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When it comes to labels on food, there's no agreed upon wording to let consumers know when to toss packaged grocery items. Public confusion over how long they can keep and safely eat products is part of the reason Americans throw away roughly a third of their food -- about $161 billion worth -- each year.
Compounding the uncertainty for consumers about when to toss food is the array of descriptions producers use to signal a product's shelf life. Those include "use by," "sell by," "freeze by," "best if used before" and "expires on," leaving the public unclear on the safety of products and causing lots of perfectly fine food to get tossed.
[...] Looking to stem the tide of still-edible food that ends of in landfills, the FDA is backing a voluntary industry effort to standardize the "best if used by" wording on packaged food, saying it should curb consumer confusion thought to contribute to about 20% of food wasted in U.S. homes.
[...] Still, the FDA's guidance may not go far in clearing up the public's misunderstanding about labels, observers said. For one, the labeling only applies to food quality, not its safety.
[...] The [Grocery Manufacturers Association] and the Food Marketing Institute in January 2017 recommended making the phrase uniform, along with use of the "use by" phrase to indicate when food should no longer be eaten for safety reasons. In a letter to the food industry, the FDA said it would not address the latter phrase "at this time."
Predicting when food is past its prime is an inexact science, according to Kevin Smith, senior advisor for food safety in the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. He said consumers should regularly examine food in their kitchen cabinets or pantries that have passed their "best if used by" dates, and throw out if they've noticeably changed in color, consistency or texture.
"Food is much safer than it was a few decades ago, largely because of refrigeration and dramatically improved manufacturing processes. But to really address the problem with food waste, the FDA should tell people something more meaningful than open it, look at it, smell it, and if it seems OK, eat away, otherwise, toss," Steinzor added.
The FDA should instead define when foods become risky to eat based on shelf life and require those dates be disclosed, she said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @02:20PM (11 children)
This approach isn't going to work because by the time the shelf life is confirmed people will be eating something else. Also, stuff that goes bad relatively quickly like raw meat and vegetables is already well known.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:42PM (9 children)
This approach (or a very similar one) is already in use in the UK:
See https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/best-before-and-use-by-dates [food.gov.uk]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:46PM (3 children)
I should add that, even with this firm advice on "Use By" dates, I still use my own judgement on things. My fridge is cold enough that milk can still be fine a week after its Use By date.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @09:34PM
Where I live there is a lot of particulate matter in the air. For us sealed food kept refrigerated will last to its use by date, but anythintg opened, even if it is immediately put back in the fridge will have mold within a few weeks (varies by food and handling.)
The real issues are threefold: chemical/enzymatic decomposition of the food, biological decomposition of the food, and proper storage of the food (which affects the first two, but can be a separate issue.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @09:46AM (1 child)
What do you think about the bunch doing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:38AM
Well, I'm sort of a kindred spirit, in that I can't walk past a refuse skip without peering in to it on the off chance that there'll be something useful. But of the food front, I've stuck to trawling the reduced aisles of supermarkets before closing time until now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:19AM (3 children)
I meant how are they going to set a date for food that doesn't go bad for years? By the time they figure it out the recipe/formulation will have changed.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:17AM (2 children)
The food that doesn't go bad for years isn't given a "safety" use by date, it's given a "quality" best before date instead.
Quality is subjective, so manufacturers can stick a pin in the calendar and decide that their product will have X months shelf life. The food that's a real safety risk (and would carry a use by date) becomes unsafe quickly enough that it can be measured or calculated during product development.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:36PM (1 child)
I was working as a school janitor over the summer years ago and found a decade old can of pepsi in a desk. I opened it and it was totally bad, like battery acid bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @05:30PM
Well, you did say it was Pepsi...
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday May 29 2019, @02:53PM
Perhaps in the UK, but in the US, the USDA's own site says (with the exception of dates on infant formula) that NONE of the dates are SAFETY dates [usda.gov]:
Also:
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:19AM
Well that at least explains the multi-year gap between Holidays and whenever the Jay and Silent Bob reboot comes out. Seems a bit of a waste of his talents to be side-jobbing at the FDA though.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @02:40PM (18 children)
>open it, look at it, smell it
Also taste a little bit and if it is not the normal taste, spit it out and toss it
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:00PM (10 children)
This. ^^^
I'll add: use your senses and wits even before opening. If it looks bad, moldy, rotten, etc., don't open! No need to spread bacteria or mold spores. Canned foods will exhibit pressure: the ends of the cans will bow outward, obviously not flat, if bacteria are growing. Do NOT open that can!
