Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Information Regarding Expiration Dates

By Keren Kipfer


Every time you purchase a drink or food product, do you read the labels and possibly consider looking into important details such as expiration dates? For many of us, buying a product near its expiration date is not to be considered, but often these dates are misunderstood. Here are a few quick facts that might help you know what food is edible near and passed these dates.

Wise consumers need to consider looking into expiration dates for items including food, drinks and even medicines. But if you are about to throw away items which have dates that have already passed, give this serious thought: some expirations dates are notices that the food quality might begin to change after the date and the food is simply "best by" a certain date. Still, in some cases the date printed there is actually its true expiration. There should be no room for carelessness when it comes to expiration dates for products like baby foods and baby formulas. These dates are set by the government and you truly need to throw away expired baby foods after the date has passed.

When you refer to sell-by dates, they are basically pertaining to products that are perishable like milk, beef, poultry and seafood or other meat items. Stores sell such products by their "date" but there is an allowance for you so as to enable you to store them in your fridge for a while. Some people even have these items frozen and kept for a day or two past its sell-by date. A general guideline often points that it is still fine to consume such product for as long as they look and smell fresh. If something looks strange or smells odd, then toss it and don't take a chance.

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.

The machines that make it possible for the fast printing of these expiration dates on your packages of foods and beverages are known as id coders. These machines also are responsible for printing serial and batch numbers. These numbers are added at the end of the production process and manufacturers can then leave it to these special coder printers to complete the task in a fast manner, but these coders also are used because they can print on surfaces such as plastic, glass and aluminum without smearing. As to the brands, you will easily find the likes of Domino coders, VideoJet coders and Imaje coders.

Replacement inks and make-up for these id coders are always needed by companies using coders. But you should know that making such purchase from your coder's manufacturer could be quite costly. What you need in order to save money is to find a special product id company selling generic versions of such inks. When you find them, you will delight in the fact that they sell generic versions of Domino ink, Imaje ink, Willett ink as well as other brands at great quality but at a much lower cost.




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