If there are two items on the shelf X and Y, such that (< (best-before X) (best-before Y)), then you know X is the older item.
A jar of peanut butter that is best before January 2025 is one month older than one that is February 2025. Therefore, of course, you want to grab the latter one.
Whether it's actually good until February 2025 is just someone's opinion.
Furthermore, if you know that X is a month older than Y, then you know something else: X is at least a month old, today. If you buy the January 2025 jar of peanut butter, you're getting something that was already around for a month when the February 2025 jar was just made, assuming they keep the best before offset the same between runs. And then add the time it took for the jars to arrive to that store shelf.
I would much rather see "date packaged" on every product.
For instance, roasted coffee beans are not very good past only two or three weeks, but not in a way that you would get sick from consuming them. (You can keep them in the freezer to keep the flavor a bit longer.) The exact roast date is important, which they often don't want you to know, substituting a fictitious best before date which includes a generous margin regarding how long it's going to sit in warehouses and on store shelves.
Hm, I’m guilty of picking up the sliced bread at the back because I know it’ll last longer and involve less waste on my part. I guess they should produce less then?
There are times when there is only one left of my favorite bread, so I take that one. There are enough people who don't care. The store staff can notice that people bought all the May 25 loaves they put out, so that only the May 11 breads are left on the shelf, and refrain from putting out any more May 25s (or newer) until the May 11s are gone. If that doesn't move the May 11s, as a last resort, they can sticker them 25% off rather than throwing them away.
The store has full control over their algorithm for avoiding waste, and full control over what they put onto the shelf. They have all the tools for solving the problem, even in the face of some shoppers going for the newest date.
>A jar of peanut butter that is best before January 2025 is one month older than one that is February 2025. Therefore, of course, you want to grab the latter one
I don't follow you. In a few weeks I'll have eaten it all, I don't even look at the BBE on things like peanut butter.
It was an assumption that you will choose the more value for your money, even if it is pretty negligible.
Some people do the opposite, when they buy something they choose the less value for their money (when it is negligible), if it maximizes the total value for the society.
It frustrates me to no end when people do this with items that expire in a year. You aren't even maximizing your utility, you're just doing the shopping equivalent of "rolling coal".
Right, I'd get that if it were a case of wanting to store it for a long time or fresh food/things with a much shorter shelf life. I don't personally see any difference in value for this example.
If you know you'll consume it long before that date, then it certainly doesn't matter much. However, for those who buy infrequently and intend to store products for longer, it make sense to get the most recent production.
What makes it not matter is if you believe the opinion of the best before date to be true: if the stuff is just fine for a year, then it being a month older makes no difference.
I'm of the opinion that fresher is fresher.
What's my incentive for taking the older stuff, if it's not discounted?
Only this one: saving a few seconds by not looking.
if it's in a can or box with a date that far into the future, using the word "fresh" seems incorrect in all aspect to me.
if you want fresh, you shop on the outer walls of the super market. anything on the interior aisles is not fresh. I wish it were a thing that as you continued to the innermost sections the "food" became more processed, and instead of aisles, it was just a spiral to that point.
Regardless, the point remains. Peanut butter is never fresh if it's in a grocery store. If you want fresh peanut butter, you'll need to find a way to buy it unsealed within the day made from the manufacturer or make it yourself.
Really, fresh peanut butter would really just be blended fresh peanuts until it reaches the consistency you want. That's a lot easier to do than making your own salad dressing.
I am not sure how this applies to my comment, but I agree that if peanut butter is so simple to make then it is best to do it yourself (we do not use peanut butter and it is not sold in normal supermarkets here so I am glad to have learnt something :))
I did at one time grind peanuts(not fresh) with Bamix... It is not actually too fast process. I would say that some salad dressings are much less work. At least without proper tooling.
Still, now I wonder what exactly would be "fresh" peanut?
How much it matters really depends where you shop. Places like Grocery Outlet, or places that don't have super frequent business like small rural grocery stores, can be selling food that _right up to_ the best-by date.
