Foods That Are Okay To Eat After Their Expiration Date
I bought an enormous supply of hummus from a bulk store last weekend and noticed when I got home that the expiration date is November 5th. I'm planning to plow through until it's gone, but will it kill me?
After all the bulk buying and stocking up we've done this year, this will be good news.
Foods That Are Okay To Eat After Their Expiration Date, according to Eat This:
Bread: 5-7 days past expiration date.
Canned corn: 1-2 years past expiration date.
Hard cheese: weeks after the expiration date.
Milk: 1 week past expiration date.
Pasta: 2 years past expiration date.
Root vegetables: several weeks.
Yogurt: 3 weeks past expiration.
Marinara Sauce: 1-4 weeks past expiration date.
If it's okay to eat canned corn or pasta two years after it expires, why does it have an expiration date in the first place? It seems like the actual expiration would be infinity, but I guess they have to stamp it with something. It's good to know we have more time than we think, and we're under no pressure to pig out and polish it all off. There are others.
Foods That Are Okay To Eat After Their Expiration Date, according to Food Network:
Cake mix - Four to five months
Applesauce - 18 months
Honey - Infinity. Even if it crystallized, it's still safe
Pudding cups - Three to four weeks
Bread - If it's not moldy, it's okay
Chocolate - Several months in the pantry, or three years in the freezer
Peanut butter - One year
Ketchup, mustard, and relish - Two years
And what about the hummus? The bulk buy leaves me with 20 individual containers that expire today, but unopened hummus will actually last a week past the expiration date in the refrigerator, and three to four months in the freezer. Who knew you could freeze that stuff?! I didn't. But that's exactly where my supply will be going if I can't eat twenty containers by this time next week. I will give it a good go, with some carrots.
It can be good to take a risk with the stock market or a new job, but not so much with cheese so it's good to know we have more time. The shelf life on all of those products we bought back in March can probably carry us into 2022, and those are looking like smart buys after all.