Cheat Sheet for Sketchy Food Expiration 'Codes'
Brian, you are the man. After seeing yesterday's post regarding the confusing expiration codes found on some foods, Brian sent The Consumerist a handy cheat sheet explaining the various code format, found inside. A+.
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The UK system seems to be slightly easier to understand. Every item of food has "Use By End " printed on it. By law. Any questions?
This is awesome.
Thanks Brian, and thanks to everyone for explaining the Julian date thing.
And why can't manufacturers put the expiration date in a common format (mm/dd/yy)?
@socialSTD: That would make too much sense/be too simple. I suppose those at the top have to justify working in an extension of the "food service" industry by making things more complex.
This just makes me wonder how much food is wasted because of these complex systems of timekeeping. It would make more sense to put the date in hexidecimal or binary than to use yet another system (that's not taught in school).
This just chaps my ass! The more I learn, the more I understand that primary and high schools don't teach but a small fraction of the shit you actually need to know when you get out in the working world! They don't even give you a good foundation (even less now than when I went to school). /rant
@socialSTD: they would lose sales. if you cant read it you dont know its went bad and you buy it anyway.
@CityGuySailing: This is true, but there's an ISO standard format for dates for a reason. (YYYY-MM-DD, which has advantages including being able to be sorted lexically as well as being unambiguous.) Unfortunately, 10 characters is a lot of space to take up on a food label just for a date.
@CityGuySailing: don't they do DD/MM/YYYY in Europe? Makes a lot more sense than doing MM/DD/YYYY...
True, but it's still easier to tell retailers that the code is in mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy format. That way you won't need a decoder ring to figure out if your Ovaltine is expired or not.
I once worked at World Market and we had a 6 inch binder with each vendor on a page with keys to all the different codes. What I did learn was it was up with the company to work with the vendors in order to get them to put a date on the item as opposed to a code. They did a pretty good job, in the 4 years that I worked there almost all their vendors changed from codes to dates. These were bigger brands, too, such as Cadbury, Lindt, and Ghiradelli.
Remind me to stock up on "Beef Hash" for the coming apocalypse. That shit's got some shelf life, jeebus.
Someone needs to step in and get this in order. FDA? FTC? FBI?!
About dates: My point being, that even across countries, date formats vary. Corporations can hardly be faulted for having a code of their own that THEY understand (and train their personnel up to) across international boundaries. Disclaimer: I worked for a mega-large food company in the 80's.
@CityGuySailing: I can understand using an internal code, but by asking someone to use the specific day on the Julian Calendar? at least print the expiration date in an easier to read format, [insert companies here]
I'd rather try my luck with the labels than read that chart. Holy sheet mayne wtf.
@CityGuySailing: Different countries have different labeling requirements for food. They can get THAT right because it's mandated by law: why is it all of a sudden so hard to localize a date to an area based on this data?
where is the key for Month Code #2?
Honestly, I think a lot of this comes from using old equipment and trying to squeeze as much as possible in as few characters. At the plant I work at, we only have 8-digit stamps at most lines. We use a format like 2008DE30, and that's stamped near a pre-printed area where it says "Best Before". Not too confusing.. but I can definitely understand the "that's the way we've always done it" mentality. We got new printers on a few of our lines which are far less limited. We could write a few full sentences on the side of the box if we wanted to. What do you think we do? 2008DE30, of course, because that's the way we've always done it. It's a lot less painful to just keep doing what you're doing, than it is to start putting in all the paperwork, getting all the sales people involved (ugh! sales people), etc, etc. Yeah, exceptional organizations have better cultures to handle change, but most organizations are not exceptional.
Want help with decoding expiration dates on food containers? I have a better tip:
Stop buying processed food.
See this apple? It's red, crisp, firm. Still edible. Soft, brown, stinky? Expired.
@VereKlimchuck: Companies are picking up on that in the states, thankfully. Some still have that "sell by" nonsense, insisting you still have a couple days to use it after the date but I wont play that guessing game.
Egg Beaters, a staple of my breakfast, switched over to the "Use By" date. Why everyone else hasn't, beats me.
@Rob Weddle: Wait a minute, this seems less like helpful advice and more like...preaching! Nah, I must just be cranky this morning and reading into things. Surely you wouldn't do that to us before noon.
@CityGuySailing: ... which is precisely why an international standards group came up with an international standard date format for this sort of thing.
