everything from condiments to you know, things that might not
even need to really be refrigerated in the first place,
and drinks to yeah, like chicken and vegetables. So'sing cereals, Yeah,
nail polish the bras it is refreshing first thing in
the morning. So okay. So raw meat should be kept
(12:10):
at about thirty degrees but most fridges are kept around
forty so that your veggies and your bras do not freeze.
So food experts recommend that you eat that meat within
two days. People, or if you are a vegetarian vegan,
you're like, not my problem. Well, yeah, so forty degrees
is all set for you. Well, and there's another tiptoo
(12:30):
of keeping those foods like meats that need to be
at a lower temperature away from the light bulb in
your fridge. That will help keep them keep it fresher
a little bit longer as well. But yeah, meat, meats, really,
meat and dairy are the toughest ones when it comes
to this. Although eggs can we talk about eggs for
a second. Tell me about eggs. They can hang out
(12:51):
in your fridge for so long after the expiration date. Yeah,
so it turns out that eggs are okay for three
to five weeks after you bring them home soon you
bought them before the cell by date, and that's just
that date. You know that we mentioned earlier about the
stores trying to get them off the shelves and handy
tip out there for people who like deviled eggs. Ooh,
I do me, me me not so fresh eggs make
(13:13):
better deviled eggs, really yeah, if they're not. You don't
want to make a deviled egg from perfectly fresh eggs
because when you try to peel them and get the
shell off, that pulls the egg off with it. If
you get them a little less fresh, they will come
out whole and shiny and happy. I think we should
make a deviled egg cooking show video now, only if
I could wear my June Cleaver dress. Yes, absolutely, and
(13:36):
so yeah. Then moving on from eggs, perishables like milk
and meat, of course, have a three to seven day
grace period after the cell by date has elapsed. So
if you're looking at your milk and it just has
a cell by date that's not the expiration date, do
not panic. Again. You might want to use the smell
test because your milk might smell weird eventually, but don't
(13:57):
be you know, don't be put off by the cell
by date. Mm hmm. Yeah. I also found it interesting
that there is a debate about butter, which is not
so surprising because some people like my mom, actually will
leaves the butter out in like a covered butter dish
so it's always soft and ready to use. But the
USCA guidelines recommend freezing it if you aren't going to
(14:18):
use it within a day or two, and then refrigerating.
I'm a refrigerat butter refrigerator. Yeah, but that's just because
I don't own a butter dish like a proper lady.
I suppose, I suppose, But yeah, the USCA recommends refrigerating
the butter, which isn't surprising. Again, you know, with with dairy,
they are more overly cautious than anything else. Well, there's
(14:39):
also a lot of stuff too where things don't spoil
necessarily or go bad, but they might just taste slightly different,
like mayonnaise, you know. And definitely you can keep it
unopened indefinitely because mayonnaise is like that, but after about
two to three months open, the taste starts to change.
So there's that same with soda. It doesn't necessarily spoil,
(15:00):
but the taste is affected. Yeah, for pretty much anything
outside of the realm of fresh produced and even with produce,
once it starts to it'll color some and lose vitamins,
but it's not necessarily going bad. But aside from meats
and milk and things like that, when it exceeds an
expiration date, it merely means that the quality is diminishing,
(15:25):
not that it is inherently going to make you sick.
And we found out something similar about twinkies. Oh man, Twinkies. Wow,
they really last a long time. If you have a
bomb shelter in your house, you might as well toss
some Twinkies in there, because they are the food of
the apocalypse. Even though there has been all that hostess trouble.
(15:46):
But Twinkies will exist. Twinkies are never going to go away.
While it is a myth, CBS News points out that
twinkies can last upwards of fifty years. Twinkies can last
a lengthy twenty five days side of their packaging. That
is an experiment I want to do, and I also
don't want to do. I wait outside that it won't mold. Yeah,
(16:09):
it's because there aren't any dairy products in the recipe
and it doesn't spoil after twenty five days. But again,
like most foods, it simply loses a little bit of
taste and flavor. Well, this one goes out to my
mother Sally, you should not be refrigerating your tomatoes. Cut
it out. Yeah. A life hacker had a good list
(16:31):
of things that you don't need to refrigerate, and they
cite in addition to the tomatoes because it makes them mushy.
