" Sell by" dates. What do you think?

I should say the freezer was outside so the breakdown wasnt immediately apparent.....not sure how long it had been merrily defrosting....but we are ok!

We recently had a problem with the freezer and a lot of meat and seafood partially/ completely defrosted. Some of it was getting on a bit datewise. I got rid of the soggy veg but cooked the rest, refroze and we are making our way through it.
No ill effects so far.....

Count me in, Appears we are all singing from the same 'hymn sheet'

I have to do food hygiene training for my job, and the word is that whilst at home, our senses are enough to tell us if something needs throwing away.

Just had a good clear out of the fridge this morning. Found two jars of opened curry paste with best before dates of 2014, and an instruction to use within a fortnight of opening. I did bin those but on the whole don't take a lot of notice of dates for dried or canned food. MIL isn't a drinker and one Christmas she offered us a glass of wine from an opened bottle of Lambrusco. She said she was sure it would be OK having been opened the Christmas before. Apart from being flat it tasted fine!

When little my DD was v concerned when I cooked fresh veg in packets where 'sell by' date had gone by; I pointed out to her that vegetables don't come out of the ground with a sell-by date, and you look/smell to check - she was happy with that

I'm notoriously 'tight' regarding throwing things away that might still be edible. My family always regard anything I cook with suspicion.

Gillybob, I have to hide dates as well. I'm a bit more fussy than I used to be about things from years back but dried pasta seems OK. The 'eat within 4 days' things irritate me.

I despair of my DD where dates are concerned, good job she doesn't look in my cupboards.

I very much go by smell, looks & taste. I am very sensitive to milk going off, I can taste it starting to "turn" a day or two before anybody else. I hate yogurt as that just tastes sour to me. Cheese with a touch of mould (except blue cheese which can develop a dangerous mould) is trimmed, grated & frozen.

Veg is used, trimmed if necessary, in stir fry/casserole etc. Fruit doesn't last long enough so that it never goes off in my home

I was recently tidying my cupboards, I found a box of lasagne sheets, Exp 2009, they went only because I no longer make lasagne.

On the whole, I ignore sell-by dates. Wheat products do go stale due to the oils in them, but personally I would give the spag a try before binning it...

If food looks and smells OK, I eat it. Like another poster, I do hide the dates from DH who is extremely fussy!

The industry tends to put very short "shelf life" on many foods. This encourages folk who believe in the sell-by date to toss the absolutely edible food in the trash and go out and buy new food. What a clever way of ensuring extra turnover. Sadly, the younger generations have difficulties in judging whether food is still OK to eat or not. My young neighbour would not even feed food 2 days before the sell-by-date to her cat

AuntieFlo. ...Camp Coffee, I was thinking about that yesterday. My mum used to buy it. I haven't had it for years.

Ignore dates on veg but nothing else , wish I could

I ignore the dates, even if it's in the fridge I smell, check and if it's yogurts I taste.
If the bacon looks a bit greyishgreen I smell it first.

If it smells off, a funny colour, growing mould or tastes fizzy it goes out. It's wicked to waste food. Sell by dates are just a ruse to get you to by more. Common sense should prevail.

I understand that older rye flour can be dangerous, stale nuts or dried fruit are not really pleasant, and flour in general can get "musty" but otherwise I eat anything that is not obviously off. Once they've been opened I think that the quality falls more quickly if they are older, especially if they have been frozen for a long time.

Last week, I found a can of spicy parsnip soup at the back of a cupboard, . It was marked BBE Nov 2011 but we ate it anyway. It was delicious.

DH's grandfather was a "horder" and when he died we found a tin of rice pud already well past its use by date; the family refused to touch it, so I scoffed it and very delicious it was too. Tins and dried foods no problem and normally prepared to take eggs, cheese and veg as potentially OK, depending . . . Dairy normally not except unopened cream carton within a day or so. Meat never. Reduced late expiry ready meals if there is room in the freezer. I remember a story about a stock of corned beef tins found years after their sell by date and seem to recall that they were reported as fine.

Morning all! I wouldn't give it a second thought. I'd eat it without hesitation and many other things as well. However...I wouldn't serve it to anyone else until I had confirmed no adverse effects on myself. Practise this regularly. Give little credence to dates but, of course, common sense trips in with appearance and smell of the better known offenders. Never suffered so far into this ripe old age but I do realise.....it only takes once!

I was always much taken with the Groomkirby family in N F Simpson's 'One-way Pendulum' - Mrs Groomkirby paid their charwoman, Myra Gantry, to eat all their left-over food.

When a friend helped clear her grandparents' rambling old farmhouse house, about 15 years ago, they found a car hidden in a sort of underground garage, a Morris Minor. Even more astonishing, the boot was filled with tinned whole chickens, in those vaguely chicken-shaped tins you used to get.

The tins still had the price on, 19/6, and when they took a chance and opened one, it looked and smelled perfectly fine. No one was willing to actually eat any, though, and they dumped the whole lot, which I thought was a shame as possibly a museum might have wanted one or two.

As the UK went decimal around 1970, I think, those chickens had remained pretty well preserved for more than 30 years!

Whether or not to eat food past its date very much depends on your state of health. Some people have stomachs of iron!

JackyB Re the old jar of Marmite . I have left odd jars of that with water in to wash them out and forgotten them.

The smell of gone off Marmite is really foul as is that artificial "cream" Elmlea.

JackyB Re the old jar of Marmite . I have left odd jars of that with water in to wash them out and forgotten them.

The smell of gone off Marmite is really foul as is that artificial "cream" Elmlea.

They are seriously overrated in general but I think I might throw out pasta that old .
Pasta is a flour product and it does stale.
(As I looked at my open two yr old pack of lasagne.)
I decided that if used it and it was stale it would waste the other ingredients. Tins and jars are a different matter. As for vegetables etc you use your judgement.