Man Ate Expired Food for a Year and Lived to Tell About It

ARLINGTON, Va.—Last year, Scott Nash challenged the expiration dates on many food products, eating outdated items and suffering no ill effects, according to The Washington Post.

Nash, CEO of Mom’s Organic Market, consumed a cup of yogurt months after its expiration date and tortillas more than a year old. “I ate heavy cream I think 10 weeks past date and then meat sometimes a good month past its date,” Nash said. “It didn’t smell bad. Rinse it off, good to go.”

The unusual diet was part of his personal, year-long experiment to test the limits of foods that had passed their expiration dates. Apparently, those dates on food labels have less to do with food safety and more about when the manufacturer thinks that product will stop looking and tasting its best. Of course, some foods, such as deli meats, unpasteurized milk and cheese, and prepared foods, such as potato salad that is not reheated, probably should be tossed after their use-by dates for safety reasons.

According to a survey by the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and the National Consumers League, 84% of consumers at least occasionally throw out food because it is close to or past its expiration date, and more than one third (37%) say they always or usually do so. That food waste ends up in landfills, where it generates carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas up to 36 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. In addition to wasting calories and money, tossing food negates the many resources that went into growing, packaging and transporting that food.

How to solve the problem? The FDA, researchers and the grocery manufacturing industry largely agree on an initial solution to part of the problem: clearer package-date labels. In 2017, the grocery industry, led by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute, announced a voluntary standard on food-date labeling.

They narrowed the many date-label terms down to two: “best if used by” and “use by.” “Best if used by” describes product quality and means that the outdated product might not taste as good past but it’s still safe to eat. “Use by” is for products that are highly perishable and should be used or tossed by that date. 

As previously reported in NACS Daily, the FDA announced in May that it “strongly supports” the GMA and FMI efforts to use the “best if used by” label to designate food quality. When it comes to food safety, the FDA said that manufacturers can put whatever terminology they want to convey a health risk. While the FDA is encouraging manufacturers to use “best if used by” as a best practice, it is still not required by law. In fact, there is no federal law that requires dates on food, except for infant formula.

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