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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    RangerGuy

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    Default Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    I really like oat milk. It tastes great, foams/steams well enough, has potentially the least environmental impact, and it can be shelf-stable for months which means running out of milk for my cereal is much less likely.

    But once it's open, according to the packaging, I've got 10 days to drink it.

    Isn't it just an oat-water slurry? If it's refrigerated, how can that go "bad"? I get that most "use within X days of opening" messages are arbitrary or especially conservative due to liability, but I just don't see what the limiting factor here would be. It doesn't seem like a particularly fertile ground for bacterial growth. But I'm not a food-ologist.

    This message brought to you by the half-finished carton of oat milk I discovered in the back of the fridge this morning and am sad to be throwing away.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    There are a bunch of types of mold and microorganisms that can grow slowly in refrigerator temperatures. If a single spore gets in any time that a food/drink package is opened, those can start multiplying.
    Quote Originally Posted by Harnel View Post
    where is the atropal? and does it have a listed LA?

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    ElfPirate

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Oatmilk contains fat. Fat goes bad if it's not kept cold.

    Also oats have starches that breaks down into sugars that bacteria loves. I sometimes eat oatmeal cookies dipped in milk. I rinse it out, but I can't always get the oats of the rim properly that way. Next day it smells riiiipe. And, no it's not the milk doing it.

    Basically it goes bad for very similar reasons milk does.

    Is those 10 days necessarily a deal-breaker though? Nope. There's no reason it can't hold for longer. The best-by-date is recommendation they put on there because people in this day and age for some reason can't smell and taste the product first. Instead lawyers get involved. So they put a date on. And people slavishly follow that number.

    I've had opened milkcartons survive in the fridge longer than 10 days past use-by date. Think 3 weeks is my record. Something silly like that. I've had milk that has been bad even before the best-before date too.

    The day you pour the (oat)milk into coffee and it "cuts" is the day the (oat)milk went bad. Also smell it. Taste it first. You will be able to tell.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Always do the smell test. Your nose has evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to detect bad food.

    Unless you recently had covid or generally have a weak sense of smell, in which case don't trust your nose. Then instead do a little sip and spit, if it tastes suspicious it's definitely bad
    Black text is for sarcasm, also sincerity. You'll just have to read between the lines and infer from context like an animal

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    Griffon

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Oatmilk contains fat. Fat goes bad if it's not kept cold.

    Also oats have starches that breaks down into sugars that bacteria loves. I sometimes eat oatmeal cookies dipped in milk. I rinse it out, but I can't always get the oats of the rim properly that way. Next day it smells riiiipe. And, no it's not the milk doing it.

    Basically it goes bad for very similar reasons milk does.

    Is those 10 days necessarily a deal-breaker though? Nope. There's no reason it can't hold for longer. The best-by-date is recommendation they put on there because people in this day and age for some reason can't smell and taste the product first. Instead lawyers get involved. So they put a date on. And people slavishly follow that number.

    I've had opened milkcartons survive in the fridge longer than 10 days past use-by date. Think 3 weeks is my record. Something silly like that. I've had milk that has been bad even before the best-before date too.

    The day you pour the (oat)milk into coffee and it "cuts" is the day the (oat)milk went bad. Also smell it. Taste it first. You will be able to tell.
    The shops around here have abandonned sell by dates for some fruit, now fruit that you used to buy with a long date on it so it kept for about ten days goes off before you start it sometimes. It really isn't a matter of sell by dates being abused by consumers, it iis about rotten produce being sold as fresh by greedy supermarkets.
    Last edited by halfeye; 2023-05-16 at 06:39 PM.
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

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    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Chimera

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Oatmilk is oats and water. The oats are treated with α-amylase to hydrolyze starches into sugars such as maltose (which is why it is sweeter than unadulterated oatmeal or the like). This makes it a low-sugar-density sugary solution, an optimal breeding ground for bacterial growth. Now, it is pasteurized or subjected to UHT heat treatment (and doesn't have the same level of endogenous bacteria that something like dairy milk has), so it starts out relatively sterile. Still, it's kind of like no-sugar-added fruit juices, non-alcoholic wines, or other substances -- it's just a place to grow bacteria. That said, temperature and keeping the lid on do help, and the use-within-X-days guidelines are just that.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    The shops around here have abandonned sell by dates for some fruit, now fruit that you used to buy with a long date on it so it kept for about ten days goes off before you start it sometimes. It really isn't a matter of sell by dates being abused by consumers, it iis about rotten produce being sold as fresh by greedy supermarkets.
    Who said anything about abusing anything? I'm saying it's a proven fact people will throw stuff way as soon as expiry date come up because well it clearly says this date right? Can't eat it after that. Store also throw away tons of food, as in literally, because we have to stick to those dates sell by dates. But as I said, they are recommendations, not hard facts. Use your nose and taste-buds. Don't solely rely on an arbitrary number. There's no telling exactly how quickly something spoils, so they tend to err on the side of caution. Not to mention it loses some of it's appeal long before it becomes actually dangerous, and frankly the seller is more concerned by that than your safety.

