The use-by date
"It's gone off already! I mean cheese, basically, hasn't it?" David Mitchell
Or as somebody said, in response to a question as to whether you could eat gone off cheese - yes you can but it tastes horrible. Personally I cannot come at any kind of blue cheese, or the strong goat's cheeses, anything strong and gone-off tasting really - even though they are all sort of designed to be gone off. And yes, cheese is sort of gone off milk. They put stuff in it to make it curdle which is kind of going off. Nevertheless it can eventually go off. Mind you I did see on a program about regional Italian food, on tv some time ago, Antonio Carlucci I think it was, having to eat a blue cheese that was actually crawling with maggots. Even he was a bit taken aback. The locals saw it as a delicacy. You had to eat the maggots too. Well I guess the Aboriginals eat wichety grubs. The picture above, by the way is of a Stilton cheese (home-made it has to be declared, but not by me - by an 'expert') - and no it hasn't gone off. Which is really interesting isn't it? I mean why is it alright to eat gone-off milk in the form of cheese and not gone-off milk itself, or yoghurt?
In days gone by - in my youth - we just had to guess if something had gone off by the look or the smell. And frankly it was more likely to go off too as refrigeration was a relatively new thing and not available to all. We only had a tiny fridge - most of the stuff we now put in the fridge was actually put in a stone walled larder. My grandmother had no fridge at all, and in summer kept her milk in a bucket of cold water in the shade. But going back to gone-off milk - I reckon you could eat it anyway - as sour cream, or make it into cheese yourself. Probably wouldn't taste that good, but you never know.
But back to the use-by date. I have to confess that mostly I do not pay much attention to it - I still tend to judge whether anything has gone off by the look or the smell or by how long it has been left in the fridge. Because basically I think the use-by date is just the manufacturer's covering themselves. Some of these labels are actually 'best before' dates anyway. But it does seem as if everything has a use by date these days. And my children are pretty ruthless about it, throwing out anything that's even a day over the use-by date. We, on the other hand, wait until it smells - we currently have some milk that is theoretically ten days over, but which seems to be OK. I do smell it every time I use it though. I guess I regard it a bit like eating dirt when small. Increases your resistance. Mind you I am careful about meat and fish - and if you're not sure about eggs put them in a bowl of water. If they float they have gone off.
Then there's tinned food. I remember doing a module (that's what they would call it nowadays) at school in biology on preserving food and the various ways you could do this. And I do remember that canning was said to be almost foolproof. If I am not mistaken an example was given of finding some cans from Scott's expedition to whichever Pole it was, opening them and finding that they were still eatable. Mind you they had a double whammy in that they were probably frozen as well. I also remember from somewhere hearing that in Siberia they hung their meat out of the window in winter - because, of course, it just froze and was kept fresh that way. All cans these days have a use-by date though. So was my teacher wrong? I think the idea of canning was to remove all the air through heat, so that it was a vacuum in there, and therefore no bacteria. But this is my childhood memory speaking. I'm probably completely wrong.
So do we need a use-by date?
Well no, not for everything. What started this article was an article that David found in The Huffington Post about foods that never ever go off. Many of them are the things we use to preserve stuff - some are not. And lots of them are not good for you really, even though they are all except one, natural products. So what are they?
Top of the list is honey - yes it crystallises but some people like it that way anyway and if you warm it the crystals disappear. The bees are obviously on to something. Their food supply won't go off. And here are the others - there are eleven in all - some are expected, but some are pretty surprising.
First there are the three that I knew would be there, because these are the things you use to preserve stuff - vinegar (they specify white vinegar), salt and sugar. Maple syrup I guess is a sort of sugar/honey thing so probably not that surprising. Neither is what they call hard liquor - i.e. spirits and liqueurs. Not wine - probably doesn't have as much sugar in it. Then we have the surprises - real vanilla extract, rice (not brown rice, but all the others), dried beans - they may get pretty bullet like but they are still eatable apparently, cornstarch (why cornstarch and not flour?) and most frightening of all, instant coffee. Apparently none of these things will ever, ever go off.
Which is just as well because we have a lot of liqueurs and spirits in our drinks cupboard. And maybe I should try and revive some of those dried beans I have lurking in the back of my pantry.
So don't be rigid about the use-by date. Just use it as a guide to be wary - if it's over the date, check it carefully. Don't go binging on Nescafe with lots of sugar though - not good for you for all sorts of other reasons.
