The Worst Twitter Conversation in History (This Week)?

@EJ (The Other One)

I’m in favour of reeducation gulags, but that’s probably just me.

You’re not alone. I’m all for it. Finally, some sober, sensible advice on WHTM!

And don’t get me started on the “expire by” dates! There is no consistency in terms of font, size, placement on the package, or wording. Also, have you ever tried to read pale-yellow numbers on a jar of coconut butter? A store clerk explained to me recently that the use of “expire by” dates is voluntary. Outrageous! I’d love to take it up with my do-nothing Congress!

Better yet, I’ll send the CEOs of all the food companies, along with all the Republicans, to reeducation gulags.

@ Kat & Orion

A while back someone found a store of WW1 “Bully Beef” (a form of tinned meat used by troops). It was found to be perfectly safe to eat. Well, from a storage point of view; they used lead based solder on the tins at the time; but that’s a different issue.

Yay, best-before dates, a topic I know and love well. Here’s some stuff I learned in the logistics industry.

As well as sell-by dates (called “best before” or “use by” in places where customers like to be respected) most products also have depot-by and store-by dates. It’s part of running a good logistics pipeline, and the benefit to the customer is a pleasant side effect. As such, for a lot of goods that are sold as loose singles or in sub-packages, those dates would be printed on the shipping case and so you won’t see them.

In the industry, this is known as “code life”: something that’s approaching the end of this period is said to be “short coded”, and when it’s past it’s said to be “past code.” The art of grocery logistics involves getting goods into the depot, then into store, then into the customer’s fridge before code life expires.

Normally things will be good for a while after they’re past code. The code life is chosen bearing in mind that it’s likely to sit in the customer’s fridge for a little while before being eaten, after all.

From a logistical point of view, “spoiled goods” are usually mostly still fine: out of a hundred cans of baked beans on a pallet, ninety-nine will probably be fine even when they’re condemned as spoiled. The issue is that nobody knows which can is bad without opening them, which turns shopping into a game of Russian Roulette and leads to delicious, delicious lawsuits. Most companies would rather throw good food away than be sued for selling bad food, so they set the code life to compensate for this.

Moral of the story: even if it’s past code you can probably eat it. People throw out too much food nowadays.

_Use By_ is the really important food advice on containers and packets. Really. Important.

Milk and other dairy, meat, bread and other fresh foods really do go off in fairly short order unless you freeze, cook or otherwise treat them to prevent it.

On the other hand, Sell by or Best Before dates are about items which will not be dangerous if consumed beyond the stipulated date, but there is no guarantee of quality if you do. Leave a frozen, dried, bottled, pickled or canned item too long and it’s your own fault if it’s got freezer burn or weevils have got into the pasta, flour, raisins or packet cake mix or nuts have gone rancid or your flavoured vinegar has gone cloudy or any other calamity that can befall food stored too long or in the wrong conditions.

Though I confess that I’ve managed to eat lettuce over a year old that was in one of those unbelievably good Tupperware containers explicitly for lettuce. I’ve also discovered the use by date “too late” after eating perfectly good yogurt. I tend to look first at refrigerated items and check the use by date only if it looks or smells a bit suss.

Nequam: I’ve owned a copy of The Deluxe Transitive Vampire for a decade-ish. I’ve used it for several games of Eat Poop, You Cat on various forums. (EPYC is a forum game where you have two groups of equal size–artists and writers–and a moderator. The game starts with the moderator sending a sentence via the website’s PM to the first artist, who then illustrates it (either treating it as a caption, or something someone in the picture is saying), sending the picture to the moderator. This picture is then sent to the second writer, who sends back a sentence describing or captioning it. The game continues until everyone has gone once. Then the moderator posts the entire chain to a forum thread, with attribution. It’s like a game of telephone, but with illustrations. The sample sentences from TDTV were always wonderfully evocative starting points for the game.)

Alan: I must admit, I’ve come to my own personal theory that Gaelic is actually just a prank the various non-English parts of the UK decided to play on the English. “Okay, so, we stick a bunch of ‘w’s, ‘b’s, ‘d’s and ‘n’s, run them all together with a ‘y’ at the front. Then we tell ’em it’s pronounced ‘Fred’.”