That said, recently I opened some older canned foods (that had no internal pressure) just to see if they were still good and nope, not edible. I suppose if you were truly starving you might eat it, but you might get sick anyway.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:34PM (7 children)
My problem is, I am always stuffed up and can rarely taste food unless it is highly spicedor has horseradish or the like in it. I'd have to get someone else to taste my food for off-taste/smell. :(
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:04PM (3 children)
Being stuffed up all the time is a symptom of having a booger made of dark matter stuck way back in your nose.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:21AM (2 children)
Ha, I like that: +1 informative, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:35AM (1 child)
Fixed it for you, I thought it was interesting :)
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:18AM
:)
You would, snotnose! XD
Thumbs way up on this, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:25PM (2 children)
IIRC, one of the many reasons for the spice trade, trade route exploration, Columbus, etc., was that spices are somewhat a preservative. So if that's true, you are well defended and well-preserved. No horse will live inside of you!
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:23AM (1 child)
Except for salt spices don't preserve the food. They cover up the taste of rotting/spoiled food.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:34PM
On another board someone accused me of "pulling a number out of my ass", 'cept I don't do that. It would be humiliating. This here's for your pleasure and edification: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5030248/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 3, Funny) by edIII on Monday May 27 2019, @11:57PM (1 child)
Your paradigm doesn't cover all use cases. I was visiting a friend in college and got the munchies. Lucky enough to locate a half full jar of home made salsa in a mayo jar in the fridge.
It was already open and pouring out over the tortilla chips before I realized it was the mayonnaise.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @03:24AM
Well, if "munchies" were involved then something else was influencing things and all bets were off.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:13PM (4 children)
That's quite enough to get some forms of food poisoning anyway, botulism, etc, sadly.
Also there's probably some kind of funny sex joke in there somewhere.
(Score: 3, Funny) by hemocyanin on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:40PM
That's what she said.
(been rewatching The Office recently)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @05:31PM (2 children)
> botulism...
This! Canned string beans killed a friend of a friend this way, possibly the pH was wrong? The person that canned them at home ate his own product, remarked on how tasty they were, and died in minutes in front of my friend (who luckily didn't try any of these beans).
Taste catches many kinds of food poisoning, but not all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rleigh on Saturday May 25 2019, @06:29PM
That sounds like a failure in the canning process, and really bad luck. I've not come across it being done at home before. Industrial canning and bottling usually puts the product through a Pasteuriser prior to labelling. That should kill off the bacteria. If that or the seal fails, then the pressure in the can and/or the smell should be indicative of spoiling. We've recovered cans from Victorian shipwrecks which were still perfectly sealed and edible (though with some contaminating lead leached out of the solder seals used back then).
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:06PM
Here in the US this is extremely rare, literally a one-in-10 million (per year) chance.
Source: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/9/03-0745_article [cdc.gov]
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Saturday May 25 2019, @11:09PM
That’s true for quality, but not safety. The microbes that are dangerous often aren’t associated with off flavors or visual clues.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday May 29 2019, @02:56PM
This is also what the USDA recommends [usda.gov]:
(Score: 5, Funny) by hemocyanin on Saturday May 25 2019, @02:41PM (11 children)
For me, the prime danger of eating food past the expiration date, is the tongue lashing my wife gives me if she finds out.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:06PM
That's why you've got to keep your stash of moldy food in a secret place. I keep mine hidden behind the toilet. Bonus urine splashes, mmmm! The wife is clueless.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:11PM (6 children)
So you're an "adventurous eater"??
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:36PM (5 children)
I was born a hippy child. One of my photos from a very early prewalking age, is of me sitting in the dirt and rocks of a river bed chewing on a stick I found with muddy drool oozing from the side of my mouth. Whatever made my parents think that was cute is beyond me, but suffice it to say, I don't get sick much.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:40PM (4 children)
That's a riot! And well-known to be true. I never quite did anything like that, but I remember eating dirt (mud pie!) and playing in dirt and covering myself with mud, swimming in ponds and rivers, getting leaches on my feet...
