Monday, December 9, 2013

Information Regarding Expiration Dates

By Keren Kipfer


Are you the type who buys food or drink and ensures that the labels including important data like expiration dates are read first? We can sometimes be careless and tend to look away from such information when it comes to the buying or consuming them. While it is important to always make note of these dates, they don't necessarily indicate whether or not an item is safe to eat.

If you want to be a wise consumer you need to be conscious about expiration dates for products like food, beverages and different types of medicine. When you have the itch to throw away stuff with dates that seem to have passed try to consider this first: that in some cases the dates that are printed are not necessarily stating that the item is now unsafe and not edible. For some products though, the expiration date is literal and required by the government and this includes items for infants and toddlers, such as formula and jarred baby food. When the expiration date has passed, these items should be tossed away.

Perishable products like milk, beef and other meat products, poultry as well as seafood have what is known as a sell-by dates. The stores must sell these perishables by this date, but they are generally still perfectly able to sit in your fridge for a couple of days and still be used. You can even freeze meats that are a day or two passed the sell-by dates. If everything looks and tastes fresh, the food is probably still ok to consume.

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.




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