    Also I've *never* heard of expiry dates for fruits. That's why you pick and muse and examine them in the shop. Never know how long it's been sitting there. Fruits have wildly varied spoil times. Stick things next to apples and the apple release gas that accelerates the ripening process (as part of their ripening process).

    I once picked up a melon at the shop which some previous customer had already weighed. But since I didn't know what day it was just on a lark I reweighed it. Saved me 2 cents on the weight it's lost from day before.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Who said anything about abusing anything?
    I did.

    I'm saying it's a proven fact people will throw stuff way as soon as expiry date come up because well it clearly says this date right? Can't eat it after that. Store also throw away tons of food, as in literally, because we have to stick to those dates sell by dates. But as I said, they are recommendations, not hard facts. Use your nose and taste-buds. Don't solely rely on an arbitrary number. There's no telling exactly how quickly something spoils, so they tend to err on the side of caution. Not to mention it loses some of it's appeal long before it becomes actually dangerous, and frankly the seller is more concerned by that than your safety.
    You've bought into the story. It's not what's really happening. If all the food we buy starts going off before we eat it, there will be a lot more waste, less from the shops, and they will make more profits from selling the bad stuff as well as the good so they will love it, but waste overall will increase dramatically..

    What is happening IF WE LET IT, is that there will be no date labels on anything. Which will mean that you will have no recourse if you get home and the product is already rotten, because "buyer beware" and you didn't. The main reason I buy big containers of stuff is that it's cheaper, if we can't buy more than we'll use in one day, things will get even more expensive, and going to the supermarket every day will be annoying.

    Also I've *never* heard of expiry dates for fruits. That's why you pick and muse and examine them in the shop. Never know how long it's been sitting there. Fruits have wildly varied spoil times. Stick things next to apples and the apple release gas that accelerates the ripening process (as part of their ripening process).
    This is packaged fruits, six packs of apples, string bags of "easy peelers", oranges, labeled avacados, labeled mangos, they used to have dates on their labels, they still have the labels, but the are no dates on them since earlier this year (I don't buy vegetables, it may be the same with them, I don't know). This is here, it may not be the same where you are ,,, yet.

    They were talking about doing it with milk, it's not happened here yet, but I've no doubt the shops would love it. A single pint is half the price of four pints, just think of the profit on doubling the price of anything.
    Last edited by halfeye; 2023-05-17 at 04:31 PM.
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

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    Chimera

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    I find the notion that grocers will deliberately sell us off food (and "love it") a position in need of defense. Obviously they would love to buy Y amount of product and sell 95% x Y of it to the consumer rather than 50% or 90% of Y. However, the grocery industry in general* is a competitive market with consumers having multiple options from which to choose (and appear to actually do so based on quality as a major motivator). The grocery store wants you to get (or at least feel that you get) quality product. Part of that is going to be product not near its listed expiration date (so a reason why they might want those dates pushed back or eliminated), but also by their food not spoiling before they can consume it.
    *excluding situations of food deserts and captive audience, notable in lower-income urban areas in my country.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    I find the notion that grocers will deliberately sell us off food (and "love it") a position in need of defense. Obviously they would love to buy Y amount of product and sell 95% x Y of it to the consumer rather than 50% or 90% of Y. However, the grocery industry in general* is a competitive market with consumers having multiple options from which to choose (and appear to actually do so based on quality as a major motivator). The grocery store wants you to get (or at least feel that you get) quality product. Part of that is going to be product not near its listed expiration date (so a reason why they might want those dates pushed back or eliminated), but also by their food not spoiling before they can consume it.
    *excluding situations of food deserts and captive audience, notable in lower-income urban areas in my country.
    Yeah. I tend to agree with that. There's no benefit to the grocery store to selling you expired product. To the degree that there have been changes over the last couple years, it appears to still be driven more by supply line issues than anything else. It feels more to me like they are finding they have little choice but to stretch those dates because it's taking them longer to get some products, so by the time it arrives in the store it's perhaps older (and less "fresh") that is used to be. I've definitely noticed this with some produce at my local store. The onions, in particular, often look really really ratty and pathetic. And while I used to buy 2 or even 3 at a time, I have learned to never buy more than what I'm using right now (no "put one in the pantry as a spare" bit anymore), because they'll be rotten in 2-3 days.

    Food deserts aside, I have also noticed a trend with chain stores and different neighborhoods (and this may totally be some fu-fu California thing), in that it's often easier to find good quality fresh produce at the stores in the lower rent neighborhoods than in the higher. Could be a function of consumer pattern differences (but you'd think the stores would adjust to that), but I've been suspecting for some time, it's about policies in terms of which stores get priority on deliveries, and therefore where shortages show up the most. Which, to be perfectly fair, makes total sense. People in lower rent areas are statistically going to be far more dependent on the local grocery store than people in higher rent areas, everything else being the same. I just noticed this in spades during some of the shortages during Covid, where my grocery store (in a fairly high rent area) was just plain out of certain things for several weeks in a row (eggs, onions, potatoes, carrots, etc). And I asked. They simply didn't get deliveries of these products at all. Mentioned this to a friend of mine who lived in a more working class neighborhood, and he and his wife were like "what are you talking about? We've never run out of those things". So yeah, I just got in the habit for about a month or two of stopping at their grocery store to get certain things whenever I visited (which was about once a week).