The mom & pop Asian grocery in my hood has a discount section where basically everything is past the best by date. It's all packaged cookies and spice mixes and the kind of thing that won't kill you if it "expired" a week ago though.
But I sure do for milk, eggs, yogurt, certain cheeses.
It directly affects whether I might have to toss the last third of the milk by the time I get around to drinking it. Or whether the cheese will be growing mold before I finish it.
The point is that just because the best-before date is a year from now doesn't erase the fact that one item on the store shelf is a month older than another identical one.
what does it say about the store you are at that has food that has dates that far apart? most products are received at the store from the factory from the same batch which means sameish dates. so how do the dates on the products vary that much on the shelf unless some gamesmanship is being done somewhere.
If peanut butter comes in cases of 24 that are in pallets of 144 cases and is delivered every month to the regional distribution center, many stores will have both the month and ++month product on the shelf at the same time. The alternative is to be frequently out of stock.
It just says that they restocked half empty shelf with newer stuff. The factory is not sending new batches every day. Month apart on something that is valid for years is oftentimes how they are spaced.
Small nit - coffee beans are often times better after 10-14 days of roasting and have had some time for degassing when making espresso. Earlier than that and you will get a lot more creme than you really want if you are going for a balanced shot. But in the end it’s all taste so I can also be wrong for your personal situation.
In the supermarket you'll never find coffee that fresh, so you won't really have to worry about that. If you buy directly from a roaster you do have to pay attention to this, though some roasters write that date as well on the package so you know the coffee should still rest a bit.
A best before date is literally a manufacturer recommendation about the time for which the quality of their product is practically as good as new. Absent specific information to the contrary, I typically trust the manufacturer's recommendation; they are certainly able to make a better informed guess than I am. Thus, I consider each of a product which I expect to use by the best by date equivalent to one another, and I don't prefer a newer one just because it's newer.
> Absent specific information to the contrary, I typically trust the manufacturer's recommendation; they are certainly able to make a better informed guess than I am.
This works the other way too: if you have information about the aging of the product because you tried it out one time, then you can pretty much just ignore what the manufacturer says.
The label can also be wrong. Just because someone stamped a product with something doesn't make it a fact. It's just the manufacturer's opinion on the matter, and their opinion may be or may not be credible like every other source of information.
Just because they appear authority-like does not make their opinion more valid.
Manufacturer's recommendation is based on what they can be sued for not things like bad taste and such which personally matter. Also storage conditions are not always followed when moving or storing the product.
Between two products with different best before dates I would just go and get a product that listed actual manufacturing date :)
Improper storage affects longevity. To estimate longevity at a suspect store you need to know actual manufacturing date not manufacturer's arbitrary best before.
But it doesn't even have to be stored improperly. If you see that this loaf is made two days ago, you will go and find a better place with fresher bread with fewer preservatives or whatever. Manufacturers and sellers obviously don't like it though. So they present you a choice between best before 1 or 2 days from now. Good eh? If you see two loaves with 1 day best-before difference, you'll go for the one with lower date and calmly go home eat your stale bread.
Or you learn to simply ignore the best before and buy bread where you know manufacturing date.
Of course if you are in a third world country likely no one audits factories for compliance and the manufacturing date is also pulled out of someone's ass.
Usually, with a lot of products, the expiry date is just an indicator. I ate 12+ year old pastas, 2+ year old sauces I found in our pantry and they were indistinguishable from half year old items. Well, the sauces actually had a much better taste than the ones used before expiry.
I'd rather see an expiry date plus some indicator that after the expiry date how fast would it spoil, or what changes it will go through, if ever.
The problem is that different foods have widely differently ways of spoilage. Date packaged is meaningless unless you exactly know the ingredients of the product, its ratios, and somehow can determine when it will go bad.
For something like coffee with one ingredient, it’s obvious. That’s why a lot of single-ingredient products like coffee or lettuce already have a packaged-on date.
>A jar of peanut butter that is best before January 2025 is one month older than one that is February 2025. Therefore, of course, you want to grab the latter one.
