To Eat or Not to Eat?

By on June 26, 2009 in FEATURED, FUN

“Are you going to eat that?”  “You’re not throw­ing that out are you?”

Cer­tain mem­bers of my fam­ily (my par­ents and my in-laws) hate to throw away food.  Con­versely, my wife and I hate to keep food for more than a few days.  This dif­fer­ence in mind­set often results in vig­or­ous debate about whether or not some­thing that has been in the fridge for a while is still safe to eat.  Generally we weigh in on the “Gross! throw that away before you develop some hor­ri­ble sal­mo­nella related ail­ment that kills you,” while the par­ents fall back on “your gen­er­a­tion is so waste­ful and this food is per­fectly fine.”

I’m not gonna lie, this debate can get pretty ugly.  Feel­ings tend to get bruised just like old apples — which I would throw out for the record.

Finally there is a medi­a­tor in this great debate of fresh­ness ver­sus fru­gal­ity.  http://stilltasty.com. 

This site tells you exactly how long food will keep in the fridge and in the freezer.  You can bet that I am going to have this site book­marked in my black­berry and ready to serve as the impar­tial judge and jury for var­i­ous food items. 

Left­over pizza, salami, milk, frozen din­ners — all listed in easy to under­stand detail. 

Thanks to StillTasty.  At last the great left­over debate can finally be peace­fully resolved.  The Sun­day after Thanks­giv­ing, the 8th of July, and Decem­ber 29th, will all be made safer, more fru­gal, and much hap­pier thanks to you.  

Still­Tasty: Your Ulti­mate Shelf Life Guide — Save Money, Eat Bet­ter, Help The Environment

3 Responses to To Eat or Not to Eat?

  1. Geoff D June 27, 2009 at 7:18 pm #

    Dave,

    Inter­est­ing web­site and great for stuff that doesn’t come with a ‘use/sell by date’, but I can’t see myself going online to check if my pizza sauce is still good. Gen­er­ally I default to the fol­low­ing rig­or­ous criteria:

    1–Does it have hair on it? Is is sup­posed to? Nope. OK, throw it out.
    2–Has its con­tainer become pres­sur­ized from gases given off by its own decay? Yes? Pitch it.
    3–Does it have a sweet or sour taste or become dis­col­ored? If so, taste it and give it the Johnny Cochran approach: If it tastes OK, eat away.

    Also, for bruised apples or moldy cheese, just cut/bite off the bad part and sal­vage the rest. I often find the use/sell by dates to be too con­ser­v­a­tive. Fol­low­ing the above guide­lines will help pre­vent any food borne ill­ness while help­ing to develop an iron stom­ach like mine. My only prob­lem now is feel­ing like I must eat every­thing to pre­vent wast­ing it.

  2. davidebowman July 2, 2009 at 3:21 pm #

    Geoff,

    While we have rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent approaches to “shelf life” we share a dis­like of wast­ing food. Rather than try­ing to reduce waste through increased con­sump­tion and sav­ing items as long as pos­si­ble, we are try­ing to reduce our inven­tory of per­ish­able items to a min­i­mum. If we are not going to eat it, don’t buy it or throw it out. This reduces options and thus reduces fur­ther waste from other items going bad. We are exper­i­ment­ing with pre-planning meals, mak­ing more trips to the store, and cook­ing smaller meals. We fall short a lot, but we are learn­ing. Our goal would be to eat all of what we buy, have few or no left-overs, and use a “just-in-time” approach to meal preparation.

  3. davidebowman July 7, 2009 at 10:49 am #

    My last com­ment sounded really seri­ous… what the heck is the mat­ter with me? Here is a re-do of my thoughts:

    Geoff,

    I pre­fer these max­ims. When it doubt, throw it out.
    If it’s green and furry, throw it out in a hurry?
    You bruise you lose.

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