    But yeah. That sort of stuff is always driven by shortages of the goods in question. How that gets distributed is going to based on various policies. But it is about basic shortages. There's not enough stuff available to fill the pipeline with some goods like we used to be able to. So that's going to manifest in various ways. If you ran a store where you could only get produce at the very end of its lifespan, you'd remove the "sell by" dates too. Nothing too conspiratorial here. Just a natural response. And hardly something I'd blame on the stores themselves. They're just making do with what they have.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Yeah. I tend to agree with that. There's no benefit to the grocery store to selling you expired product. To the degree that there have been changes over the last couple years, it appears to still be driven more by supply line issues than anything else. It feels more to me like they are finding they have little choice but to stretch those dates because it's taking them longer to get some products, so by the time it arrives in the store it's perhaps older (and less "fresh") that is used to be. I've definitely noticed this with some produce at my local store. The onions, in particular, often look really really ratty and pathetic. And while I used to buy 2 or even 3 at a time, I have learned to never buy more than what I'm using right now (no "put one in the pantry as a spare" bit anymore), because they'll be rotten in 2-3 days.

    Food deserts aside, I have also noticed a trend with chain stores and different neighborhoods (and this may totally be some fu-fu California thing), in that it's often easier to find good quality fresh produce at the stores in the lower rent neighborhoods than in the higher. Could be a function of consumer pattern differences (but you'd think the stores would adjust to that), but I've been suspecting for some time, it's about policies in terms of which stores get priority on deliveries, and therefore where shortages show up the most. Which, to be perfectly fair, makes total sense. People in lower rent areas are statistically going to be far more dependent on the local grocery store than people in higher rent areas, everything else being the same. I just noticed this in spades during some of the shortages during Covid, where my grocery store (in a fairly high rent area) was just plain out of certain things for several weeks in a row (eggs, onions, potatoes, carrots, etc). And I asked. They simply didn't get deliveries of these products at all. Mentioned this to a friend of mine who lived in a more working class neighborhood, and he and his wife were like "what are you talking about? We've never run out of those things". So yeah, I just got in the habit for about a month or two of stopping at their grocery store to get certain things whenever I visited (which was about once a week).

    But yeah. That sort of stuff is always driven by shortages of the goods in question. How that gets distributed is going to based on various policies. But it is about basic shortages. There's not enough stuff available to fill the pipeline with some goods like we used to be able to. So that's going to manifest in various ways. If you ran a store where you could only get produce at the very end of its lifespan, you'd remove the "sell by" dates too. Nothing too conspiratorial here. Just a natural response. And hardly something I'd blame on the stores themselves. They're just making do with what they have.
    I'd be curious to see the logistics of that theory (not challenging you, just genuinely curious). If the grocery stores are all chains, I don't see why they would make the distinction of which location gets the fresh produce. And, though I don't like to admit it, you'd think the opposite would be true - that chains would invest their highest-quality produce in the place with the customers who have more buying power.

    If it was instead a regulations thing at the city or state level, that seems fiddly and hard to legislate/enforce. How would a government verify that stores in low-income neighborhoods are getting the best produce? And, more tongue-in-cheek, why have I never heard rich people complaining about it?

    My first guess would be that low-income families often have less free time, which means less cooking time, which means more prepackaged or fast food. That's a long-held belief that I've heard regurgitated pretty frequently, though a (quick, shallow) Google search tells me that equation isn't as clear-cut as I thought and home-cooked meals don't cleanly break along income lines.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
    I'd be curious to see the logistics of that theory (not challenging you, just genuinely curious). If the grocery stores are all chains, I don't see why they would make the distinction of which location gets the fresh produce. And, though I don't like to admit it, you'd think the opposite would be true - that chains would invest their highest-quality produce in the place with the customers who have more buying power.

    If it was instead a regulations thing at the city or state level, that seems fiddly and hard to legislate/enforce. How would a government verify that stores in low-income neighborhoods are getting the best produce? And, more tongue-in-cheek, why have I never heard rich people complaining about it?

    My first guess would be that low-income families often have less free time, which means less cooking time, which means more prepackaged or fast food. That's a long-held belief that I've heard regurgitated pretty frequently, though a (quick, shallow) Google search tells me that equation isn't as clear-cut as I thought and home-cooked meals don't cleanly break along income lines.
    The way I read it wasn't policies of the grocery store chains or government policies. I read it as policies of the produce suppliers the grocery stores in that area buy from.
    Quote Originally Posted by Harnel View Post
    where is the atropal? and does it have a listed LA?

