Expiration Dates 101: Helpful Information About Your Food

by Keren Kipfer

Every time you purchase a drink or food product, do you read the labels and possibly consider looking into important details such as expiration dates? For many of us, buying a product near its expiration date is not to be considered, but often these dates are misunderstood. Here are a few quick facts that might help you know what food is edible near and passed these dates.

If you want to be a wise consumer you need to be conscious about expiration dates for products like food, beverages and different types of medicine. When you have the itch to throw away stuff with dates that seem to have passed try to consider this first: that in some cases the dates that are printed are not necessarily stating that the item is now unsafe and not edible. For some products though, the expiration date is literal and required by the government and this includes items for infants and toddlers, such as formula and jarred baby food. When the expiration date has passed, these items should be tossed away.

When you refer to sell-by dates, they are basically pertaining to products that are perishable like milk, beef, poultry and seafood or other meat items. Stores sell such products by their "date" but there is an allowance for you so as to enable you to store them in your fridge for a while. Some people even have these items frozen and kept for a day or two past its sell-by date. A general guideline often points that it is still fine to consume such product for as long as they look and smell fresh. If something looks strange or smells odd, then toss it and don't take a chance.

When it comes to shelf-stable products like macaroni and cheese, dry pasta, canned veggies, canned meat and mayonnaise and many other similar products, you will find a date that says "best if used by" or "use by." These are printed on the packages as a quality control and not necessarily because of safety. A can of soup three months passed its expiration might taste fine and probably is still safe, the manufacturer is simply sharing that the quality is at its peak prior to the date of expiration. Again have your senses of smell, taste and sight be your guide. If it looks or smells odd, don't eat it.

The machines that make it possible for the fast printing of these expiration dates on your packages of foods and beverages are known as id coders. These machines also are responsible for printing serial and batch numbers. These numbers are added at the end of the production process and manufacturers can then leave it to these special coder printers to complete the task in a fast manner, but these coders also are used because they can print on surfaces such as plastic, glass and aluminum without smearing. As to the brands, you will easily find the likes of Domino coders, VideoJet coders and Imaje coders.

Most companies that use such machines often need replacement inks and make-up for these id coders. Buying directly from your coder manufacturer is quite expensive, and you can save money by purchasing from a special product id company with generic versions of these inks. In finding them you will be able to get high quality yet budget-friendly generic versions of VideoJet ink, Imaje ink, Domino ink and more.



Keren Kipfer enjoys researching products for industrial manufacturers like ink jet printers. To get more information on parts for a <a href="http://www.printjet.net/HTML/Parts.html">CIJ coder</a> or to know about commercial printers, please visit the <a href="http://www.printjet.net"
>PrintJet.com</a> site today.