Decoding food package codes

[TheUnboundOne]

Brosia,

According to an article I read from Helouise, the goddess of home economics, expiration dates on canned and packaged goods are usually just a rule-of-thumb. Canned foods kept at room temperature in a dry place can last up to 18 months longer than the expiration date, or even 2-3 years longer if kept cooler.

According to a Guinness book that I read one time, cans of corned beef dating back to the Napoleonic Era were found in the early 1900s and were still edible!

The best guide is color and smell of the food and lack of swelling of the can. If all of these check out, they're all right by me.

[Rustyshakelford]

Cool!!! Thanks. Guess who gets my vote for food moderator?

[Brosia]

Rusty suggested this in another thread.

Try as I might, I could not find any place that would really give a definitive answer, as different manufacturers use their own personal codes. there are no FDA regulations that say they have to tell consumers what it means. While there are plenty of foods that make it easy enough, with those "sell by" and "use by" and "best by" dates, there's still plenty of packages with numbers and letters that mean nothing to the consumer as to the date of manufacture or suggested storage life.

I did find these links to be most useful:
http://lancaster.unl.edu/food/ftjan05.htm

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/...ting/index.asp

http://www.mealtime.org/content.aspx?id=160