It does make the mushy, and nothing's worse than a
mushy tomato. Potatoes, honey, and onions. Yeah. Also, you might
not want to keep onions in the fridge because then
your other food will taste like onions. Well, whicheah might
(16:52):
be good for some people like onions. Yeah, it gets
if you're an onion fanatic. Sure. Things that go under
the category of refrigerator only if you feel like it
are peanut butter bread. I refrigerate my bread. It does
get harder faster, but I just you know, I don't know.
I don't want it to get moldy or whatever. Bananas
they will get black if you put them in the fridge,
(17:12):
but they'll still be good to eat. Baked goods, they
will stay fresh. I guess, well that's a lie. They
will go stale faster, is what I meant, So the
opposite of what I said. And then oils, which will
thicken and get cloudy, but that will all go away
once you take them out of the fridge. And of course,
things that you should always refrigerate include meat, milk, eggs,
like we said, cheese, condiments like jams, and salad dressings
(17:34):
and buta and butlda. Yeah, there was one tip speaking
of refrigerators and because I think a lot of times
too food waste happens because we overstock the fridge and
we forget what is in there, and so things end
up in the back and they just they look so
pitiful once we finally get back to them. And I
was listening to Marketplace Money recently. It was right after Thanksgiving,
(17:58):
and they were talking about food waste, and one of
their experts came on saying that you should keep a
picture in the back of your fridge and then if
you can't see the picture anymore, you got too much
food in there. Did they say what it should be
a picture of It should be a picture of food. No,
he didn't recommend a specific picture. Okay, I'll keep a
(18:19):
picture of Ryan Gosling in the back of my fridge.
You'll just always be trying to get to him. No,
but this, I think these food waste tips are very
important because I feel like every time I go home
and open my mother's fridge, I have to clear stuff
out because she buys I don't want to say in
bald because she doesn't shop at those big stores, but
(18:40):
she buys so much stuff and then just has it
in the fridge because you never know who's gonna come over. Yeah,
and then I have to go through and be like,
your celery has turned to a liquid. I'm going to
throw it away. And now she's like, why are you
throwing away all my vegetables because you bought so much
stuff that you didn't need. Why are you throwing away
perfectly good orange juice but keeping the liquid celery? Sally,
(19:03):
But there are some if she if you do want
to stock up though, there are some quote unquote everlasting
foods that CBS News sided, and these things are not.
It's not too surprising. Although honey was a surprising one
because I've had old honey before, and I have I'm
guilty of throwing away honey because it does. It does hard.
All you have to do is heat it up and
(19:25):
then re kind of mix it up and it's fine.
But uh, liquor, thank goodness, rice, sugar, corn starch, distilled
white vinegar, pure vanilla extract not imitation, pure vanilla extract,
and salt. Yeah, and with all of those things you
could make, not well, a stiff drink and that's about it. Well.
(19:48):
I was also happy to see about olive oil that
that's pretty much okay for two years after the manufactured date.
But after that time, it's not like it's going to
kill you. After that, it's still safe. It's just the
color and flavor might be affected, just like all that
other stuff we talked about, because I am guilty of
throwing away olive oil that I thought maybe I had
too long. So essentially what we have learned from all
(20:08):
of this is that we should ignore or start ignoring
expiration dates except for infant formula and the baby foods,
and be braver. Yeah, but also try to just buy
what you need. Well, yeah, that's true, Sally. Oh, I
hope your mom listens to this episode. I don't think
(20:29):
she knows how to work it. And by it I
mean the computer, the internet, podcast technology, anything, and celery
and cellery. So I hope this was a good primer
on food waste. This will help cut down on holiday
food waste. I mean, everybody's guilty of it at some point.
And also like that that was one thing that they
(20:51):
pointed out in the slate test Slate article that I
think we did mention like one in doubt, just use
a smell test, Yeah, smells funky, then okay, But until then,
you know, eat it. And if you get a little
food poisoning, no, I'm just kidding, you'll be fine. You'll
be okay. So let us know your thoughts out there.
(21:11):
If we have any grossers, I would like to hear
from you. If you're like, no, gosh, no, people should
certainly pay attention to expiration dates. Let us know your thoughts.
