expiration date of the food products you buy?

When we stayed at a friend's house during our daughter's graduations last April 12-17, we were given a free rein of the refrigerator on what to cook and eat. Amongst those in the fridge, were bottles of commercial dressings. I tasted all of them and choose those we liked best for our salads. We enjoyed the salads so much! After a few days, as i was tinkering with the bottle of dressing, i saw that it has already expired since November! I looked at the rest and they too were expired. But what the heck, they were still sooooo delicious! We still used them .

it is the length of time wherein a product is still edible, potent and effective. it is intended to remind the time needed to consume or dispose the product at hand.

Expiration dates are there to help you assign blame. When you open a carton of milk and drink without looking at the date then realise it tastes awful, you can look at the expiry date to see who/what to blame. If it's expired, you can blame the taste on the passage of time. And on bacteria. Stupid bacteria. If it's not expired, you can blame the farmers for having weird cows with weird-tasting milk.

For me, it means you have to consume it before those dates, to taste it at its best. But speaking of that, just recently when we went to the city where our daughter graduated, we stayed at a posh family friend's house. He gives us free rein of his refrigerator and cook and eat whatever we could there. There were so many commercial dressings that i used them to dress my salads. They were of different flavors and we have a grand time eating the salads. On the next day, as we are again to use it for our salads, we saw that it has since expired last November 2010. But what the heck, they were still delicious! So i guess, it's still safe to use even after it has expired. You just have to taste it first, if it still meet your standard of taste.