Food expiry dates, what the hell?! The irony here is reaching hipster record collection levels, for despite all the tainted product scandals, Chinese made products manage to TKO their foreign competitors in this simple but important facet of consumer goods.

Let’s take a look shall we?

Product: Nature Valley granola bars

Country of origin: USA

The label says better if used by [string of undecipherable dot matrix print code]. Uhhh…”better”? So after that unrecognizable date they only become “good”? They were never “best”? It would actually be “best” if they wrote “better eat these by…or else we’ll come and break your flower power face ya dirty granola bar munchin hippy scum!”

Product: Sapporo lager beer

Country of origin: Japan (note this is the real deal import, not that bathtub domestic crap that’s made in Wuhan).

On the bottom we have more hardly readable dot matrix print. This time it’s some lovely Japanese kanji characters, followed by years and a months. I can only hope that the date that is already past was the production date, and the future date is the expiry, because if it’s the other way around…man oh man have those crazy japs got some funky time travel shit going on. I wouldn’t put it past em. “SAPPORO BEER: ACQUIRES YOUR GREAT ENJOYMENT, BEYOND THE FUTURE!”

Product: San Marcos green Mexican salsa

Country of origin: Mexico

Oh Mexico, way to keep it qua-li-ty. But honestly, who really cares if the expiry date is worn off? It’s not like anyone has ever got sick eating something from within your secure and sanitary borders.

Product: Barilla basillico tomato sauce

Country of origin: Italy

A six digit number, the letter B in brackets, and then what is obviously a date of some kind. The Italians have left us a little riddle wrapped in an enigma, for the digits are all lower than 12, meaning who knows which one is the month, the day or the year. Italians are clever like that. They always want to keep you guessing, even when it comes to whether you might get food poisoning from their tomato sauce.

Product: Marks and Spencer mayonnaise

Country of origin: England

Not sure why this M&S Mayo advertises a new recipe, when in fact it tastes like glue made from horses. The BB is probably short for bloody bollocks, exactly what I would say, if I was British and trying to read this expiry date on a cold rainy afternoon in Manchester. Now maybe it’s just me, and I’m a big idiot, but I read that expiry date as January 11^th 9:31pm. Good to know, because I like to be precise to the minute when it comes to not eating expired mayo. But what bloody year? Uh oh, I get it now, it’s really January 2011. But then what bloody day? I mean, it could go bad on the 1^st of January, and then that’s fine, but what happens if it’s not until the 31^st? I certainly wouldn’t want to waste a spoonful of precious mayo that could go with some delicious Belgian cut fries.

Product: Shao Feng spicy oil pepper sauce

Country of origin: China

It may be a little daunting because it’s in Chinese characters, but if you can remember the ones you need to know, it’s always the same. 保质期 is the duration of time after it was produced that it’s safe to eat (here being 18 months). 生产日期 is the date it was produced on (here being January 11^th 2010). It sure is nice that they’ve gone and printed the expiry date with all the rest of the static info that never changes right on the label. Must cost a lot to have to print a new label for every day of production. I sure hope they don’t cut any costs…naw what am I thinking…a Chinese company would never do that.

Thankfully for imported products, China has strict label laws that require the ingredients, date of production, origin, etc. to be printed in Chinese, and it always clearly tells you when the stuff expires (sometimes almost too strict, because the Chinese label covers up the original nutritional information). So in effect this post was redundant, so let’s all go eat some Belgian fries with unexpired mayo.

Filed under: things i ate