Whenever I revisit that staggering statistic about how around 40 million pounds of food are wasted on a yearly basis, I rack my brain over how wasteful large corporations and businesses are as they toss portions of perfectly edible food into their nearby trash bin or dumpster, and what can possibly be done to remedy this situation.  Meanwhile, as I review the ideas and possible solutions we've run across during our past few months on the road, I find myself rummaging through one of our food bags, my fingers digging and shoving aside an array of condiment and ingredient bottles.  As I'm rummaging and contemplating, searching for something to munch on for the morning, my fingers graze past a bottle that my eye catches on to; our mustard bottle...from five months ago...oh dear.

     Now, my immune system has taken a beating since we left back in January, and sudden bouts of food poisoning act as my "Achilles Heel" in a lot of these situations.  But, seriously, I put on the table the "common sense" of any man who encounters the reddish hue of a neon sign at a gas station promoting "75¢ Onion Rings" and NOT take up that tantalizing offer.  I don't know; maybe I just have a soft spot for fried slivers of vegetables in highly questionable oil.   I don't know where it's been, but I do know where it will end up, as I rummage in my pockets for some loose quarters.
   
     In a series of unsurprising events from that one time in West Virginia, I make a mad dash from the carpet of the gas station where I had wolfed down the onion rings, straight to our motel room that night which is a stone throw away, and finally to our complimentary in room toilet, where I elect to hunker down beside for the remainder of the night and the following morning as my insides are torn out, along with my stomach, which is actually eerily reminiscent of the demolishing phase of an episode of Extreme Home Makeover.  Honestly, this is the best I can do to describe what happened without using some abhorrently, albeit more accurate, wording to convey how impressively addle brained my decision was to buy those "in the moment" delicious onion rings.
   

...I still love you...

     Anyways, back to present day.  So here I am, radioactively vibrant yellow bottle in hand, my face stretched to one corner of my mouth as I concentrate on the pros and cons of actually...having a taste.  At this point, I'm in utter confusion as I raise my eyebrows and nod my head from side to side one minute, cooing to myself "Go ahead, give it a taste", and then suddenly being hit with PTSD from my aforementioned bout the next, my face scrunched up in horror of what could be growing in this bottle.  The last phase of my decision making didn't last for long.  With a clearing of the throat, I give the bottle a good shake, pop the cap, squirting a dollop onto my thumb, and give it a lick.  I like to think that the words "Oh God, why?" were reverberating among my recently scabbed over stomach walls as I swallowed the smearing.

     A handful of minutes pass, all the while I keep the out house in the area in my line of sight.  Preemptively I prepare for my meet and greet with the toilet, already cradling my water bottle and paperback for another night of kicking my insides out onto the curb.  So they pass, and I am still tasting it.  The mustard had that surprising after taste of being very mustardy.  That's a good sign, I suppose.  My stomach hasn't put up a fuss yet, except for the fact that it felt a bit perturbed that this wasn't the oatmeal it was expecting. "Am I in the clear?" the little voice cautions in my head.  I squirt another dollop in my mouth in answer.  Now all I need is a cracker, or something.

     So, as I digest that bit, flipping over the bottle and scanning for some sort of expiration date, I flit over the date stamped on its back side.  Yikes, my little voice says, in which I promptly tell it to go stick its head in the sand.  Obviously, this loop hole I've come across should be looked into.

     Coming from someone who eats months old Kimchi on a consistent basis, my stupefying adventurous tasting spirit has gotten me past quite a few expiration dates, and for a time I considered that a sort of super power.  My stomach lining is testament to a scientific breakthrough, I'd reason; if only they would accept my invitation to prod at me for the answer.  Yet, as I sat there with that salt rich, vinegar tang in my mouth, I came to terms with a much simpler fact that I had mulled over before: the labeling system for food across the board is laughably inadequate.

     Tour your local grocery chain, and scan the dates on all those containers, and you'll find something rather interesting.  Words like "Use By" or "Best By" are typically found stamped on items that are generally considered "shelf stable".  In layman's terms, it means that these food items will muscle on through a nuclear fall out and keep on trucking for years after the store has been blown to bits, that is if the container is unopened.  These printed terms refer to the optimal color and taste of the product that stores prefer for their product to look its most appetizing, and doesn't refer to its safety.  So even after it passes that date, it is still perfectly edible, despite the vibrant yellow of that mustard turning a bit pale in its complexion. Typically, a product like some ho hum, run of the mill mustard can last for up to two years, thanks to its salt and vinegar concentration.  Even if you open said bottle of mustard, that sucker will stubbornly hold on for at least a year, if properly refrigerated.  Heck, if you're feeling testy, you can run my unintentional experiment of keeping an opened bottle of mustard in a bag that has been through the Death Valley heat waves of 100+ degrees with little to no refrigeration, but then I would be liable for your potential hospital bills, so please don't; I already did that experiment for you.

     On the other end of the spectrum is the "Sell By" stamp you typically see on all kinds of refrigerated milk, eggs, meats and poultry products, and other perishable food stuffs.  Even for an idiot optimist like myself, I still realize that the shelf life of these products are drastically reduced to the point where keeping them on an actual shelf for a year will be surprisingly comparable to a fermenting corpse that your land lady will undoubtedly call in due to stench complaints, followed by the replacement costs of your door hinges when the police drop kick it open to investigate the assault on the nostrils.

At least it will air out the place...

     Yet, although it is important to adhere to these "sell by" dates more stringently, the life of these products can still be perfectly extended for a considerable amount of time after the date passes, most notably for milk, eggs, and other dairy products.  For meats, it's roughly about 2-3 days after the date, and extended to quite a number of days if plopped into a freezer.  If you cook these perishables and keep it properly covered and contained in your refrigerator,  that will essentially even double the lifespan, and make for an awesome array of left overs for future meals.  In the long run, that will cut down on preparing every single meal and cut down on waste of leftover food.  Comparatively, the perishable's life spans are drastically stunted compared to your shelf stable items, but the trade off is that they are consumed more frequently than the jars of post apocalypse ready peanut butter or Tabasco.

     As for the gibberish you occasionally find in the form of a mash up of letters and numbers on the top of cans, for instance, that is just the store's way of keeping track of and rotating their stock, in case another pesky strain of salmonella finds its way into a batch of peanut butter and they have to issue out a recall.

Side note: if you happen to catch word of a recall on some of these items I've stated, feel free to disregard the safety concerns and potential health safety outbreak and plop some of that infected sandwich spread on a piece of bread.  Be adventurous, imminent death be damned; this is America.

Additional side note: Please don't do that.


 


       In the end, it's all about the individual looking into this themselves and educating themselves and others about this slice of potential food waste, and researching the life span of the contents of their refrigerator through various other sources.  With no federal oversight regarding a consistent system for food labeling, states can, and do, create their own labeling and dating of their goods that only aggravates the consumer and provides false information.  One obvious yet curiously little circulated source is the Food Safety and Inspection Service page, as well as sites like stilltasty.com, which even has its own smartphone application so you can save any potential harm to your dietary tract on the fly.  If this epidemic of food waste is to be fruitfully diminished, then information like this has to be transmitted to the consumer, whether it be from the direct word of grocery chains and the total remodeling of food labeling by manufacturers, or from the select few who sacrifice their own bodies to bring you this often overlooked information.  I'll still be your gastric guinea pig for many years to come, but I do hope you refer to the links before tasking me with testing out the shelf life of, say, wasabi.

Eh, who am I kidding, really?  I'll do that one pro bono.  I think I'm sick in the head.


stilltasty.com

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/

http://www.nrdc.org/food/expiration-dates.asp