So Mom's stuff at Discovery dot com is where you
can send them. And speaking which, we got a couple
of letters for you. But before we get to that,
we've got a quick word from our sponsor that brought
(21:34):
you this episode, and it is jackthreads dot com. Just
in time for the holidays, you can head over to
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(22:16):
is up to eighty percent off. What better time to
save than around the holidays. So again it's jackdreads dot
com slash mom. And now back to our letters. Here's
a letter from Michel about our podcast on interracial marriage.
Michel writes, my parents were married eight years after Loving
(22:38):
Versus Virginia. Technically, interracial marriage was legal in their state
before that, but it's still weird to think that it
was that recent. My sister is an interracial child, and
if you look back on pictures, she has definitely gone
through faces of looking more Asian versus more white. Some
people do ask her now if she's Polynesian, among other things,
mostly because she has dark hair. In most other states
(22:58):
it wouldn't even be a question. But because of that,
she has identified more with her Asian background as an
adult than she did as a kid. I wish I
could say that the people who still believe interracial marriage
is bad or all of an older generation, but I
have met people in their teens or twenties who have
very strong beliefs about it. One of them tell certain
interracial kids that they should marry their minority side, while
(23:19):
telling others that it's okay for them to marry white
because to him they are white. Ironically, his parents and
grandparents have never held those beliefs, so we don't know
where it came from. My grandpa was in Pearl Harbor,
and subsequently, even though my mom is Korean, my dad
did worry about what my grandpa would think when he
brought my mom home the first time. Considering his background,
(23:39):
no one would have blamed him for freaking out, but
he was always accepting and we're pretty sure my mom
was always his favorite of the daughter in laws. I
have noticed that even with interracial couples where one party
is white, people still assume in some cases that that's
how all of them must be if they see these
couples misbehaving. Subsequently, I do expect more from Asian white
interracial couples because they are represent my parents too, despite
(24:01):
a lot of differences. Though, my parents are proof that
all of the crap used by those against interracial marriage
is just that crap. So thanks Michel, Well, I've got
one here about interracial marriage as well from Hannah, who
also hails from Atlga. Hello neighbor. She says, I am,
in fact in an interracial relationship with a Dominican American
(24:22):
man from New Jersey, and I am white, white, white.
By that, I mean every kind of Anglo Saxon guild,
all sex together in a pool of Prussian, Scotch, Irish English,
in a pinch of Cherokee. My partner and I have
talked a lot about our heritage, how he is descended
from the invasion of the Spanish, when Christopher Columbus landed
on the island now known as Haiti and the Dominican Republic,
and how my family came to the American mainland sometime
(24:44):
way back in the eighteen hundreds. Ultimately, we are both
European invasion babies, and when we get right down to
the nitty gritty, we are in no way try to
justify our relationship. We are just fascinated by our own
genetic history. We are modern people, still in our twenties.
So when we heard both of our fathers say he's
not white and she's white, it was pretty amazing to us.
(25:05):
We found our mothers to be on equal level of
acceptance with us and not even considering race in juxtaposition
to our father's reaction. And she goes on to say
that she and her partner have been together for seven
years and they are They got engaged almost immediately, but
have not gotten married yet. She's wondering whether or not
they will, but certainly clearly the interracial aspect will not
(25:29):
be a factor in that. So thanks to folks for
writing in Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com is where
you can send your letters. You can also find us
on Facebook and like us there and follow us on
Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast, and you can also follow
us over at our blog on Tumblr at Stuff Mom
Never Told You dot tumblr dot com. And again, if
(25:50):
you want to learn more about freagans and dumpster diving,
which I mentioned earlier, you can do that at our
website and read how freagans work. It's at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit HowStuffWorks dot com. MHM
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from Houstuffworks dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and I should probably also say happy holidays, because tis
the season, Caroline for food waste. Oh yeah, this is
(00:24):
the most wasteful time of the year. Oh gosh, I
don't okay, I'm not angry. I'm not going to get angry.
But this is a report that we found over at UPI.
