Yup, I said it. And I stick by it!
I joke, but this really is a serious issue. Not deadly serious (hopefully), but definitely something worth serious consideration.
Like most people, I have a favorite grocery store–Giant Food, LLC–where I go to for the majority of my shopping. The problem is, I’ve discovered outdated and expired food items on their shelves on NUMEROUS occasions. And since I’ve been paying better attention, I can safely say that I find at least one expired item practically every time I shop at this store, which is about once a week.
In once case, I saw a quart of expensive gourmet Australian olive oil sit on the shelf until it had expired by three months. (At this point, I took a bottle of the stuff up to customer service and reported it to customer service.) I have also found expired meat, milk, and most recently, organic string cheese that had expired a month and a half earlier. Even expired sodas past their best by date by at least a month.
In the unfortunate situations where I mistakenly purchased expired items, the customer service people at Giant did refund my purchases with no fuss–I must give them credit for that. However, it is still hard to justify so many occurrences of outdated products every week. Oil expired three months? Cheese expired for a month and a half? Clearly, this is an unacceptable situation. And if expired food items are consumed by a susceptible person, they could become seriously ill–or worse.
The bottom line: don’t assume that all food items on grocery store shelves are still good. Always check the expiration dates. And if you find an item that is past its date, inform a manager before you leave the store–preferably as soon as possible.