I hosted a shrinking product chat over at WashingtonPost.com this morning and an interesting comment from someone in New Orleans came up about milk going bad:
Over the past two weeks, I have ended up with two gallons of milk, purchased at different stores from different dairies, that went bad before their expiration date. When we asked for a refund at the second store, the manager noted that they had gotten several complaints about sour milk lately, which was unusual for the store. The manager wondered whether truck drivers were turning up the thermometer on their refrigerator system or skipping it altogether to save gas…
I live in Brooklyn and a few months ago, even before the summer, I myself started to notice my milk was spoiling a lot faster too. As in, a matter of days. I thought our corner store was just being cheap. I’ve since switched to organic milk because it lasts for weeks. Has anyone else noticed this? If so, what part of the country are you in, what brand do you buy, and from what store?
(Illustration: wedgienet)
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@Dobernala: I think people are confusing “Organic Milk” with “Raw Milk”.
Raw Milk is unpasteurized and illegal.
YES! As a matter of fact, I just returned on Monday 2 gallons of milk with the same expiration date of 6/23 I’d bought the night before. Both tasted like they were turning.
They need to remove the control of the refridgeration from the driver.
I worked in grocery stores for years. Started working in the dairy department of a major Southeastern Chain & left a job as Manager at a small Natural Foods chain just a few months ago. Here’s some reasons your milk may be going bad faster:
- Truckers are cutting off the truck when they make deliveries to save gas. Used to, they’d leave the truck running at all times to make sure everything stayed nice & cold. When you shut the truck off, the trailer warms up. Rapid and repeated temperature changes degrade the milk.
- Thinner plastics & “bio” plastics. They’re thinner & block less light. More light means the milk goes bad faster.
- They’re waiting longer to get signed in & paid. A lot of milk isn’t sent out on huge trucks, it’s sent out on small trucks. The driver wheels in a few crates worth & waits for his check before he starts stocking it. The longer he stands there, the warmer the milk gets. And since all the milk in the truck is already warming up because it’s been cut off…
- Moving from a “Sell By Date/Best By Date” to an “expiration date”. Milk used to have a “Best By Date” where the milk was still technically good for about 5-7 days after the date. I’ve seen more and more milk being given an “Expiration Date” now. Which means stuff that is now marked “Expires On July 27th” would have been previously marked “Sell By July 22nd”. This means that stores can keep it on the shelf longer than they used to.
Just a tip: If you only use a little bit, don’t waste your money on “Fresh” milk. Horizon and Organic Valley make shelf stable (think Parmalat or the same “Tetrapak” boxes Soy Milk comes in) versions of their organic milk. If you’re not going to use a quart in a week, then you can get it in a “lunch box” size which is perfect for adding milk to your coffee.
@Angryrider: Whoa whoa whoa… So you’re saying it’s a “scam” because it’s Asian? Us sneaky Asians with our soy drinks trying to scam you?
We have not had this problem.
We are in Schenectady, NY, and we purchase milk either from Stewart’s or from Hannaford.
Stewart’s only carries their house brand, which is produced locally (Stewart’s is based in Saratoga, if I understand correctly).
From Hannaford, we are getting the house brand, also, though I don’t know where it is produced. I know that they are based somewhere in Maine, but I doubt they are shipping the milk from that far away.
I have a question.
Why is it that people living in America enjoy having refrigerated milk to begin with…
I used to live in France and Germany, and as far as i remember milk there was mostly not refrigerated, except it was pasteurized and sold in tetra-packs (brick shaped cartons) kind of like the Soy Dream milk is sold here. Except you could buy them 6 cartons to a pack. Refrigerated milk mostly the unpasteurized kind was in the refrigerated part anyways.
Is the milk in the coolers at the US grocery stores unpasteurized?
Is there a benefit to having so much milk in coolers, other than the fact that it’s cold when you bring it home from the store?
What would it take for americans to buy milk in tetra-packs, they’re efficient and much much more ecologically sensible than plastic bottles requiring refrigeration from the minute they’re filled.
Just my 2 cents…
One thing that I have noticed about milk is that it takes more
effort to find a carton with a sell by date that is much more than a
week away. And the amazing thing is that when I finally found someplace
that did have gallons with a sell by date around two weeks away, they
were also cheaper priced than all of the other places.
@DrGirlfriend: The smaller the carton would
fall in line to the ideas that have been proposed that the milk is
being kept outside of an ideal temperature range for too long of a
period of time. The smaller cartons have smaller volume and change in
temperature faster than a larger volume would.
I had this happen last week for the first time. I thought something was wrong with my refrigerator.
We used to get half-gallons but they would turn before we could finish them (maybe four days?). Now we get a quart every few days which seems to work. We finish it before it can get a chance to turn. Had a seriously moldy frozen pizza the other day – only a day or so after purchase. My produce isn’t lasting as long either anymore. I agree on the truck refrigeration theory.
Absolutely. I’ve bought several milks lately that had gone bad within a day of bringing them home, and several others that were bad before opening them.