Americans waste three times more food than usual between Thanksgiving
and New Year's We're just throwing food away left and right. Yeah,
(00:44):
that is an extra five million tons of food. Five
million tons of food, which equates to about two hundred
and eighty two million dollars just trash. To be fair,
at least one of those tons is probably just fruitcake,
unwanted fruitcakes. Yeah, turkey carcasses. Yes, But even during the year,
(01:07):
this is no big surprise, I'm sure to any of
our listeners. Food waste is a huge problem. Yeah. This
is coming from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which estimates
that outside of the holidays, just in general, Americans trash
nearly half of our entire food supply, about forty percent
and Dana Gunders, who's a food project scientist with the
(01:30):
nr DC, says that you can imagine it like this.
It's basically like you go to the grocery store, you
get three bags worth of groceries, and on your way out,
you just drop one, yeah, in the parking lot. You're like,
I'll just leave that behind that, I won't bother picking
that up. This This council also says that the average
American family of four ends up throwing away about two
(01:50):
two hundred and seventy five dollars annually in food. Yeah,
and it's not like we have any kind of pressing
economic problems, you know, or food shortages anywhere else around
the world. Probably not. Yeah, no, no big deal. That
was sarcasm, everybody. Yeah. But one thing that food scientists
(02:11):
like Dana Gunders will point to you as a reason
why Americans are so wasteful are because we are perhaps
a little too vigilant when it comes to food expiration dates.
Now obviously, like with food born diseases and scares where
you know you have like bad peanut butter, Oh no,
(02:32):
everyone freaks out. I think maybe we we throw away
before we really need to. Yeah, Like I was just
telling Kristin about how my mother threw away a container
of orange juice three days before even at cell by date,
which we'll explain the whole difference between cell by versus
used by, et cetera, et cetera. But so, anyway, she
(02:52):
threw it away because she saw and it's clear container
that it had separated, and she's like, eh, I don't
know what that is. Well, mother, it's orange juice. You
just shake it just like a shakewaight, sally? Uh So, yeah,
my mother is a good example of maybe what is
wrong with our attitudes toward food or just our ideas
(03:14):
and our misconceptions about expiration dates. Yeah, and uh, there
really isn't a huge gendered angle to look at in
this conversation. But since it is the holiday, since we
all must live from food, I figured, you know, it's
a good opportunity to to learn some things about how
to become savvier consumers and you know, treat treat the
(03:35):
world a little a little better. So let's talk about
what exactly those dates are that we see on food,
because not everything is not every date means the same thing. Yeah,
so we have a cell by date and that is
really telling the store not you. It's telling the store
(03:55):
how long to display a product for sale. Then you
have the best if used by or before date, which
is recommended for the use of the product while at
peak quality. And that kind of touches on the whole
thing about expiration dates, which is that they are more
about quality and freshness than they are about safety. Yeah,
(04:16):
the USDA does not regulate these kinds of expiration dates.
In fact, only when it comes to infant formula and
certain baby foods are package dates ever regulated by the
federal government. A lot of this comes down to a
state by state basis, and also on manufacturers' terms. Yeah,
(04:39):
there was a great Slate story back in February twenty
ten which talked about basically just you know, kind of
ignore those expiration dates, not totally use them as a suggestion.
But the writer kind of explained why they are so conservative,
and she pointed out that manufacturers are kind of taking
into account all men of consumer. They imagine how the
(05:02):
laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and
handle their food. So if they buy a packet chicken
breast of the store, come home and leave them sitting
on the counter for three hours, whoops. So they're trying
to take into account people who might not be as
responsible with the way they handle their food. And it
makes sense because you know, they probably all these food
manufacturers also want to cover themselves in terms of any liabilities.
(05:26):
But it is good to keep in mind that when
you are looking at that date, that is stamped for
the very worst food consumer out there who just doesn't
give a hoot about it. Like Sally, she's vigilant, we're
talking about she's overly if the orange juice is curdled.
That is what the expiration dates are there for. And
(05:49):
also in that Slate article, Nadia Roumagom talks about the
evolution of these expiration dates and she cites Consumer Reports
as one of the major reasons why they exist. Basically,
we have the urbanization from farms to cities and towns,
(06:09):
and in the nineteen thirties, she writes the magazine Consumer
Reports argue that Americans increasingly look to expiration dates as
an indication of freshness and quality. And then in the
nineteen seventies we have more supermarkets and food chains implementing
their own dating systems, and she says, despite the fact
that in the seventies and the eighties, consumer groups and
the processors held hearings to establish a federally regulated system.
