In order to determine when a product is no longer up to snuff, manufacturers recruit experts to tell them. One such expert firm is the National Food Lab located in Livermore, California.
This company takes food and leaves it on shelves for days, weeks, and even years to see how it holds up. Then, at controlled intervals, the food is presented to a highly trained panel of experts who assess the food for taste, smell, and texture. They then assign a food grade in numbers; the lower the number, the poorer the quality. Needless to say, the numbers go down as the food gets older.
Food manufacturers consider these numbers when determining best-before dates. So, if a product was designed to be a 7 when it was fresh, but gets a 6.2 after a certain length of time, the manufacturer can draw the line at that point. Interestingly, many foods that are assessed at lower values still taste good — and are safe to eat — it's just that the manufacturer is no longer satisfied with the level of quality.
As noted, expiration dates don't indicate safety. And as experts claim, they're often still good to eat past the best-before date. An NPR report explains:
According to [John] Ruff, most products are safe to eat long after their expiration date. In fact, even meat or milk that's clearly starting to spoil is not necessarily dangerous. "Very often, you won't eat it because of the smell, and you probably won't like the taste, but in a lot of cases, it's unlikely to cause you illness," he says.
That's because it's not the food that sat on the shelf too long that makes you sick, Ruff says. It's the food that got contaminated with salmonella or listeria bacteria, or disease-causing strains of E. coli. And that food might not smell bad as it might have arrived in the store only yesterday.
"In 40 years, in eight countries, if I think of major product recalls and food poisoning outbreaks, I can't think of [one] that was driven by a shelf-life issue," Ruff says.
- More Here
This company takes food and leaves it on shelves for days, weeks, and even years to see how it holds up. Then, at controlled intervals, the food is presented to a highly trained panel of experts who assess the food for taste, smell, and texture. They then assign a food grade in numbers; the lower the number, the poorer the quality. Needless to say, the numbers go down as the food gets older.
Food manufacturers consider these numbers when determining best-before dates. So, if a product was designed to be a 7 when it was fresh, but gets a 6.2 after a certain length of time, the manufacturer can draw the line at that point. Interestingly, many foods that are assessed at lower values still taste good — and are safe to eat — it's just that the manufacturer is no longer satisfied with the level of quality.
As noted, expiration dates don't indicate safety. And as experts claim, they're often still good to eat past the best-before date. An NPR report explains:
According to [John] Ruff, most products are safe to eat long after their expiration date. In fact, even meat or milk that's clearly starting to spoil is not necessarily dangerous. "Very often, you won't eat it because of the smell, and you probably won't like the taste, but in a lot of cases, it's unlikely to cause you illness," he says.
That's because it's not the food that sat on the shelf too long that makes you sick, Ruff says. It's the food that got contaminated with salmonella or listeria bacteria, or disease-causing strains of E. coli. And that food might not smell bad as it might have arrived in the store only yesterday.
"In 40 years, in eight countries, if I think of major product recalls and food poisoning outbreaks, I can't think of [one] that was driven by a shelf-life issue," Ruff says.
- More Here
No comments:
Post a Comment