Friday, November 29, 2013

Information Regarding Expiration Dates

By Keren Kipfer


Every time you purchase a drink or food product, do you read the labels and possibly consider looking into important details such as expiration dates? For many of us, buying a product near its expiration date is not to be considered, but often these dates are misunderstood. Here are a few quick facts that might help you know what food is edible near and passed these dates.

Wise consumers need to consider looking into expiration dates for items including food, drinks and even medicines. But if you are about to throw away items which have dates that have already passed, give this serious thought: some expirations dates are notices that the food quality might begin to change after the date and the food is simply "best by" a certain date. Still, in some cases the date printed there is actually its true expiration. There should be no room for carelessness when it comes to expiration dates for products like baby foods and baby formulas. These dates are set by the government and you truly need to throw away expired baby foods after the date has passed.

Sell-by dates are basically dates used for products which are perishable such as milk, beef, poultry, meat items and seafood. You may find stores selling these items by their date but you should know that it is still possible for you to store them in your fridge for a time. While the store won't sell an item after this date, a steak a day or two passed the sell-by date is probably fine and you could even freeze it for a few months and then thaw it and safely consume the product. As a rule of thumb such products can still be consumed quite finely as long as their smell and looks are well.

As for shelf-stable items like canned foods, boxed food products like macaroni and cheese, mayonnaise and many more similar items, "best if used by" or "use by" dates are being used. Manufacturers of such products use such detail in order to convey to consumers that in fact their product will have its best taste before the date stated but is nearly always edible and safe passed this date. If in case you are a bit in doubt about whether or not to consume a product, the best tool for you to use is still your sense of smell and taste.

There are special machines that print these expiration and sell-by dates onto package. These id coders, as they are known, also responsible for printing serial numbers and batch numbers onto a variety of materials including glass jars, aluminum cans, foil bags, cardboard and more. These coders work very quickly and the ink used in an id coder dries quickly as well. There are quite a few brands of coders, including Altima coders, Imaje coders, Willett coders, Domino coders and others.

Most companies that use such machines often need replacement inks and make-up for these id coders. Buying directly from your coder manufacturer is quite expensive, and you can save money by purchasing from a special product id company with generic versions of these inks. In finding them you will be able to get high quality yet budget-friendly generic versions of VideoJet ink, Imaje ink, Domino ink and more.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...