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Back when I was rock climbing on a regular basis, I knew some very serious climbers who lived a very nomadic life style. They would travel at a moments notice to what cliffs had the best weather. Obviously, they couldn't hold a job for any length of time. They used to go dumpster diving and claimed that high end grocery stores like Whole Foods had the best pickings because those stores had the shortest expiration dates.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
    I'd be curious to see the logistics of that theory (not challenging you, just genuinely curious). If the grocery stores are all chains, I don't see why they would make the distinction of which location gets the fresh produce. And, though I don't like to admit it, you'd think the opposite would be true - that chains would invest their highest-quality produce in the place with the customers who have more buying power.
    You'd think that. Didn't comport with my own personal experiences. And I started asking around with various friends and family that lived in and shoped in different areas, and saw the same trend. Why that pattern existed is a huge question mark. But it definitely did (at least in my geographical region). Literally every single person who lived in a "high rent" neighborhood reported massive shortages that lasted for weeks and weeks for some staple goods, but every time I asked people who regularly shoped in "low rent/working class" neighborhoods, they had not experienced any shortages at all (well, aside from the whole paper products thing which affected everyone). What few things were missing were occasional and for short periods of time. Like "they're out of X today, but I go the next day and it's there" kind of stuff. I remember literaly going to my local grocery store every single day, looking for the same set of staple stuff and never finding any for weeks at a time. I distinctly recall going to a friends house and making this observation, and they told me their local store had all of it and they'd never not been able to get it. I literally drove by on the way home, and sure enough, I was able to buy eggs for the first time in like 3 weeks, along with a few other things as well.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
    If it was instead a regulations thing at the city or state level, that seems fiddly and hard to legislate/enforce. How would a government verify that stores in low-income neighborhoods are getting the best produce? And, more tongue-in-cheek, why have I never heard rich people complaining about it?
    Could have been regulations, or "guidelines", or who knows what. It felt to me more like a delivery priority that pre-existed, and which was never noticed until there were real shortages. Which, as I mentioned in my previous post, makes a fair bit of sense. If, at the distribution center, they automatically load the trucks delivering to "strores in groupA" first, then load the ones to "stores in groupB", then "stores in groupC", and those groups align with economic strata in the areas they are delivering to, you don't have to add any new rules to make this happen when a shortage occurs. It's a natural result of the sorting/loading methodology you are using.

    Pure speculation though. One of several possible explanations for what I noticed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
    My first guess would be that low-income families often have less free time, which means less cooking time, which means more prepackaged or fast food. That's a long-held belief that I've heard regurgitated pretty frequently, though a (quick, shallow) Google search tells me that equation isn't as clear-cut as I thought and home-cooked meals don't cleanly break along income lines.
    Yeah. This is certainly another, and goes to the "consumption patterns" I mentioned earlier. It's entirely possible that the exact same number of each type of goods were loaded up and delivered to the stores in each area, but consumers maybe buy more of those things in some areas and less in others, resulting in shortages in the former areas. But you'd think stores would take into account the normal rate of consumption of each type of good and have that baked into their standard order set (no one wants to order more than they will sell, right?). So if every delivery was say down 20% on those items, you'd think the shortage would affect all stores equally.

    It's also 100% possible that a fair amount of hoarding was going on, which would be felt more directly in areas with lots of people with greater disposable income who could afford to buy up ridiculous amounts of everything so as to make sure "I have enough". But I'm not sure how well that applies to the sorts of staple food goods I was talking about, which don't have super long shelf lifes, so there's a hard limit to how much hoarding helps the hoardee. But yeah, can't discount that as a factor either.

    But in any case, whenever I did ask I always got the "we didn't get any delivered" answer. Now, it's totally possible that they were just lying to cover something up maybe? Not sure how that's better than "we got some delivered yesterday morrning, but were out by 9:30AM" or something. The latter would have at least clued me in on when to maybe try to show up to get there when there were goods to buy. But then maybe they were doing that intentionally to avoid having hordes of people show up and rush in when the doors open to get the just delivered goods. Dunno. Again though, none of my friends and family members who lived in more working class areas even noticed this, nor even considered having to figure out when best to try to show up to get things that were otherwise missing. They were able to just always get them and were never in risk of running out.

    Lots of possible explanations for this. But again, without going into the specific "why", the reality is that all of it is ultimately driven by some sort of shortage going on. And I suspect that a lot of other issues we've seen with some grocery items (like mentioned earlier) are still related to such things. Don't want to get into the weeds of causes and whatnot, but that's clearly what's driving things like selling stuff later in their freshness range. It's not like businesses suddenly discovered the profit motive just in the last few years, so it's a bit simplistiic to just say "they can sell older stuff and make money", and blame it on greed. Um... Could have been doing that all along, right? So something changed here. Something that changed "we can afford to toss out any food that reaches this date" to "we can't afford to do that anymore".

    Quote Originally Posted by gomipile View Post
    The way I read it wasn't policies of the grocery store chains or government policies. I read it as policies of the produce suppliers the grocery stores in that area buy from.
    Yeah. I"m not sure to what degree the chain influences the delivery schedule or priorities. But at least around here, usually the larger chains have large distribution centers owned by them. They get stuff delivered there, and then sort that onto trucks to deliver to specific stores owned/operated/associated with/by that chain. But I'm not intimately familiar with the process. So it's entirely possible there's some subcontractor involved and making these decisions. Not sure at all.