(06:34):
Nothing came of them. So these dates are just They're
not out of thin air, but they are. They're more
for the manufacturer than really for the user, it sounds like.
And speaking of grocery stores and supermarkets, they are certainly
not innocent of food waste. There's massive food waste that
(06:57):
just goes on before it even re our cupboards. Right well,
I mean, just think about all of the food at
grocery stores, like what the heck happens to it? And
I felt much better reading a Forbes story that explained
this was according to supermarket consultant David J. Livingston, who
said that fresh vegetables and meats are often cooked up
(07:20):
for in store deli and salad counters before they spoil.
So that's good, that's one place that they go. Now,
a portion of it is inevitably thrown into the garbage
and ends up in landfills, but some of it is
given away to food banks, sold to salvage stores, and
the rest is taken by people who they say, scrounge
outside supermarket freagans. So talking about freagins, there's an article
(07:45):
on how stuff works if you aren't familiar with Freaganism,
called how Freagans work, and basically they will. I remember
in college I knew some they weren't Freagans, but they
were a little more. They were a little more of
the punk rock DIY group, and they would go to
the Dunkin Donuts in town and they figured out the
time when they would toss out all of the old
(08:06):
donuts and the bagels, which were perfectly fine. I did
have a dumpster dobed divin bagel in my day, and
they would they would go and and scoop up all
of these all of these donuts and bagels. I just
I just picture that Portlandia sketch it. Yeah, it's very
it is very Portlandia. But yeah, it is good to
(08:27):
know that that not all the food just goes directly
to that, because I think about it now, like how
common in large supermarkets that all the ready made food
that they now have, and there's no way I'll go
in there, you know, later on at night to pick
up something and there's still so much food out there. Yeah.
And also there was a two thousand and five FMI
Supermarkets and Food Bank study that found that more than
(08:49):
half of the eight thousand, three hundred and sixty supermarket
surveyed donated to food banks one hundred thousand pounds of
food that they could not sell. And this was usually
like out of seasoned products or damaged like dented cans
and things like that. Yeah, and I didn't think about
either before reading this Forbes article about how there is
that down market. Kind of in the same way that
(09:10):
we have with fashion of it, the of clothing trickling down,
you also have those a lot of those discount stores now,
especially with you know, the economy the way it is.
And Forbes talked to one owner of one of these
discount grocery stores that takes expired food. They never know
what they're going to get necessarily, and they said when
(09:32):
they first opened, people were very hesitant and would buy
a couple of cans of things or like some expired
granola bars, and you know, because they were nervous about
it because those expiration dates freak us out so much.
But once people become more comfortable, business is doing really
well because they realized that, you know, this food is
perfectly fine. Yeah, yeah, most of it is exactly well.
(09:54):
It did also make me feel better because of this
quote from Gene Schwabs. She was interviewed by NPR and
she is a senior analyst in the EPA's waste division.
She said that food waste is now the number one
material that goes into landfills and incinerators, and this is
part of a big There were a couple articles about
restaurant food waste, in particular about how many pounds of
(10:16):
food waste restaurants generate, and she said that food waste
from restaurants makes up fifteen percent of all the food
that ends up in landfills. Right, because there are all
of those the laws that prevent restaurants from being able
to give that leftover food of the in the night
directly to say soup kitchens or food banks. Yeah, which
(10:37):
is unfortunate, But again I feel like a lot of
this is a product of entities covering themselves. Yeah. Well,
you don't want to make anybody sick, and you don't
want to get in trouble for making anybody sick. Right,
But we should point out though, with the package dates,
because I'm sure some people are thinking, no, these package
dates are important. They are keeping us healthy. What about
(11:01):
bad spinach and bad peanut butter. No, actually, package dates
are not designed to protect the public from food born illness,
like they don't those dates are already packaged. They don't
know whether or not. Hopefully it's assumed that it's equal
life free, so that it has nothing to do with
keeping us safe in that way. Food safety is much
more dependent though, on temperature than age. So when it
(11:25):
comes to determining whether or not food is still good,
how long you can keep it in your fridge, keep
it in your cupboard, it's more temperature you need to
think about than how long it's been sitting there, right, Yeah.
