Food Spoilage

Post Reply New Topic

I just got some milk delivered today and the exp is April 30.

Otherwise, since organic is natural, you'd think it would spoil quicker since it doesn't have any "additives".

It can only be UHT then.

I looked and the only thing I could find is a "U". I only found out about it by looking up the pasteurization process online after seeing the exp dates.

Expiry date of pasteurized milk is about 2 weeks only. Only UHT can be kept more than a month.

...and the water supply, but I'm not going to ruin anyone's imagination about the sanctity of their water supply by explaining how it happens.

Ultra pasteurized milk (UHT, like the "Organic Valley" brand of shelf-stabilized boxed milk) has an amazingly long unrefrigerated shelf life, but to me it also tastes halfway boiled/cooked. That's not necessarily a bad thing (I like cooked milk), but I'm one of those people who tries the local low-temp pasteurized (HTST or "normal"/"regular" refrigerated) milk whenever I travel b/c I luv the stuff. Despite being a milk connoisseur, I'm still too chicken to try raw milk.

Wonderful website for these questions:
Eat By Date Dot Com

You should try raw milk, it tastes like pasteurized milk but 10 times better ! A bit sweet, never sickening like UHT milk. It's a real treat and it's easy to digest compared with other kinds of milk.

@MissAlgernon - really? I mean, there are tons of 'artisan' dairies nearby and from what people tell me a number of them sell raw milk, but how real is the danger of contamination?

I've eaten eggs and yogurt far beyond the expiration date- over a month in some cases. No issues.

Milk is good so long as it smells good. I've had milk go bad prior to it's expiration date, and some last a week past it. It's funny, because here in NJ some of our milk has two expiration dates stamped on it. One for NY and one for everywhere else. Ny's dates are 3-4 earlier. Does it expire faster there?

As far as soda and things of that sort, not all dates are "expiration" dates. They are freshness dates. Canned food, for example, can be eaten for years after it's date if the can is not punctured or rusted through. Same with any dry goods like pasta sides, rice-a-roni and all of that sort of thing, chips, etc. The dates are the last date they can guarantee little to no loss of quality.

Any food that does not give off an atypical odor, and does not show visible signs of mold, rot, or insects is typically just fine to be eaten regardless of what date is on the packaging.

Like all raw foods, you just need to take the same kind of precautions as you'd take with steak tartare, sushi, raw egg or even raw cake batter. There are even more problems with people getting sick from bacteria coming from eating salad or touching pet food, because they're less careful about hygiene with those products.
In France, a lot of cheeses there are made with raw milk only as there are specifications making mandatory the use of raw milk for some traditional cheeses, so almost everyone eats them, often daily. The main risk comes from Listeria. On average in France (governmental statistics for 2014), 250 to 370 cases of listeriosis are recorded each year, 4 to 6 cases per million inhabitants.

@MissAlgernon, I don't eat steak tartare, sushi, or raw egg; to me they are not at all enticing. Now, raw cake batter on the other hand..& yeah I know it's the raw egg in it that increases risk. I wash salad ingredients carefully & as a family sanitary food prep is just how we do things. Same with pet food & pets. Where I have fears is the sanitation - or lack of - at the milk producer. How do you verify they are safe, please?

http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/index.html

http://www.stilltasty.com/

http://www.eatbydate.com/

Sorry, I often misunderstand questions when they aren't hyper specific about details I apologize in advance if I'm missing the point again.
Because of the number of cows with mastitis in industrial farms, I wouldn't buy raw milk if it isn't organic.
Here farmers disinfect the cow's udder before milking, bottles are sterile and milk is always kept barely above freezing, its expiration date is 3 days if my memory is good but anyway when you buy it, never keep it more than 48 hours max. But it's local laws for France and not much different from production of pasteurized milk except for expiration date, for other countries I don't know at all. I buy raw milk at a local grocery store, and directly in a farm in a place where i go to vacation, and it's really clean there, but European laws are extremely strict with that.

I checked the expiry date on a small bag of flour and discovered it expired almost a year ago. Even though it looked all right I threw it away. Better safe than sorry, right?

But now I'll have to buy more flour for cooking. I'm planning to make home-made macaroni and cheese this week.