How To Tell If Meat & Other Foods Are Expired

Should your eggs float? How bad should your cheese smell? And can you really trust a tomato? It depends. Let's talk about the consequences of getting it wrong. While it's natural to not want to take the risk with fresh meat if something seems a little off, the New Survivalist says that properly canned meat may last far longer than you would expect. Although the date printed on the can may only be a year or two away from the date you purchased it, some types of canned meat can last up to 10 years if properly stored. It isn't just the canning process itself that gives canned meat an incredible shelf life. The food's high salt content also does a lot to help preserve. Other preservatives, such as nitrates, may also be present and extend the length of time the meat will be safe to eat. However, while salt and other preservatives will stretch out your canned meat shelf life, sugar and acidic sauces will do the opposite. A can of corned beef may last a decade, but a tin of meatballs and a sweet tomato sauce will go bad much faster. So if an older can is in good condition and contains some form of salted meat, eating it probably won't do you any harm. If the can is swollen, punctured, or rusted, however, you shouldn't take the risk. But everything has a shelf life, so I must eat and then replace everything that's about to expire. It's nice not to have to plan my meals. While canned meat has a couple of preservation methods on its side, raw beef, chicken, and pork usually don't. That said, fresh meat is a great way to illustrate how expiration dates are really just guidelines. And a guideline can be wrong. As Livestrong explains, improperly handled and stored fresh meat could actually be unsafe to eat before its expiration date has passed. If you buy a cut of meat with three days to go and leave it on the counter during the summer, that food could be full full of dangerous microorganisms, regardless of what the date label says. At the same time, if stored properly, there's a chance meat will be good after its expiration date has passed. Freezing can also help keep food safe for extended periods of time, and the USDA has extensive guidelines to make sure you're doing it right. They also claim raw meat is a better candidate for freezing than its cooked counterpart, as raw foods will usually have a higher moisture content, making them easier to freeze. As with all canned foods, the condition of the can itself is more important than an expiration date. Extensive rust, holes or swelling could indicate that harmful bacteria have made their way into the can. Eating anything that's gone bad can be highly dangerous and even fatal in some cases. Assuming the can is in good condition, the main thing to be aware of is the soup's acidity levels and what effects that can have on the can itself. Acidic soups like tomato can react with their containers, and the soup's quality can be impacted as a result. If you want to eat an acidic soup at its best, you may have less than two years to do so. If you choose to eat expired tomato soup and the can seems to be OK on the outside, you probably won't feel any ill effects with the really old canned soup. There is something else to consider. Cans manufactured before 1991 may be very hazardous for your health because lead was one of the materials used during can manufacturing, so it really isn't worth the risk. Don't eat metal Don't eat metal Bread has been a dietary staple for centuries and can go bad in several ways depending on the conditions it is stored in. If mold develops, bread should be discarded and not eaten. While a lot of molds are harmless, some can have damaging toxins and ingesting them is not worth the risk. It's also important to note that if mold is spotted on one slice that doesn't make another safe to eat, the whole loaf should be thrown away. According to Healthline, eating moldy bread can lead to stomach problems and cause damage to your gut Biome, increasing your chances of developing an illness. If the bread smells, looks, and feels fine, you can probably eat it without any ill effects. Bread can also dry out and go stale. Eating stale bread isn't necessarily bad, and if the only issue is some dryness, you can ingest the bread without any ill effects. Stale bread actually tends to make better toast. It's also worth keeping in mind that preservative stacked commercial loaves will stay in their store bought conditions far longer than the artisan stuff. As with most other foods, storage conditions are more important for maintaining freshness than anything printed on the packaging, and pasta should be kept in a cool, dry place if you want it to remain edible for as long as possible. While heat and moisture can cause it to go off, properly stored pasta is one of those foods that can remain safe to eat indefinitely. How the pasta looks might give more indication of its quality than any on date the manufacturer has slapped on there. With off pasta crumbling or appearing dry and brittle without any moisture, microbes can't grow and the chances of foodborne illness are minimal. However, if your pasta did get damp at one point, it could develop mold. As with the fungus that grows on old bread, ingesting moldy pasta can lead to health problems, per the Cleveland Clinic. So if it looks, smells, or tastes off, do not take the risk. According to the USDA, any fish that isn't frozen will only last a few days with proper storage. The fish that does make it into the freezer will be edible indefinitely, regardless of the expiration date, but may not have a desirable texture or flavor by the time it makes it onto your plate. This usually gets worse the longer the fish is frozen, and with fish, that's an important thing to keep in mind. The USDA recommends frozen cooked fish be eaten within three months and frozen raw fish in under eight months if you want a palatable meal. Fish can spoil if left at room temperature for as little as two hours. Rotten fish, along with other off seafood, can be a breeding ground for dangerous