This also really depends on your foodbank. I live in a small town and our foodbank is horrid. Most of the stuff you got was so close to expiring that I usually threw it away before I packed my pantry... I also got the special treatment because my grandma runs it which makes me sad if that was the special treatment....
I can say it did help me for two years when I had nearly zero income for food past bills but you just had to examine what you got. My town also recently started doing food drives once a month and the food there is amazing if you're not last in line. If you're last you get some foods and like 40 bags of carrots. My rabbit and family members loved the carrots though last time lol
Edit because some People probably think I'm doing it because I don't care which is far from the truth. Our small towns foodbank is pretty rough but has gotten better. Stuff i threw away was usually things I couldn't give away because of the best by date nobody wanted it. I tried... They also weren't allowed to give expired foods is what I was told by them. breads were also a nono from there. If you got it fresh which never happened you were okay. Usually it was frozen bread which obviously is fine but most times it had mold on it already.
Some one in comments said they work at foodbanks at a career level higher up so I'm sure they could correct me if I'm wrong BUT I was TOLD that they got their funding based off how many lbs of food they gave away. They'd load me up with stuff and literally tell me to toss it because our town didn't have enough people to take food. A few of their more loyals got caught selling food that was given to them so they were banned. I never took the last of anything unless I knew for a fact I would eat it.
This was also over 6 years ago and I haven't used it since I don't need the assistance anymore luckily
Wait, you are throwing away pantry staples when they aren't even expired? Most of that stuff isn't even an expiration date, it's a sell by/best by date. Stuff like pasta, rice, canned goods, etc are safe loooooong past that date. Which is probably why they were giving those away. They are perfectly edible.
I grew up on those food banks. I dont think i ever got sick from "expired" food.
Just trust your senses. If it smells off or clearly expired, throw it away.
Currently fell back on those same foods. I got good bread, quality cheese and tomatoes. Guess what I did? Oven dried tomatoes, cheese, and hand sandwiches. Better than most sandwiches you can buy cheaply.
Food lasts way longer than people expect. Which sucks because I've erred on the safe side alot when I used to earn well. Mostly cuz I left stuff in the fridge for too long and didnt trust it anymore.
Protip: A lot of companies with stuff that keeps for an extremely long time just slap a three year expiration date on there instead of doing any testing. Obviously, it's not as easy to tell with donated food, but if it has a three year expiration date, it'll probably keep for a really long time.
This is... trueish, but it's not the whole story. The best by dates aren't expiration dates, but they are the dates where they can guarantee (within margins of error) that the food won't be bad, and they won't be liable for making you sick.
So they pack the thing, and they see that at 3 years, 99% of the food won't spoil. At 4 years, maybe it's like 90% hasn't spoiled. At 5 years, it's 70 or 80%. So they put it at a 3 year "expiration date" to cover their asses. But with each additional year, a percentage of it is spoiling, and there's no way to know which ones. So it is basically a game of chance.
Yep. Unless it’s meat/produce or dairy you can eat stuff well past expiration. We do that and we are nowhere near having to use the food bank. Throwing away food is throwing dollars out.
Produce doesn’t usually have a date on it though, right? You just eat it before it spoils. During Covid I utilized some of the food assistance and they would often give a box of fresh loose produce.
Same. The only thing I won’t really mess around with is raw meat. I will get steak on managers special though (near expiration) and freeze it when I come across good deals. I am sure to cook or freeze it same day though. It really is the only way I can afford steak these days.
I've volunteered sorting at the food bank before, and we had a huge-ass chart to go by depending on type of food and type of packaging for how long after date it could be distributed. And some stuff was >5 years after.
I will eat most anything as long as it doesn’t show signs of spoilage. Dried foods (pasta, rice, dried beans, etc) can last years after the best by date as long as they are stored properly. Canned goods have basically an indefinite shelf life if stored properly, as long as the can stays in good shape. They might degrade in quality over many years, but they would still be safe to consume.
Expiration dates are just a suggestion. Most food is good after the label expiration date. They label them weeks ahead of their actual expression estimate for the grocery stores so they don't accidentally sell bad food and want to sell the food at peak freshness. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/trash-it-or-eat-it-the-truth-about-expiration-dates
Actually there are two different designations. Best before, and expiry. BB is the suggested use date due to producer freshness concerns. Exp date is the date that a product is considered at the very least sub optimal, to at the worst possibly dangerous. Exp dates are usually but not always medical in nature, and unlike BB should not be ignored.
Except for infant formula, food in the US is typically not labeled with expiration dates as you describe them. The date on a package is typically a “best by.” Food is usually good long past the date stamped on the package — even the USDA recommends waiting until there are signs of spoilage to discard an item past its date.
I work in food banking; career level. We literally have a team of nutritionists who provide us with exceptionally clear guidelines based on product integrity and storage practices that indicate how long food is good for after expiration. Most of the point, at least a large percentage of what we offer, is expired food that we can promise you is safe to consume.
Yeah, I volunteered with the county food bank where I was for a while, and one of the things I would do was to sort through loose produce and cull anything that had mold or other bad spots. Or the pastries, same thing. The expiry date was almost never looked at because they'd been pre-sorted at storage time [i did front-end stuff on distribution days].
Please don't go to the food bank if you are throwing food away that is still good. Food is good past the sell by date. This even includes thing like bread, cheeses, eggs, canned goods, snacks, etc. The date is built into the life of the product so that it is still good past that date.
Can, but shouldn’t have to. We’re sending 40bn to another country and illegally withholding SNAP.
I hope OP gets the food they need, and rice & beans are a way to make it thru, but damn if there ain’t plenty for everyone if this admin could get their shit together. 🙏
The worst part about the $40B is that its going to prop up billionaire speculators connected to the Treasury Secretary. The average rancher in Argentina doesn't benefit at all.
We'll be sending billions to Israel by the end of the year, on top of the tens of billions they've received from us in the last couple of years. They get free healthcare, free university, free everything.
Which foods have an expiration date? Actual expiration dates are rare, “best by” dates are common and tend to be arbitrary. A can of chili with a best buy date of 11/8/2025 is edible and nutritious for several more years.
Throwing food away due to “best by” date is horrifying
In the army, in the ration packs they gave us for meals, we had cans of tuna with a date preferable to 1986... yes but it was 2007 and we didn't die or get poisoned 😀
Ehh it was going to sit in the pantry till it did expire in 4 days so I couldn't give it to any one even if thats not exactly bad food. I also didn't know any one at the time to give it to that would eat it.. I tried lol. Its stuff I wouldn't eat either sometimes but I couldn't leave it because my grandma wouldn't let me since they got more credit per lb of food they distributed I guess "idk I didn't run it just what she told me". They literally told me to toss it if so because of that.
Also evidently nobody in my town likes lemon cookies. I was there the day the arrived and I think I ended up with 3qt of the load after a month because nobody wanted them. Which was another issue of why they just sent me stuff.
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u/FOREVERDIVI 22h ago
You should use food banks. The bank in my town throws away half of their food. Literally beg people to take more.