    But yeah, the individual stores don't have any direct control over it. They get what shows up. I'm just not sure who specifically made the choices that affected that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    Back when I was rock climbing on a regular basis, I knew some very serious climbers who lived a very nomadic life style. They would travel at a moments notice to what cliffs had the best weather. Obviously, they couldn't hold a job for any length of time. They used to go dumpster diving and claimed that high end grocery stores like Whole Foods had the best pickings because those stores had the shortest expiration dates.
    Whole Foods (or "whole payheck" as some of my friends refer to it) has an "odd" buisness model. They really target a specific type of shopper and I'm sometimes convinced that it's counterproductive, and yet, somehow they remain in business. It's "odd" in that they seem to target folks who want fresh ingredients, but want it packaged the same way the processed stuff is. Which is just... strange. It's like their entire business model is to grab people who grew up "cooking" boxed mac and cheese, but want to be "really cooking", so they separately package the noodles, and the cheese, and the bechemel sauce, charge 3x the total amount, and then have the consumer combine them together. Heck. I'm pretty sure if they thought they could get away with selling a pre-measured box of water for the consumer to boil to make their mac and cheese, they'd do it. I fully expect someone to link to boxes of water at Whole Foods now.

    It falls in that uncanny valley between people who buy ingredients and then combine them themselves to cook various meals and people who want to buy boxed meals. At least, that's my impression. I could be totally off on this, but I've scratched my head for years trying to figure out what the whole "individually packaged vegetables/<things that aren't normally packaged like that>" is really about, and that's the best I can come up with. Consider me baffled.

    I kinda put it in the same category as the Hello Fresh style meals. I get it. Folks who want to cook, but aren't sure how to manage their own grocery shopping so they basically pay for someone else to do it for them. It's a great step towards learning to cook for yourself. But it's ridiculously expensive, so maybe good for the learning period, but one should really just learn how to shop at some point. You're paying takeout prices for home cooked meals, which eliminates one of the main advantages to home cooking. I guess it's a step in the right direction to getting cooked food delivered, but only a small step.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I kinda put it in the same category as the Hello Fresh style meals. I get it. Folks who want to cook, but aren't sure how to manage their own grocery shopping so they basically pay for someone else to do it for them. It's a great step towards learning to cook for yourself. But it's ridiculously expensive, so maybe good for the learning period, but one should really just learn how to shop at some point. You're paying takeout prices for home cooked meals, which eliminates one of the main advantages to home cooking. I guess it's a step in the right direction to getting cooked food delivered, but only a small step.
    For me a big part of the attraction of the Hello Fresh kind of plan is not having to source and then commit to buying large amounts of odd ingredients, most of which I am going to end up wasting because I don't regularly cook a (Korean/Indian/Chinese/Sicilian/whatever) meal - if Hello Fresh or whatever meal plan company can split out the appropriate portion of kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass or asafoetida or Sichuan peppercorns or that one particular variety of cabbage that I could buy but then I'd have half to 3/4 of a chunk of cabbage that I had no plan for, and then do the same thing for another dozen people and send each of us just what we need to make that dish.. that seems reasonable to me.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by tyckspoon View Post
    For me a big part of the attraction of the Hello Fresh kind of plan is not having to source and then commit to buying large amounts of odd ingredients, most of which I am going to end up wasting because I don't regularly cook a (Korean/Indian/Chinese/Sicilian/whatever) meal - if Hello Fresh or whatever meal plan company can split out the appropriate portion of kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass or asafoetida or Sichuan peppercorns or that one particular variety of cabbage that I could buy but then I'd have half to 3/4 of a chunk of cabbage that I had no plan for, and then do the same thing for another dozen people and send each of us just what we need to make that dish.. that seems reasonable to me.
    Unless you are running a restaurant, recipes are plans, and plans always have to adapt to reality.
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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by tyckspoon View Post
    For me a big part of the attraction of the Hello Fresh kind of plan is not having to source and then commit to buying large amounts of odd ingredients, most of which I am going to end up wasting because I don't regularly cook a (Korean/Indian/Chinese/Sicilian/whatever) meal - if Hello Fresh or whatever meal plan company can split out the appropriate portion of kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass or asafoetida or Sichuan peppercorns or that one particular variety of cabbage that I could buy but then I'd have half to 3/4 of a chunk of cabbage that I had no plan for, and then do the same thing for another dozen people and send each of us just what we need to make that dish.. that seems reasonable to me.
    Yeah. I get that as as concept. Just not sure it really pans out if you do the math. You're also paying for salt and pepper and other common spices by the quarter/half teespoonful. Some stuff, like various herb and veggies make a lot more sense. But even then. I can throw out a heck of a lot of cabbage and lemongrass for the price difference and still come out ahead.

    And yeah, as someone who grew up poor and hungry, I *hate* the idea of throwing out food, so I will actively plan meals based on using a set of the same ingredients if they come in sizes larger than what is needed for what I'm cooking if at all possible. But if you are looking at cost, I think you would be surprised to find that you could probably make that exact same recipe, even tossing out 3/4ths of the spoilable ingredients you overbuy at the grocery store, and still come in somewhere around half the cost you are paying through something like Hello Fresh. You are paying for someone to separate those items into quarters or halfs or whatever, then package them, and ship them to you in a box.

