Food Security| Myths
‘Rot On’ Dates and Anaphylactic Ants
The problem with best before dates
We’ve created myths in the western world, and some of them involve food.
Take eggs for example.
In the west, we refrigerate our eggs. while many countries in the world don’t and they’re still considered safe to eat.
It’s because we wet-wash our eggs.
Our health agencies decided that eggs to be sold for human consumption needed to be wet washed, packaged, and then cooled before they’re shipped to stores. They were washed to protect us from the salmonella that might come in contact with the shells.
In most European countries, they don’t wet wash eggs. That leaves the protective coating that occurs naturally on eggs. This coating, called the cuticle, protects the egg from bacteria. An egg with an intact cuticle is less likely to be infected by salmonella as well.
So eggs don’t need to be refrigerated if they aren’t wet washed. Their shelf life is much shorter, about 20 days instead of 40 days for washed and refrigerated eggs. It’s a good thing to know, in case we suddenly find ourselves faced with a scarcity of refrigeration in the future.
Best before dates are another myth.
They were originally created for items that truly have a short shelf life. Items that will go bad if they aren’t refrigerated. Like leaving mayo in the hot sun, they will make you sick if you consume them. For those foods, the ‘best before’ date was a health and safety issue.
The intent was to ensure the customer could purchase the freshest food, as fresh food is a higher quality and has a greater nutritional value.
The trouble is, our litigious society ended up putting a best before date on everything.
Best before dates aren’t expiry dates.
As we say in our house. It’s not a ‘Rot On’ Date.
You can eat food after it’s best before date. It might not be as fresh or the flavor might be slightly different than intended.
We’ve all opened that chocolate bar where the chocolate is a bit stale. It still tasted pretty good, yes, of course, we ate it. It’s chocolate after all. Can chocolate go bad?
The unintended result has been a lot of food waste, as consumers throw out food that is still edible, but is considered “expired”.
Ingredient labeling has gotten completely out of hand as well.
I realize it’s super important to know what’s in processed food. One of my sons has a peanut allergy, so I’ve always read ingredient labels obsessively.
We cooked most meals from scratch as it was easier than trusting that food was labeled correctly.
Again, the labeling has gotten a bit out of hand.
‘Manufactured in a facility that contains peanuts or nut products’ was my favorite. If a peanut came within a mile of that food item, they slapped a disclaimer on it.
One time I was buying ant traps.
You know, the little round metal tins for poisoning ants. You would poke in the holes around the edge of the tin. The idea was the ant would go in and take the poison back to its nest.
I turned it over and out of sheer habit, read the ingredient label.
It said — May contain traces of peanuts.
