That time a grocery store cashier called out my conspiracy theory about expiration dates

I was buying milk in Austin last month and this older cashier saw me checking the date too long. She laughed and said 'you know those dates are just suggestions for the store, right? They don't actually mean the food goes bad then.' It made me wonder if half the stuff we believe about food safety is just marketing. Anybody else had a random stranger shift how you see a common belief?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavin_clark6d ago

...yeah and it goes way beyond food too, @kelly_hill. I've noticed the same pattern with expiration dates on medicine, cleaning products, even skincare. They put those dates on everything now and it's all just designed to make you toss stuff and buy more. My buddy worked in advertising for a decade and he told me once that the whole "best by" thing was invented by a marketing guy in the 70s to sell more ketchup. Now it's everywhere and we just accept it. The sniff test is the real deal, your grandma knew what was up. It's like we traded common sense for a number stamped on a package. Whole system feels engineered to make us forget how to trust our own senses.

smith.jordan2mo ago

That line about "suggestions for the store" really stuck with me. My neighbor used to work at a dairy plant back in the 80s and she told me something similar once. She said the sell-by dates on milk are set way earlier than they need to be, mostly because the stores want you to throw it out and buy more. I started sniffing my milk past the date and honestly it's usually fine for another 5-7 days if it tastes normal. Same with eggs, you can float them in water to check. The whole system feels like it was designed to make us waste food on purpose.

kelly_hill2mo ago

The "sniff test" is something I live by now. My grandmother used to say if it doesn't smell dead or look fuzzy, it's probably fine, and she lived to be 92. Makes me wonder how much of our modern paranoia about dates is just clever marketing to keep us buying more stuff.