Odds are your pantry holds expired food

#Middlebury #Seniors #ExpiredFood

Is it time to go through your pantry and look for any expired food items that might have been purchased over the past two years? You might be surprised. I sure was.

I’d been careful, with new items lined up behind old ones in my cabinets. The problem I just discovered, after picking up a load of curbside items, is the expiration dates of newer items aren’t necessarily better than items that have been in the cabinet for a while. They might be worse.

Why, I inquired of our store manager, was a box of crackers due to expire sooner than the box I bought two months ago? With a sigh, he admitted the problem: The warehouse is having a terrible time getting in anything. And managers have set up their own grocery swap with other nearby stores in the chain, basically bidding on items another store might have. “I’ll give you six boxes of crackers for six half-gallons of whole milk!”

Additionally, he said, he’s having a heck of a time getting trained people to work the night shift to stock the shelves correctly. Then, when the curbside pickup people race through the aisles to select items for each order, they grab from the front … without looking at expiration dates.

Which is a long way of saying: Check your groceries. Either when you pick them up curbside and bring them home or when you take something out of your cabinets, look at the expiration dates and store them accordingly.

A helpful note in seeing those expiration dates at home: A black marker is very handy to write expiration dates on packages and cans that can be seen at a glance. No more turning jars over trying to find a date; no more squinting at the tiny print. You’ll have all the dates in large black letters.

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