Vegan MOFO Post #6: In celebration of ignoring sell-by dates

It turned out I can't count so we are having post six now, as apparently i missed it out. Whoops! This post is in praise of ignoring sell-by dates and using out of date food and not dying from it! I used to be really finnickity about sell by dates and I would always throw food away a day before it reached the 'best before'. Wasteful! Stupid! It took a long while for me to realise that sell by dates are not always correct. Something can't possibly turn from perfectly edible to catastrophically-calamitously-poisonous just because the clock struck midnight and the 'use before date' has come up.

I am not, by the way, condoning eating things that are so gone off they are injurious to your health. Don't eat mouldy food, for example, even if it is within its sell-by. You can push the bounaries a bit, but don't go way out there!

Here are some examples of food I have recently eaten out of sell-by. And I lived to tell the tale.

These are the green beans I ate with my pie and mash. Two days out of sell-by and still delumptious.

These are the tomatoes I used in a chilli which will be the subject of my next post (#8! Ha!). I completely forgot I had them. I don't like raw tomato at all, I bought these to make a pasta sauce and completely forgot about them.

Three days out of sell-by and still fine.

The more suspicious side of my brain thinks that sell-by, use-by and best-before dates are part of a supermarket conspiracy to make us waste food and buy more. The less suspicious side believes they are just over cautious because supermarkets don't want people to get ill ("because they care!" says trusting-brain-side; "because of the cynical fear of litigation" says conspiracy-theory-brain-side.)

I hate waste, I think it is unnecessary and unethical. So this is my post in celebration of being fearless, and daring to eat out of date.