That said, as an adult I met a friend who is a medical expert (brilliant VMD (veterinary medical doctor)) who will never touch grass or dirt. She told me about the parasites that will go through your skin and feet. There's speculation that Schistosomiasis (parasitic worm) probably killed King Tut. And there are many others. And MRSA. And maybe you and I and others are inherently immune to MRSA? I know I have no allergies, and there's some thought that early life exposure to varieties of germs builds a healthy immune system.
Don't read if you have a "weak stomach": One of my friends is a world traveler, has lived in very unclean areas of undeveloped countries. Back here in USA, some mutual friends bought a house and started setting things up, including stocking the refrigerator with some kind of liquid yogurt. Well, major renovation / construction ensued, and the world traveler sees the many years out of date yogurt, just opens a bottle and chugs it. Never tasted it, never poured it out to see what's in it. Never got sick from it either. And now I've lost my appetite... sorry if you've lost yours too.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:21PM (1 child)
LOL -- eating lunch all through reading. Still reading. Not grossed out in the least. The acid in yogurt probably makes quite stable so long as it doesn't catch a mold spore.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:32AM
So a few months ago I did a rare for me food adventure and ate some yogurt that was a month or two out of date. It didn't seem to taste much different- to me yogurt by definition has gone bad, and bad is bad, right? Well, the next day, or maybe that night, had a bit of an issue- not too bad, but I won't eat yogurt that's out of date by more than a few days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:08AM
Similarly, we were dirt poor (sorry for the pun). Seriously though, whenever we got meat it was usually so cheap we stocked up as much as we could afford. Of course it got "funky" pretty quickly. I remember my mom yelling at my dad "I wouldn't feed that to a dog," and my dad yelling back "It's fine just cook it." Long story short, I'm known among my friends as the man with the cast iron stomach. The real test was when an LA restaurant got a whole lot of people sick from food poisoning on day. It was the salads. I had one too. I was the only one who didn't get sick. Everyone else sat on the toilet for a week.
I'm not poor now, but I've made sure my kids have eaten some pretty funky meat. In some countries it's called "aged beef." There are restaurants in Mexico where you can actually order steaks that they have to scrape the green fuzz off of before they cook it. Pretty tasty too.
So far, my kids have never had any stomach issues. Now if I could only get them to eat broccoli...
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday May 27 2019, @10:05PM
No worries. I've seen 2-Girls-1-Cup, thus I've developed quite the immunity to crap on the Internet.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:36PM (2 children)
I like t when my wife gives me a tongue lashing...and I give it back! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:37PM
love the sig. Funnier than the post! ;-)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:43PM
And this is where someone's supposed to say "pics or it didn't happen".
(but really, TMI, so no thanks, we're good without pics, we believe)
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:22PM (7 children)
A possibly interesting perspective is inventory out on the market is a financial liability if some moron eats it and gets sick, and the courts are insane, so the bean counters (get the pun? its a food story LOL?) get weird sometimes and the highest corporate profit might be one food poisoning case per century, which may be excessively risk adverse for most people.
Essentially the medical-industrial complex and the legal system distort the free market such that you end up with bizarre allocation of risk resulting in truly weird "expiration date" behavior such as putting a date on salt or granulated white sugar.
Another interesting perspective that was relevant when I worked at a food store a quarter century ago is some non-intuitive expiration dates exist for hard to predict reasons. We used to get a lot of shit about powdered sugar having an expiration date, and its not really preventing the sugar from decay its more the packaging material will leak and for most cooking purposes specifically buying powdered sugar and opening the bag to find a giant solid block would be a big problem for most kitchens. I have a powerful food processor, but... So bottled water "goes bad" not because the water is bad but because normal abuse will make a hole in the bottles after X months on the shelf. Likewise if you buy the bottles and store them next to a gas can in the garage for five years, they'll taste weird because plastic is semi-permeable over a long time period. Under ideal conditions bottles of water should last decades, just like plastic buried in landfills; in practice, bottle water kinda needs an expiration date.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday May 25 2019, @05:10PM (2 children)
Occasionally I have great difficulty finding the date code. On some spaghetti sauce jars it's printed very tiny, barely visible, just below the cap.