I switched to Silk Vanilla since I only use it for coffee anyway. I hate milk except for what it does to coffee.
MercuryPDX: Saying raw milk is illegal is a VAST over-simplification. If the substance its self is “illegal” I’d be breaking the law all the time.
It is illegal to sell in in grocery stores in most, but not all states. Washington State has several dozen grade A raw dairies that transport and sell all over the state. I live in Portland, OR, where it is TOTALLY legal to buy raw milk directly from the farm.
I’ve noticed this problem with orange juice.
This is why I buy my milk at the dairy, where it is often less than a day old.
Well, for all you that buy and store milk, here’s a tip to extend your shelf-life: get an old silver dollar or silver half-dollar (pre-1965) and drop it right in! Silver is a known anti-bacterial and will help to extend the life of your milk. It is what they used to use before refrigerators existed.
@JamieSueAustin: Turkey bacon is an abomination.
@rockasocky: It is a scam to call it milk. It is soy juice. I have never seen a teat on a soybean. It also tastes like the water they used to clean out the skim milk tanks.
Milk in my area (KC, MO) stays good past the expiration date. If it starts to turn, blend in some sugar and fruit and call it yoghurt.
@Aesteval: Would make sense, at a lower price, they were probably turning over inventory faster.
Yes! I thought I was taking crazy pills! I’m glad that other people are experiencing this too! Now that this problem is solved, how do I stop yelling!?!?
Hey Consumerist readers, read Consumerist readers!
[consumerist.com]
Somehow I remembered that. I dunno how I did, but I did.
woah… I had noticed this too… I shop at Price Chopper in south central Mass.
I’m going to start buying half gallons instead.
I drink Lactaid. It tastes just like real milk but lasts forever.
Is this a coastal thing or is it across the country? Reading the comments it seem like a lot of the people having issues live on the coasts, mostly east. Could be my imagination.
@BustedWheel: Organic milk (and other organic or even “high-end” dairy products) last longer because of the ultra-pasteurization process, which makes them last a lot longer before spoiling. Definitely a great way to go; I’ve noticed a huge difference in the shelf life of the dairy I’ve been buying.
My husband is allergic to dairy (not that same as lactose intolerant), so I would buy a half gallon a week for myself. I about a month ago that by the end of the week it was going bad. We now buy trader joes vanilla soy for a $1.70 and we can both drink it.
And I have also been having this issue (on the east coast, for reference), and I’ve had to throw away half-containers of milk before their sell-by date. I only sometimes buy organic but now I think I’m going to only buy organic since I’m not really saving money buying the normal stuff if I’m throwing half of it out every freaking week.
Interesting note… New York City is the only place in the state and one of relatively few in the country that has its own dating system for fluid milk, which may legally be sold only up to 96 hours after 6 A.M. on the day after pasteurization. The rule is the same for whole, skim or low-fat fortified milk.
So you’d think we don’t get it as well… right?
I went into a local store by me last night to buy milk. The expiration date was still 3 days into the future so I figured it was still really fresh (and because of the NYC rule above – even fresher than for the rest of you.)
I noticed all the quarts were bulging… To the point that I was afraid to touch them for fear of one bursting. I am standing there in front of the milk cooler (full cooler, not one of the open air ones) and the store owner comes back and says “don’t buy the milk – none of it is any good”
He only got the delivery the day before and they’re all bad. Niiiiccceee..
@garfield1979: I think there’s just a yick factor to buying milk off a shelf.
@jstonemo: *rolls eyes* I’ve never seen a cow produce peanuts either but it’s still peanut butter. And if you’re going to get technical, the water content in soy milk doesn’t come from the soybean (you have to add water to make it) so it’s not juice either. How about soy broth? Or soy stock?
@chemmy: So that’s why there are two dates on NYC milk. Makes sense now.
Too bad neither date was ever any good. I’ve never had more spoiled milk, faster, than during my three years in the city. I eventually gave up on half-gallons unless I knew I would use them within 48 hours, because in Brooklyn and in two different neighborhoods in Manhattan, they all seemed to go bad within three days no matter where I bought them — Citarella or Anonymous Korean Bodega.
@failurate: It’s funny how sometimes the most obvious answer can be the hardest to see.
Hamm, that’s too bad really. I think the realization of high oil price is going to shake the american lifestyle more than people are willing to admit.
I for one am welcoming a change in american lifestyle. It will benefit all of us in the end.
Wow, I thought I was nuts. I go through milk unevenly- some weeks I can go through a gallon in 3 days, other times a week. I’ve had 3 in a row go bad before I got through them, and it wasn’t because I was away or just tired of milk at the time. Might be time to switch to half gallons too. Orlando suburb, for what it’s worth.
Okay, call me a crunchy hairy-legged hippy if you will, but I SWEAR milk from cows treated with rBGH goes sour faster. A couple years ago I was switching between the 2, depending on where I bought it, and I was always having to throw out the rBGH milk before I’d finished it. And I a) drink milk every day and b) don’t buy it in huge jugs, so it’s not like it was sitting around for weeks at a time.