    Additionally, a lot of the spoilable ingredients you may run into can often be put into salads. Some more than others, of course, but still. And there are some really nice health benefits to eating a leafy green salad regularly with dinner, doubly so for those of us a bit on the older side. So a lot of this comes down to meal planning, and it's not that tricky. Once you start doing this all the time, it kinda gains its own inertia and becomes easy. It's starting the process, from scratch, without really knowing what you are doing, that can be a bit overwhelming at first.

    On the flip side, I will say that one of the benefits of these food services is that you can eat a wider variety of food. Most home cooks will tend to develop a dozen or so "go to" recipes for meals they make all the time. So you always have the spices for them, and probably make sure to reuse the more spoilable ingredients for other things. But yeah, probably not going to be hitting some of the more exotic stuff very often, so there is that. And hey. You can always make larger portions, then fridge or freeze and use as leftovers.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    There's no telling exactly how quickly something spoils
    Or rather there is but you don't want to be constantly plating your oat milk into petri dishes; it's not practical,




    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Also I've *never* heard of expiry dates for fruits.
    Yeah, they'll turn into an inedible mess from ethylene long before the bacteria and mold can get to them
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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    Or rather there is but you don't want to be constantly plating your oat milk into petri dishes; it's not practical,
    Look, the only fridge I could afford was from a pathology lab estate sale, I didn't come here to be judged

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Who said anything about abusing anything? I'm saying it's a proven fact people will throw stuff way as soon as expiry date come up because well it clearly says this date right? Can't eat it after that.
    In some cases, it's a liability concern. A restaurant doesn't want to be known as serving old food, so they will generally encourage workers to toss post dated stuff. Even my local food bank requires that everything be at least a bit before expiration, because they throw away expired food, and need a bit of time to give it out.

    There are legal protections for things like charity in this case, but of course people want to err on the side of caution. You don't *have* to, and I casually ignore dates where I know they are off myself, but I certainly don't fault those organizing food on a larger scale for not wanting to check every thing, or have a risk of something being off. There's some inherent waste involved, but in service to keeping people fed and healthy, it's not the worst thing ever.

    As for stuff expiring more rapidly than usual, that can be a result of supply chain disruptions, so something spent more time than usual in transit. Grocery stores do not generally want this, and neither do shippers, but accidents happen. Covid caused a lot of lingering complications here, and of course there are issues like the Ohio derailment that I'm sure also caused delays. Nobody really wants food to go bad, but life is imperfect. Sometimes you will see deals on food that is approaching expiration. My local supermarkets often do deals on meat that has been on the shelf a bit. It's fine so long as you immediately cook it up, but if you let it sit in the fridge, good odds at least one package will go off. It might be a good deal if you've got the time to do that right away, but it's a reasonable tradeoff, not any sort of conspiracy.

    I highly recommend a garden if you want truly fresh produce. Nothing like it. Mine's cranking out food for me this year, and being able to just grab stuff off the vine is noticeably fresher and tastier than store stuff. I added some oddities this year, including a coffee bush that seems to be doing very well.

    Quote Originally Posted by gomipile View Post
    The way I read it wasn't policies of the grocery store chains or government policies. I read it as policies of the produce suppliers the grocery stores in that area buy from.
    I would expect that chains are standardized, using the same suppliers for everything. Works better at scale, and it matches what I've seen. One Safeway carries pretty much the same goods as another Safeway for the most part. However, I wouldn't be surprised if poorer areas tended to have less upscale chains. Nobody's gonna put a Whole Foods in a low income housing area, yknow? Probably Dollar Trees and such instead. The Dollar Tree probably has cheaper suppliers, on average, than Whole Foods.

    Just a standard economic effect, not really anybody setting out to do it. Richer areas tend to have nicer stores of all sorts, that's just the nature of wealth.

    As for why a given chain runs out or not, eh, that really comes down to supply chain management. Walmart in particular, is notorious for focusing on this, and rose to power on the backs of an efficient distribution system. Not every chain controls their own back end. Some have long term contracts, others a patchwork of shorter term stuff. The truck driver shortage hit hard for a bit there, and I would hazard a guess that the companies with less stable arrangements suddenly noticed. This can affect suppliers, distributors, just all depends on the market how things shake out....but those with a solid in house system were probably least affected...even if they were not the most expensive location.
    Last edited by Tyndmyr; 2023-05-26 at 03:53 PM.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tyndmyr View Post
    In some cases, it's a liability concern. A restaurant doesn't want to be known as serving old food, so they will generally encourage workers to toss post dated stuff. Even my local food bank requires that everything be at least a bit before expiration, because they throw away expired food, and need a bit of time to give it out.

