I visited my gramps yesterday and was imploring him to throw out some of the mountains of expired food they have in there (that they don’t even eat!). I pulled out literally like 20 expired cans of canned tuna and salmon, showing him expiration dates going as far back as 2009!!
As a former food distributor, he says the expiration dates are a con by the companies to get you to buy more when you don’t need to. On most foods, especially those that are air sealed, and especially annoyed at the notion that medications ever go bad. So he insisted we open the canned salmon from 2009, and he literally ate half of it in front of me and was like it’s absolutely perfect, no different than if I bought one today. He implored me to try it. I admitted to him that the smell was fine and it looked fine too, but why take the risk to eat 12 year old food than to buy a new one for $1?? He says he happily makes regular charitable donations (i.e., not tight with money), but he will never throw out those $1 cans if his life depended on it.
He put the rest of the opened can of salmon back in the fridge, uncovered, to finish off later.