Going back to that Slate article, the writer points out that,
you know, most consumers are not aware that their fridges
aren't actually cold enough for raw meat because think about
(11:47):
all the things you have in your fridge. I have
everything from condiments to you know, things that might not
even need to really be refrigerated in the first place,
and drinks to yeah, like chicken and vegetables. So'sing cereals, Yeah,
nail polish the bras it is refreshing first thing in
the morning. So okay. So raw meat should be kept
(12:10):
at about thirty degrees but most fridges are kept around
forty so that your veggies and your bras do not freeze.
So food experts recommend that you eat that meat within
two days. People, or if you are a vegetarian vegan,
you're like, not my problem. Well, yeah, so forty degrees
is all set for you. Well, and there's another tiptoo
(12:30):
of keeping those foods like meats that need to be
at a lower temperature away from the light bulb in
your fridge. That will help keep them keep it fresher
a little bit longer as well. But yeah, meat, meats, really,
meat and dairy are the toughest ones when it comes
to this. Although eggs can we talk about eggs for
a second. Tell me about eggs. They can hang out
(12:51):
in your fridge for so long after the expiration date. Yeah,
so it turns out that eggs are okay for three
to five weeks after you bring them home soon you
bought them before the cell by date, and that's just
that date. You know that we mentioned earlier about the
stores trying to get them off the shelves and handy
tip out there for people who like deviled eggs. Ooh,
I do me, me me not so fresh eggs make
(13:13):
better deviled eggs, really yeah, if they're not. You don't
want to make a deviled egg from perfectly fresh eggs
because when you try to peel them and get the
shell off, that pulls the egg off with it. If
you get them a little less fresh, they will come
out whole and shiny and happy. I think we should
make a deviled egg cooking show video now, only if
I could wear my June Cleaver dress. Yes, absolutely, and
(13:36):
so yeah. Then moving on from eggs, perishables like milk
and meat, of course, have a three to seven day
grace period after the cell by date has elapsed. So
if you're looking at your milk and it just has
a cell by date that's not the expiration date, do
not panic. Again. You might want to use the smell
test because your milk might smell weird eventually, but don't
(13:57):
be you know, don't be put off by the cell
by date. Mm hmm. Yeah. I also found it interesting
that there is a debate about butter, which is not
so surprising because some people like my mom, actually will
leaves the butter out in like a covered butter dish
so it's always soft and ready to use. But the
USCA guidelines recommend freezing it if you aren't going to
(14:18):
use it within a day or two, and then refrigerating.
I'm a refrigerat butter refrigerator. Yeah, but that's just because
I don't own a butter dish like a proper lady.
I suppose, I suppose, But yeah, the USCA recommends refrigerating
the butter, which isn't surprising. Again, you know, with with dairy,
they are more overly cautious than anything else. Well, there's
(14:39):
also a lot of stuff too where things don't spoil
necessarily or go bad, but they might just taste slightly different,
like mayonnaise, you know. And definitely you can keep it
unopened indefinitely because mayonnaise is like that, but after about
two to three months open, the taste starts to change.
So there's that same with soda. It doesn't necessarily spoil,
(15:00):
but the taste is affected. Yeah, for pretty much anything
outside of the realm of fresh produced and even with produce,
once it starts to it'll color some and lose vitamins,
but it's not necessarily going bad. But aside from meats
and milk and things like that, when it exceeds an
expiration date, it merely means that the quality is diminishing,
(15:25):
not that it is inherently going to make you sick.
And we found out something similar about twinkies. Oh man, Twinkies. Wow,
they really last a long time. If you have a
bomb shelter in your house, you might as well toss
some Twinkies in there, because they are the food of
the apocalypse. Even though there has been all that hostess trouble.
(15:46):
But Twinkies will exist. Twinkies are never going to go away.