    There are legal protections for things like charity in this case, but of course people want to err on the side of caution. You don't *have* to, and I casually ignore dates where I know they are off myself, but I certainly don't fault those organizing food on a larger scale for not wanting to check every thing, or have a risk of something being off. There's some inherent waste involved, but in service to keeping people fed and healthy, it's not the worst thing ever.
    I am very specifically talking about *private individual* foodwaste here, not that of stores, restaurants and other institutions where other rules apply. I'm saying many people today do not examine the food they bought to check its' condition but exclusively go by the the stamped date on the package.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Whole Foods (or "whole payheck" as some of my friends refer to it) has an "odd" buisness model. They really target a specific type of shopper and I'm sometimes convinced that it's counterproductive, and yet, somehow they remain in business. It's "odd" in that they seem to target folks who want fresh ingredients, but want it packaged the same way the processed stuff is. Which is just... strange. It's like their entire business model is to grab people who grew up "cooking" boxed mac and cheese, but want to be "really cooking", so they separately package the noodles, and the cheese, and the bechemel sauce, charge 3x the total amount, and then have the consumer combine them together. Heck. I'm pretty sure if they thought they could get away with selling a pre-measured box of water for the consumer to boil to make their mac and cheese, they'd do it. I fully expect someone to link to boxes of water at Whole Foods now.

    It falls in that uncanny valley between people who buy ingredients and then combine them themselves to cook various meals and people who want to buy boxed meals. At least, that's my impression. I could be totally off on this, but I've scratched my head for years trying to figure out what the whole "individually packaged vegetables/<things that aren't normally packaged like that>" is really about, and that's the best I can come up with. Consider me baffled.
    I stopped shopping at Whole Foods 15 years ago. Thanksgiving was being held at my house that year. My brother was making the stuffing and I was buying ingredients before he flew in. He insisted I should buy everything at Whole Foods. Everything cost too much but the "bread crumbs" broke the camels back. Whole Foods was selling a box of bread crumbs for $8.00!

    Part of me admires this. I mean, they were taking loaves of bread that didn't sell, drying them out in an oven, crushing them, repackaging them, and selling them at a profit. I bet they turned a $2.00 loaf of bread into 2-3 $8.00 boxes of bread crumbs.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    I am very specifically talking about *private individual* foodwaste here, not that of stores, restaurants and other institutions where other rules apply. I'm saying many people today do not examine the food they bought to check its' condition but exclusively go by the the stamped date on the package.
    Of course they do, that's what it's for. If it's before that date, they have the protection of quality assurance and some ability to get reimbursed if it turns out to be bad. If it's after that, it's up to your ability to judge, which most people don't have much of for food, and if you get it wrong you're out of luck.

    As somebody who works at a grocery store, we take that date pretty seriously because we basically have to if we want any trust at all. By far our biggest losses are on things like produce that don't have those dates because things can and have gone off days before one would expect them to and we have to bend over backwards to assure people we want them to have good safe food without that date on it.
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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    I stopped shopping at Whole Foods 15 years ago. Thanksgiving was being held at my house that year. My brother was making the stuffing and I was buying ingredients before he flew in. He insisted I should buy everything at Whole Foods. Everything cost too much but the "bread crumbs" broke the camels back. Whole Foods was selling a box of bread crumbs for $8.00!

    Part of me admires this. I mean, they were taking loaves of bread that didn't sell, drying them out in an oven, crushing them, repackaging them, and selling them at a profit. I bet they turned a $2.00 loaf of bread into 2-3 $8.00 boxes of bread crumbs.
    Well, that is a process. But yeah. I'm assuming you were talking about the boxed "stuffing mix" stuff, which is a bit more than just plain old bread crumbs. But even then, $8 is like twice what you would pay just going to a regular chain grocery store (yeah, I've been known to "cheat" when making stuffing myself). I've actually baked my own bread, cubed it, dried it, oiled/toasted/tossed with herbs, and still not been able to get the same flavor you get out of those boxed mixes. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. But there is a point where my time is worth more than I'm saving here. I'd rather focus time on the other incredients I'm adding to my stuffing and not on the bread.

    But yeah. I've encounterd what's almost a cult-like following for Whole Foods, and I just don't get it. Not one bit. It's bad enough that their boxed products are like double the cost as any random grocery story you probably passed while driving to Whole Foods, but the fruits and vegetables? OMG! I can buy apples for $1 to $1.50 per pound bulk (which is usually 6-8 apples per pound depending on size) at any random grocery store, or buy like 4 apples for $2 at Whole Foods (in a funky four apple package that I then have to throw into a landfill I guess). Um.... really? But people shop there. And yeah, some people shop no where else if they can help it. Boggles the mind. I can only assume they pump aerosolized heroin though the air ducts or something.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    But yeah. I've encounterd what's almost a cult-like following for Whole Foods, and I just don't get it.
    Whole Foods bascially is a cult. So is Apple. And Pelaton. A bunch of hype and pretense to hypnotoze people into paying exorbitant amounts of money for something mediocre
    Last edited by Bohandas; 2023-05-31 at 09:09 PM.
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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Well, that is a process. But yeah. I'm assuming you were talking about the boxed "stuffing mix" stuff, which is a bit more than just plain old bread crumbs. But even then, $8 is like twice what you would pay just going to a regular chain grocery store (yeah, I've been known to "cheat" when making stuffing myself). I've actually baked my own bread, cubed it, dried it, oiled/toasted/tossed with herbs, and still not been able to get the same flavor you get out of those boxed mixes. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. But there is a point where my time is worth more than I'm saving here. I'd rather focus time on the other incredients I'm adding to my stuffing and not on the bread.
    It was actual bread crumbs. I can't remember if it had a particular seasoning (like Italian seasoned bread crumbs) but it was just bread crumbs.