@CityGuySailing: I don't know of any date format in common use that has a Julian date in it. When was the last time someone in any country referred to a Julian date in a typical conversation? "Was last Friday the 315th?"
12252008 and 25122008 I can understand (Dec 25th), but a Julian date? WHY?
@CityGuySailing:
Not only that, but you can write "Jun 27 2008" in a variety of different orders and it will always mean the exact same thing.
That and it's only one letter larger than all-numerics.
Wouldn't Sour Cream have a "Best After" date?
Those amongst you that have never been in a food warehoure or shipping depot ask why dates are not standardized. I would assume that many of you have some form of college education. That is NOT the case for the workers in the warehouses (for the most part). A Julian date makes the math simpler - and STILL mistakes happen. The dates on the cans, boxes, and crates are not PRIMARILY for the consumers, but for the sorting and picking in the warehouses and depots. The guys in there try to ship out the LEAST fresh off the manufacturing lines to get it out of their inventories and into the warehouses of the stores, and then their warehouse workers try to get it onto the trucks to the stores before the expirations run out as well.
The Julian Code system is no longer used on the majority of Kraft products anymore. They haven't been used since 2003 and are now only used on pizza and some baking goods like Bakers chocolate and some Lu Biscuit products made in Europe. I'm a customer service rep for Kraft Foods, the company now uses a clear Day-Month-Year format for American products and Year-Month-Day for Canadian products.
Is the year represented by the number of years after 2000 (with the tuna exception)? I notice that "Y" on this chart is usually 1, 2, 3, or 4. God forbid you find something in a bodega manufactured in 1999 - how would this work?
Also, someone should convert this into an Iphone app!
@lannister80: There are three reasons that I can think of to use Julian dates.
- It makes the math easier for humans, when they're trying to figure out how old something is. Just find today's Julian date and subtract. None of this "thirty days hath September" stuff.
- It's easier for equipment to generate. Just increment once per day until you hit 365 or 366. Not such a big deal now, but once upon a time these date stamps were generated by mechanical counters, and adding logic to handle months of varying lengths would have greatly complicated things.
- It takes up less space on the label.
@Xkeeper: Yes, but that only works for English-speaking countries. Every language has its own words for the months of the year.
@JohnDeere: How would they lose sales? Once the product is on the shelf the manufacturer sold the product and it is up to the retailer to sell the product. The manufacturer does not want the retailer to easily have their staff determine what is out of date and what is not! The manufacturer does not take the expired products back so it is the retailer who will lose if the product is not sold.
@JohnDeere: they would lose sales. if you cant read it you dont know its went bad and you buy it anyway.
Bingo. How many people are going to make the effort to take a spoilt $2 product back to the store the next time they shop? And how many of them are going to do it within the usual refund period, within 14 days of purchase? They're betting on people just throwing it out.
"You bought this three weeks ago! You should have brought it sooner, now we can't refund the money. It doesn't matter that you don't shop here that often." I've heard that load of crap once or twice, even on products that weren't past their due date but were "off" (e.g. eggs).
@snowburnt: don't they do DD/MM/YYYY in Europe? Makes a lot more sense than doing MM/DD/YYYY...
Going YY/DD/MM or MM/DD/YY makes as much sense as a watch that lists time by hours/seconds/minutes.
@ChristopherDavis: This is true, but there's an ISO standard format for dates for a reason. (YYYY-MM-DD, which has advantages including being able to be sorted lexically as well as being unambiguous.) Unfortunately, 10 characters is a lot of space to take up on a food label just for a date.
So what's wrong with printing six characters (YYYYMM)? Four characters might cause ambiguity for the current two decades we're in, but aside from that, four characters is within 30 days of accuracy, good enough for most packaged foods.
@OprahBabb: Same.
Usually it's not too difficult to read the labels, but lately I have spent a lot of time turning products every which way to see what combo of numbers is the expiration date...It would also help if they PRINTED the date instead of embossing it (or whatever that's called) on the white part of a cardboard package so you have to find the right angle in order to read it...
@socialSTD: @socialSTD: @Rob Weddle: But wait, you mean if I wanted to know what the weather was, I could look outside!?
Still, you wouldn't know how the produce looked on the inside until you bought it, took it home, and cut it open. My grandma always has problems with avocados. Half the time, she cuts them open and they're nasty inside.
Also, you can't - or you're not supposed to - open a box of cookies or crackers, or any other product, and check out how they look.
Oh wow. This is pretty handy.
Anybody know what a Julian date is though?