While it is a myth, CBS News points out that
twinkies can last upwards of fifty years. Twinkies can last
a lengthy twenty five days side of their packaging. That
is an experiment I want to do, and I also
don't want to do. I wait outside that it won't mold. Yeah,
(16:09):
it's because there aren't any dairy products in the recipe
and it doesn't spoil after twenty five days. But again,
like most foods, it simply loses a little bit of
taste and flavor. Well, this one goes out to my
mother Sally, you should not be refrigerating your tomatoes. Cut
it out. Yeah. A life hacker had a good list
(16:31):
of things that you don't need to refrigerate, and they
cite in addition to the tomatoes because it makes them mushy.
It does make the mushy, and nothing's worse than a
mushy tomato. Potatoes, honey, and onions. Yeah. Also, you might
not want to keep onions in the fridge because then
your other food will taste like onions. Well, whicheah might
(16:52):
be good for some people like onions. Yeah, it gets
if you're an onion fanatic. Sure. Things that go under
the category of refrigerator only if you feel like it
are peanut butter bread. I refrigerate my bread. It does
get harder faster, but I just you know, I don't know.
I don't want it to get moldy or whatever. Bananas
they will get black if you put them in the fridge,
(17:12):
but they'll still be good to eat. Baked goods, they
will stay fresh. I guess, well that's a lie. They
will go stale faster, is what I meant, So the
opposite of what I said. And then oils, which will
thicken and get cloudy, but that will all go away
once you take them out of the fridge. And of course,
things that you should always refrigerate include meat, milk, eggs,
like we said, cheese, condiments like jams, and salad dressings
(17:34):
and buta and butlda. Yeah, there was one tip speaking
of refrigerators and because I think a lot of times
too food waste happens because we overstock the fridge and
we forget what is in there, and so things end
up in the back and they just they look so
pitiful once we finally get back to them. And I
was listening to Marketplace Money recently. It was right after Thanksgiving,
(17:58):
and they were talking about food waste, and one of
their experts came on saying that you should keep a
picture in the back of your fridge and then if
you can't see the picture anymore, you got too much
food in there. Did they say what it should be
a picture of It should be a picture of food. No,
he didn't recommend a specific picture. Okay, I'll keep a
(18:19):
picture of Ryan Gosling in the back of my fridge.
You'll just always be trying to get to him. No,
but this, I think these food waste tips are very
important because I feel like every time I go home
and open my mother's fridge, I have to clear stuff
out because she buys I don't want to say in
bald because she doesn't shop at those big stores, but
(18:40):
she buys so much stuff and then just has it
in the fridge because you never know who's gonna come over. Yeah,
and then I have to go through and be like,
your celery has turned to a liquid. I'm going to
throw it away. And now she's like, why are you
throwing away all my vegetables because you bought so much
stuff that you didn't need. Why are you throwing away
perfectly good orange juice but keeping the liquid celery? Sally,
(19:03):
But there are some if she if you do want
to stock up though, there are some quote unquote everlasting
foods that CBS News sided, and these things are not.
It's not too surprising. Although honey was a surprising one
because I've had old honey before, and I have I'm
guilty of throwing away honey because it does. It does hard.
All you have to do is heat it up and
(19:25):
then re kind of mix it up and it's fine.
But uh, liquor, thank goodness, rice, sugar, corn starch, distilled
white vinegar, pure vanilla extract not imitation, pure vanilla extract,
and salt. Yeah, and with all of those things you
could make, not well, a stiff drink and that's about it. Well.
(19:48):
I was also happy to see about olive oil that
that's pretty much okay for two years after the manufactured date.
But after that time, it's not like it's going to
kill you. After that, it's still safe. It's just the
color and flavor might be affected, just like all that
other stuff we talked about, because I am guilty of
throwing away olive oil that I thought maybe I had
too long. So essentially what we have learned from all
(20:08):
of this is that we should ignore or start ignoring
expiration dates except for infant formula and the baby foods,
and be braver. Yeah, but also try to just buy
what you need. Well, yeah, that's true, Sally. Oh, I
hope your mom listens to this episode. I don't think
(20:29):
she knows how to work it. And by it I
mean the computer, the internet, podcast technology, anything, and celery
and cellery. So I hope this was a good primer
on food waste. This will help cut down on holiday
food waste. I mean, everybody's guilty of it at some point.