I switched to non-rBGH Berkeley Farms (I live in the East Bay, CA) and haven’t had to throw out milk ONCE.
@hydrargyrum: You got me on the peanut butter. How about peanut paste? Sounds appetizing!
Maybe producers could add soybean paste to make the soy “milk” similar to milk in mouth feel. I would rather drink whole milk instead of 2% just because of how it tastes and feels when I drink it, but my wife won’t let me.
I think the Organic milk lasts longer because it’s more likely to be UHT instead of regular pasteurized. I don’t consider UHT to be a good thing, though.
I live in Southeastern PA, and buy raw milk straight from farmers who’s farms I’ve visited. No problems here!
I buy 4-6 Gallons at Sam’s club…have not had a problem, but with 5 milk drinkers in the house, a gallon a day is about what we drink. …so there is no time for it to go bad. I’m kinda scared to think about how much i am going to be buying when the boys are no longer 4, 2 and 2….
This happened where I work. We got our milk from Safeway and the milk went sour about a week early. I was the one to discover that with my breakfast – yuck. This was about a month ago. I’ve never seen this happen before and I know Safeway wouldn’t want to piss my company off because we buy a TON of food from them.
@PurplePuppy: Crap… I knew I should have put illegal in quotes. I didn’t intend for it to be taken as “Drink raw milk : GO TO JAIL!”
Being that my milk consumption comes mostly from white russians served at super sketchy dive bars, I run into this problem on, like, a daily basis. I think that’s what gives drinks down here their lagniappe or joie de vivre.
Since I’ve been buying milk in New Orleans in my own house (about a year
and a half now), I’ve never been able to trust the expiration date. The
milk ALWAYS goes bad days before from the major companies around here.
WinCo, Clackamas (Portland), Oregon. 2% 1/2 Gallon.
I have noticed this as well over the past few months. Especially since it has started actually being Summer around here. I don’t drink a whole lot of milk so I definitely notice when it does not make it to the date on the container. I remember milk being good several days beyond the date.
I’m a total nut about my fridge and have a digital thermometer inside. It’s holding steady at 40°F.
I have been purchasing milk from BJ’s in Queens and it has been going bad several days early. I thought it was only me, but now I am a believer in the conspiracy.
We buy Lactaid milk at home, since my wife’s lactarded. The stuff’s a little pricy, bit it lasts for ages.
Holy cow. hehe
Who knew there’d be this much crying over spoiled milk.
okay, I’ll stop.
Anyway, in NC, and I haven’t noticed this, but I have noticed that meat has been spoiling at much faster rate since I’ve been here. We have to freeze chicken breast, or lunch meat immediately after bringing it home or it will be bad within 2 days. I had been blaming my refrigerator.
Can I just say that milk is a product that is not needed by most of the population. What other living animal needs milk after it’s been weened from it’s mother?
None. And neither do we.
Case in point, how many lactose intolerent animals have you ever heard of? And how many people suffer from this problem every day (including myself). I won’t cite stats because we all know that 64% of all stats are made up on the spot and 93% of those stats are wrong 100% of the time.
@ddaq89: Not really. That’s pretty off-topic.
I live in Wisconsin and the milk is fine, because I live in Wisconsin and they literally make it down the road. I could go get it right out of the cow if I wanted to.
My father, however, has started buying half gallons instead of whole gallons, because the experation date is highly unreliable, and he can finish off a half gallon in a few days.
@garfield1979: Because we are energy pigs, that’s why. They also don’t refrigerate eggs in Europe, and we wouldn’t have to either, except that the egg industry washes the protective coating from the eggs that would keep them from spoiling on the counter.
We in America are only beginning to think about the impact of our little trips to the grocery store, and not enough of us. It makes me sick to look at all the 100 calories packs that keep popping up, like we need to put less and less into every package so we use as many resources as possible per bite of food.
I know I’m ranting, but having spent a lot of time in Canada, everything we do here is just overbloated, overpackaged nonsense. Hopefully we’re learning. I’d like to start with outlawing bottled water and plastic bags myself, or at least making them prohibitively expensive. I’d also like to see bagged or boxed milk that is shelf stable. Way too much waste here.
Maybe part of the problem is transport temperatures ..but also wondering if supermarkets are turning up their refrigerator thermostats a notch to save on power bills?
Two years ago when my s.o. and I moved into our house, I noticed our milk going bad a few days before the date. at first I thought it was our fridge, so I brought a thermometer home from work (I work in a foodbank), and found my fridge to be at the proper temp. I decided it was the ghetto-y Kroger’s where I was buying the milk, since other things I was buying there (cheese, OJ) were also going bad before they normally should. (I have also caught this particular store selling shelf-stable items past their ‘use by’ date). I bought milk at UDF and our local convenience store and had the same thing happen, so I switched to organic. Problem solved. The milk stays fresh for weeks (we don’t keep it in the door), and it tastes way better than the stuff I used to buy.
I lived overseas a couple of times and liked the ‘box of milk’ I could buy – it was ultra-heat treated and came in a special box that didn’t required refrigeration until it was opened – really convenient!