    To make stuffing right, you need to do it with some meat. I make my stuffing with sausage, herbs, spices, some finely sliced vegetables. I use bread I have cubed and dried out in the oven at a low temp. The fat melts off the sausage and absorbs into the bread, that's what makes stuffing so good.

    BTW, to be technical, "Stuffing" is when you bake it inside of the turkey or the animal. "Dressing" is when you make it separate.

    But yeah. I've encounterd what's almost a cult-like following for Whole Foods, and I just don't get it. Not one bit. It's bad enough that their boxed products are like double the cost as any random grocery story you probably passed while driving to Whole Foods, but the fruits and vegetables? OMG! I can buy apples for $1 to $1.50 per pound bulk (which is usually 6-8 apples per pound depending on size) at any random grocery store, or buy like 4 apples for $2 at Whole Foods (in a funky four apple package that I then have to throw into a landfill I guess). Um.... really? But people shop there. And yeah, some people shop no where else if they can help it. Boggles the mind. I can only assume they pump aerosolized heroin though the air ducts or something.
    The funny thing is there is a limited number of fruit and vegetable distributors in any given area. So the "Organic Apples" you buy at whole foods are likely from the same source as the ones you buy at Walmart.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    It was actual bread crumbs. I can't remember if it had a particular seasoning (like Italian seasoned bread crumbs) but it was just bread crumbs.
    Huh. Actual bread crumbs? Why? I've actually seen this, but have never understood it. Even in the boxed/bagged kits, they come in crumbs or cubed, and the cubed is vastly superior. But again, if you're going to buy this pre-packaged, why not actually just buy the stuff already made specifically for making stuffing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    To make stuffing right, you need to do it with some meat. I make my stuffing with sausage, herbs, spices, some finely sliced vegetables. I use bread I have cubed and dried out in the oven at a low temp. The fat melts off the sausage and absorbs into the bread, that's what makes stuffing so good.

    BTW, to be technical, "Stuffing" is when you bake it inside of the turkey or the animal. "Dressing" is when you make it separate.
    Yeah. That's one of those bits where you know the technical terms, but don't know if everyone in your audience does. If you use the word "dressing", how many people will be confused and think you're talking about something you put on a salad, which, in conjunction with talk about bread crumbs/cubes will tend to take your conversation in a very different and confusing direction.

    At the end of the day, whether I'm cooking it inside the animal or on the stove/oven, doesn't really make enough difference to rationalize the amount of confusion generated by using a separate term.

    I love stuffing (dressing, whatever) with sausage in it as well. It is so much more yummy! But if I'm making some as a side for a shared potluck style meal, I tend to stick with just veggies, unless I'm absolutely certain that there are no non-meat eaters in the group. Even then, there's already a big ole piece of animal as the main dish, maybe give folks a protein rest in the sides? And it's not like you can't just slather it with gravey if you want to anyway (Mmmmm... Gravey...).

    And speaking of gravey (or something gravey/mother-sauce adjacent): I totally use turkey dripping fat as an element in the bechemel used to make my scalloped potatoes (when there's a turkey involved of course). Cause that's just the way I roll.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    The funny thing is there is a limited number of fruit and vegetable distributors in any given area. So the "Organic Apples" you buy at whole foods are likely from the same source as the ones you buy at Walmart.
    That's somewhat regional and relevant legislation specific though. In theory, there are supposed to be legal guidelines as to what can and cannot be labeled "organic" when sold in a grocery store. Um... In practice, it's some really silly cobled together set of rules that are only somewhat followed and even then are not terribly consistent or sensible. And I'm pretty sure that the folks who actually work in the stores don't really care that much. I've seen enough shuffling/loading of produce around, on a single cart, back and forth beteween organic and non-organic sections that it's unlikely that these people are actually keeping any of that stuff straight.

    And that's right out in front of the customers. I have very little faith in the sorting processes that go on behind the scenes where the final consumer isn't going to be able to see it. I largely see anyone shopping for "organic" foods at a chain store as just paying a gullibility tax. You want organic, go drive out to a farmers market, or sign up for a co-op and get your farm box, or whatever. Anywhere else? Probably not really worth the cost difference.

    Eh. I'm a bit jaded on this. But I also think you have to pick your battles, and this really isn't a high value hill to die on.

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    Default Re: Does oat milk REALLY go bad in 7-10 days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    The funny thing is there is a limited number of fruit and vegetable distributors in any given area. So the "Organic Apples" you buy at whole foods are likely from the same source as the ones you buy at Walmart.
    and more to the point the "organic" apples are pretty much the same as the non-organic apples. They might as well be selling special apples that somebody has waved a wand over for all the difference it's going to make
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