And also like that that was one thing that they
(20:51):
pointed out in the slate test Slate article that I
think we did mention like one in doubt, just use
a smell test, Yeah, smells funky, then okay, But until then,
you know, eat it. And if you get a little
food poisoning, no, I'm just kidding, you'll be fine. You'll
be okay. So let us know your thoughts out there.
(21:11):
If we have any grossers, I would like to hear
from you. If you're like, no, gosh, no, people should
certainly pay attention to expiration dates. Let us know your thoughts.
So Mom's stuff at Discovery dot com is where you
can send them. And speaking which, we got a couple
of letters for you. But before we get to that,
we've got a quick word from our sponsor that brought
(21:34):
you this episode, and it is jackthreads dot com. Just
in time for the holidays, you can head over to
Jack Threads to find some new cool duds for any
dudes in your life. Now. The reason why you want
to head over to Jack Throws to check things out
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(22:16):
is up to eighty percent off. What better time to
save than around the holidays. So again it's jackdreads dot
com slash mom. And now back to our letters. Here's
a letter from Michel about our podcast on interracial marriage.
Michel writes, my parents were married eight years after Loving
(22:38):
Versus Virginia. Technically, interracial marriage was legal in their state
before that, but it's still weird to think that it
was that recent. My sister is an interracial child, and
if you look back on pictures, she has definitely gone
through faces of looking more Asian versus more white. Some
people do ask her now if she's Polynesian, among other things,
mostly because she has dark hair. In most other states
(22:58):
it wouldn't even be a question. But because of that,
she has identified more with her Asian background as an
adult than she did as a kid. I wish I
could say that the people who still believe interracial marriage
is bad or all of an older generation, but I
have met people in their teens or twenties who have
very strong beliefs about it. One of them tell certain
interracial kids that they should marry their minority side, while
(23:19):
telling others that it's okay for them to marry white
because to him they are white. Ironically, his parents and
grandparents have never held those beliefs, so we don't know
where it came from. My grandpa was in Pearl Harbor,
and subsequently, even though my mom is Korean, my dad
did worry about what my grandpa would think when he
brought my mom home the first time. Considering his background,
(23:39):
no one would have blamed him for freaking out, but
he was always accepting and we're pretty sure my mom
was always his favorite of the daughter in laws. I
have noticed that even with interracial couples where one party
is white, people still assume in some cases that that's
how all of them must be if they see these
couples misbehaving. Subsequently, I do expect more from Asian white
interracial couples because they are represent my parents too, despite
(24:01):
a lot of differences. Though, my parents are proof that
all of the crap used by those against interracial marriage
is just that crap. So thanks Michel, Well, I've got
one here about interracial marriage as well from Hannah, who
also hails from Atlga. Hello neighbor. She says, I am,
in fact in an interracial relationship with a Dominican American
(24:22):
man from New Jersey, and I am white, white, white.
By that, I mean every kind of Anglo Saxon guild,
all sex together in a pool of Prussian, Scotch, Irish English,
in a pinch of Cherokee. My partner and I have
talked a lot about our heritage, how he is descended
from the invasion of the Spanish, when Christopher Columbus landed
on the island now known as Haiti and the Dominican Republic,
and how my family came to the American mainland sometime
(24:44):
way back in the eighteen hundreds. Ultimately, we are both
European invasion babies, and when we get right down to
the nitty gritty, we are in no way try to
justify our relationship. We are just fascinated by our own
genetic history. We are modern people, still in our twenties.
So when we heard both of our fathers say he's
not white and she's white, it was pretty amazing to us.
(25:05):
We found our mothers to be on equal level of
acceptance with us and not even considering race in juxtaposition
to our father's reaction. And she goes on to say
that she and her partner have been together for seven
years and they are They got engaged almost immediately, but
have not gotten married yet. She's wondering whether or not
they will, but certainly clearly the interracial aspect will not
(25:29):
be a factor in that. So thanks to folks for
writing in Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com is where
you can send your letters. You can also find us
on Facebook and like us there and follow us on
Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast, and you can also follow
us over at our blog on Tumblr at Stuff Mom
Never Told You dot tumblr dot com. And again, if
(25:50):
you want to learn more about freagans and dumpster diving,
which I mentioned earlier, you can do that at our
website and read how freagans work. It's at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit HowStuffWorks dot com. MHM
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