Time to bring back the king's taste testers!
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Sunday May 26 2019, @12:12AM (1 child)
Because it is a quality date. It is commercially sterile so it might taste bad but won’t make you ill.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:35AM
Yeah, I did try some that was like 10 years out of date. It was some organic portabella stuff. Still had vacuum in the jar, but it was really nasty. Trouble is, I'm not sure what it tasted like new!
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday May 25 2019, @09:53PM (1 child)
In short, with bottled water it's not the water that expires, it's the packaging.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:38AM
Yeah, the water doesn't expire, but you might not want to drink all the seamonkeys in it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @11:55PM (1 child)
Found a can of ancient Coke when cleaning a forgotten spot and somehow the water osmosed through the aluminum because it was half empty. I double checked the seal and it was never punctured.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:47PM
(Twilight Zone music playing...)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:43PM (4 children)
Did you know you're not supposed to defrost in room temperature? And when you thaw them out in the fridge, you're supposed to do it in cold water? That's what the minimal cooking temperatures were set against:
( https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/foodborne-illness-and-disease/salmonella-questions-and-answers/ [usda.gov] )
Live (or not) and learn (or not) I guess.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:14PM (3 children)
I think you're reading that incorrectly. Allow me to FTFY:
The insertion of the word "or" helps to make sense of that advice. Frozen food can be stored pretty much indefinitely. Thawing food can be safely stored for about three days in the refrigerator. Thawing food can be safely stored for many hours, in cold water, which is roughly the same temp as your refrigerator. The danger with thawing food at room temperature is, the outer layers of that frozen food reach room temperature long before the center. The organisms that cause food-borne illnesses proliferate at room temperature, so you only want to keep that food around for about three hours.
Long story short - never thaw your turkey overnight by sitting it on the kitchen counter.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday May 26 2019, @12:22AM (2 children)
I've quoted the full passage precisely because the three sentences combined give an unexpectedly complex procedure:
Ok, so, the water should be cold... Throughout the defrosting... So, I should be either defrosting in a refrigerator+water or constantly replace water.
Confirmed. I shouldn't let the water warm up.
More so, I must immediately cook it after thawing.
The cold water procedure is also explained here confirming this: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/the-big-thaw-safe-defrosting-methods-for-consumers [usda.gov]
Weird, ha?
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @05:43PM (1 child)
You have failed to understand the standard usage of the English language as it handles serialized lists. The final modifier is implied for each entry separation, thus:
Thaw food in the refrigerator, in cold water, or in the microwave.
can be re-written accurately as:
Thaw food in the refrigerator or in cold water or in the microwave.
and because of implied articles would carry the same meaning as the first version or:
Thaw food in the refrigerator, cold water, or the microwave.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @08:31PM
Oxford comma...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @03:59PM
We pack things with nitrogen to keep it fresh. Well those seals are not 100% and the bag leaks a particular percentage. Within 2-5 days of it being all gone the food will spoil.
Now not in all cases is spoiled food bad for you.
But with things like dairy and meat the aging process is well known and understood. So we have that dialed in pretty good. The rest of the stuff we buy in boxes and cans and bags is not as well understood. Most of that is packing with nitrogen and CO2 to keep the oxygen out to reduce spoilage. For example take a bottle of red wine. Once you open that bad boy you better drink it fairly quickly (within a couple of days or less). Even though it sat on a shelf for 20 years.
We 100% have the tech to do that to all of our foods. The cost however would be quite large. But is it really needed for a majority of things? Most things you buy them then consume them in short order. But not always. For example take a breakfast cereal. You usually eat the box within a month or so. But lets say you buy a box and let it sit for 4 years. Why did you buy it in the first place? You thought you were going to eat it is why. But you didn't. The packaging is literally designed to not be that way. They could design it that way. But 99% of the people do not use it in that way.