Only if they're the same brand. Some brands have different shorter best before dates, within what's permissible, than others.
We produce and sell cheese. The best by date we put on it is required by some regulation or other. The date is mostly arbitrary. If the package is still sealed and the best by date is a year ago, congratulations. Your medium cheddar is now sharp cheddar.
If you opened the package of some fresh Colby, and the best by date is 3 months in the future (so it's been open for 3 months), you're going to have to trim a lot of mold off of it and it probably won't even taste that great anymore.
Really it would be more accurate to say: best before X time after opening or X time after purchasing, whichever is first.
But even then: if someone buys the sharp because they like it, they'll very possibly like it more as it ages to extra sharp, even though it passes the best by date.
>At least in Europe we sometimes have a “do not consume after” which is when the product is expected to go bad, not just off.
Sometimes yes but only on products known to spoil quickly and become dangerous to your health. But still even most dairy has best before and not to be consumed by.
> I would much rather see "date packaged" on every product.
...it's not there already in the US? Over here, there is always a "production date" on the packaging, and then additionally it's either a "best before" date, or a "shelf life" time. But to put just a best-before date without the production date?.. That's insane. Why even omit that?
One can argue that it has negative value for the customer.
Advantages: a fancy fact, satisfies your curiosity
Disadvantages: you can mistake it for the expiration date, especially if that gets less visible for some reason
You can't. There is either one date, and then it's the production date (because it's required), or there are two dates, right next to each other, in which case the later one is the expiration date, and so the shelf life is written somewhere else on the packaging.
For instance. Packaged juice has 1 year shelf life. Pasta has it in the range from 1 to 2 years. Sausages have 1 to 3 months, depending on the exact kind. Some sweet milk deserts have one week. Is this just a fancy fact, or does it give you a hint that if something can survive for 2 years, it may as well be good for 2 years and 2 months while something that has shelf-life of a week probably won't survive for 2 weeks? I think it's the latter, but YMMV of course.
Actually, the disadvantage might be more about how grossed out people might become if they realize how old some of the food on the shelves might be.
Especially if they needed to also include the origination dates of each ingredient, recursively. E.g. The corn was been stored for 10 years in a silo, and this specific box of corn meal was in a warehouse for a quarter of a year. An extreme example, but there was a time when our country had too much corn in storage, which is why the public school lunch program and corn ethanol became programs to use all this extra corn. Not to mention corn syrups.
> the disadvantage might be more about how grossed out people might become if they realize how old some of the food on the shelves might be.
Only if you've never knew that before? I mean, I guess that's true: I know that e.g. cereals and past can go for years if store properly but if you never knew that, it may shock you. But if for you whole life you've seen labels "Shelf time: 18 months" on various foodstuffs, that's just the piece of general ambient knowledge.
> if they needed to also include the origination dates of each ingredient, recursively
Well, this is ridiculous, so they are not required to do that although, of course, there are (self-)regulations on how old can the ingredients be for the manufactirers to be able to claim the shelf-life they want to claim.
If there are two items on the shelf X and Y, such that (< (best-before X) (best-before Y)), then you know X is the older item.
A jar of peanut butter that is best before January 2025 is one month older than one that is February 2025. Therefore, of course, you want to grab the latter one.
Whether it's actually good until February 2025 is just someone's opinion.
Furthermore, if you know that X is a month older than Y, then you know something else: X is at least a month old, today. If you buy the January 2025 jar of peanut butter, you're getting something that was already around for a month when the February 2025 jar was just made, assuming they keep the best before offset the same between runs. And then add the time it took for the jars to arrive to that store shelf.
I would much rather see "date packaged" on every product.
For instance, roasted coffee beans are not very good past only two or three weeks, but not in a way that you would get sick from consuming them. (You can keep them in the freezer to keep the flavor a bit longer.) The exact roast date is important, which they often don't want you to know, substituting a fictitious best before date which includes a generous margin regarding how long it's going to sit in warehouses and on store shelves.