bacteria, according to Aqua Find. That's what leads to food poisoning. A bucket Pharmacy Rice is one of the world's most popular foods, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it can be stored indefinitely. It usually comes as a bag of dried grains, but unlike other dried foods such as pasta, your rice can have some very unpleasant things living on it. In terms of average shelf life, white rice is usually good for two years, whereas Helpline estimates that the brown rice you have stored could be past its best after around just six months. Signs of spoilage can include the presence of insects, strange coloring, an oily texture, or the presence of mold. As with many grains, mold is a danger when eating a product that has been in storage for a while. However, rice can also be dangerous when cooked. It can contain a bacteria called Bacillus cereus, which is not destroyed by the cooking process. The toxins produced by these bacteria can cause food poisoning if ingested. The shelf life of canned vegetables will vary depending on the characteristics of the vegetable itself. On average, most canned vegetables can be eaten a couple of years past their sell by date with no I'll effects. The heat and salt applied during the canning process tend to stretch out the life of most canned vegetables, though some nutritional value is lost along the way. As with other canned goods, the actual lifespan will depend on the exact vegetable that has been canned and what it's been canned with. There are some things to consider. For example, peas canned and water will last longer than beans in a tomato sauce as the acidic sauce will react with the can. The canning process sterilizes the cans contents, so as long as the container isn't heavily rusted, punctured or damaged, the food within won't spoil. While you won't get food poisoning as long as the can is in good condition, the further canned vegetables go past the printed sell by date, the greater the loss of nutritional value. Flavor, texture and the vegetables appearance can also be impacted. If you've ever found an old chocolate bar, you may notice a white substance may have appeared to have grown over its surface. This substance is something called bloom, per HuffPost. It isn't dangerous at all and does not indicate a chocolate bar is inedible. Good news, how long a bar of chocolate will remain good to eat depends on a few factors. The 1st is the type of chocolate you're storing, pure dark chocolate. Chocolate lasts longer than any other kind as it contains no dairy products. Milk chocolate stays fresh for about a year. White chocolate tends to taste old after just a few months due to its high dairy content, though it probably shouldn't even count as it doesn't actually contain any chocolate. Eating chocolate that's a while past its sell by date could also have some benefits. The High Five Company says that some in the chocolate world believe the confection can develop new, complex flavors as it ages, a bit like wine does. So if you bite into an older bar, there's a chance you'll find it more palatable than a new one. Several varieties of cheese are purposely laced with a desirable species of mold. That mold gives the cheeses their characteristic appearance and contributes greatly to their final flavors. Other cheeses are aged under certain conditions for months or even years. But all of this takes place in a carefully controlled environment. So what do you do with the cheese in your fridge which exceeds its sell by date? The chances are you can eat it without any ill effects. Depending on the cheese, it may have simply matured further and will taste more intense as a result. If the cheese in question is medium or hard, any mold that has developed can be cut around and discarded. If soft cheese gets moldy, however, the fungus has probably penetrated deep within the cheese and it should be thrown out. Eating expired cheese that smells like ammonia or makes your mouth tingle or burn could easily lead to foodborne illness, according to Can it Go Bad? Preserves like jam can remain perfectly edible years past their sell by date if stored within a sealed container. Perfectly edible doesn't mean as good as new though, and older jams can lose a lot of the sweet, fruity flavors that make you want to eat them in the 1st place. Open jars are a different story and require closer inspection and will likely develop mold or other issues within a year. Flavors tend to disappear with an few months, so don't let it sit around. If mold is visible or any odd smells are present, eating the jam is probably not worth the risk. Depending on what's contaminating your jam, there's also a small chance of alcohol developing within your preserves. If the correct strain of yeast makes its way in there and starts eating the sugar, you'll probably get a touch of booze and your fruity spread, and it should be discarded. While eating some expired products may just leave you with an off flavor in your mouth, eating expired eggs can have some pretty dire consequences. Eggs have been known to harbor a pathogen called salmonella, which really doesn't get along with the human digestive system. Symptoms of salmonella infection include vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhea, and fever, according to the CDC. Fortunately, with modern food safety practices, an egg has a three to five week fridge life before it has a good chance chance of making you sick. Well it wasn't in a treat, it was in a hole. Yeah, I mean think a rats egg or something. There are a few ways to tell that your eggs are off. The most notable is its smell. A rotten egg has a distinct sulfurous smell and won't taste much better. Other indicators your egg is far from fresh are a powdery shell, red indoor white spots on the yolk, excessive runniness of the whites, discoloration of the yolk, and a pink yolk. If you see any of these, toss them. There's also a simple test to help check if an egg is fresh enough to eat. Put the egg in a glass or bowl of water. If it floats, throw it away. If it sinks to the bottom, the egg is edible.