But we have an opportunity here to design new packaging that has way better reusablity and could be recycled better. Would the public be willing to take on that extra cost. The rich would say 'oh yes totally'. The girl working part time at wally world would probably not care too much about it just so long as she could buy it at all. Yet it is not the 'rich' buying that junk. It is the people who need cheap products. With cheap products come thin margins. Thin margins create incentives to cut costs to the majority cases. If we could make better packaging and it is cheaper than plastic and thin cardboard we would. You could 'tax' it but that only removes a portion of the problem. The producer is not going to really change their ways. The tax is not on them it is directly passed onto the consumer. They will see their product is not selling as well and will cut more corners (smaller packaging, bundling, cheaper product, sales, etc). They will in no ways make the product they are selling cost more. They want to sell more but raising the price on inputs would not do that. It may reduce consumption of that good. But the producer will be looking to get their margin back. They will find a way and it will be a cheaper (usually worse) product to do so.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday May 25 2019, @05:10PM (2 children)
The purpose of the Best By Used date is to get you to throw it out as soon as the date has gone by so that you have to go out and buy more.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:38PM (1 child)
It also has a practical use in helping supermarket staff rotate stock correctly.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:51PM
So you're saying if I rotate my canned food it'll last forever? So if I buy one of those 7-11 hotdog cookers with the rolling rods, and disable the heaters, and put it on a timer, and keep my canned food on it, I can keep a doomsday food stock? That's cool! Thanks!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @06:19PM
Who has a normal sense of smell and doesn't smell it, regardless of date? Actually, not having the sense of smell is a more serious handicap than you might think for this very reason.
There have been plenty of times when I've had stuff that was supposed to be "fresh" and sent it back. In one case in particular, I actually got supermarket salmon that was so disgustingly funky that it blew my mind to think that it got packaged... like whoever was back there didn't have a sense of smell.
Happens sometimes with ground beef too. It ruined my 4th of July once... "I'm not eating that burger". We had to toss 'em. It wasn't marked-down beef either, it was supposed to be good and fresh.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @07:26PM
just blockchain the hell outta that shit already!
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:43PM (1 child)
This company [approvedfood.co.uk] only sells stuff other shops won't, because of the dates on the labels.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:57PM
In US we have "Dollar" stores and they occasionally sell stuff that's out of date. Recently I was surprised to find major brand crackers (crisps) in a Dollar Store and noticed they were several months out of date. They were fine- I should have bought more.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Saturday May 25 2019, @09:28PM
There is a non-zero amount of fraud in the food packaging industry. Every so often there is a report in the UK media about a group being caught washing and relabelling 'fresh' chicken, mincemeat and other cuts of meat etc. From this I can draw two conclusions:
1) In some cases the 'Best before' and/or 'Use By' date is fraudulent.
2) People get away with this because (a) much food is actually edible after the dates given and (b) enough people show enough common sense to check and not use food that looks or tastes 'off'.
The only area I am unsure about it mouldy cheese. Some cheeses are basically mouldy milk, it can be difficult to determine what is normal mouldiness that can be ignored, and what shouldn't be. Over-ripe Camembert can be liquid, smell rather powerful, and still be edible. Similarly, the white layer of mould found on some preserved (fermented) sausages and cheese is harmless - https://curd-nerd.com/cheese-mold/ [curd-nerd.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @10:47PM
BBFD means best before date.
As long as the foil lid seal is still production sealed, you're good to go for several months (at least two - I've never tried it past that) after the BBFD. I know this from experience and do it all the time. Grocery stores often sell yogurt for 50% off when it's approaching expiry so I buy it because I know it will last for much longer than they specify. It tastes and smells exactly the same as fresh bought. The consistency may need a stir because of settling but once mixed in, it's normal again. This is the same with sour cream too.
With sour cream and yogurt, it's the contact with air that causes a noticeable speed up in deterioration.
Blocks of butter can be bought in bulk and used for a long time after purchase too. Cheese that's not had it's package opened is good for a long time also. AND with cheese, if you cut off the moldy parts, you can continue to eat the non moldy parts for a long time afterwards also. I know this because I used to work in a deli at a major grocery chain growing up and that's what we did all the time, open the packages, cut off the moldy crap and then vacuum seal them once more, print out a new label and put it back on for sale once more.