Are You Going to Eat That?

I daresay experation dates would also carry more weight if they were accurate and meaningful.

Many products have best buy dates that are unusually conservative as a means to protect the producer. For example, eggs are usually still good to eat for many days past their date. Best by, use by, and sell by have distinct meaning that seldom are used correctly on packaging.

Also, I might not buy a product I would consume. I'll eat day over yogurt in my fridge because I have it and no other options (other than throw it out and take the fiscal loss), I won't buy it, however, because it might go really bad before I get arround to eating it during the week. Also, the store likely has fresher options, which given the choice and the fact that the loss is the store's, means that I will take the fresher, better choice.

Finally, most producers have now taken on the habbit of putting best by dates on a whole host of non-perishable products creating a "boy who cried wolf" syndrom to such dates. While these dates are useful to make sure that product is being rotated (not just new stuff put in front of old forever), it does nothing for people confidence in such dates. Is purified water in a container that takes thousands of years to decay really a health risk after two years? Five year old Mountain Dew still tastes good and is still carbonated. Probably would still be good in twenty years (consider that my inflation shelter). While some vitamins break down over times as short as a few months, most last for years, so your Honey Nuy Cherios will still be good for you and delicious ten years after the apocalypse . . . just don't try to milk the five headed winged cow, use powdered milk; it will still be good as well.

I only speak for myself in saying that it's not necessarily the ownership property of the item, it's that I KNOW what that item has been through, where it's been, and what's been done to it - at least in my posession. If I know that I've kept my milk sealed in my refrigerator at a frosty temperature (barely above freezing!), I will not hesitate to use that milk after its expiration date, within reason of course! This is not the case with most of my friends items or items in a restaurant. It's the same reason I try to buy things new...used items have a history you know nothing about!

I had to create an account to post this. This has nothing to do with endowment effect. There are two reasons that I would eat expired food

1. I paid for it
2. nothing else in the cupboard to eat

If you gave me a case of expired yogurt, I would probably eat it since it was free, but not because I own it.

It makes perfect sense. How does this rationale extend into our daily lives? Does this make us less wasteful if we have ownership? Such as a person who has ownership in a neighborhood will take care of the property as opposed to a renter?

Sounds like these so called scientists don't know anything about correlation studies. Where does any evidence suggest that this effect has to do with ownership?

Would you buy something that is past the sell-by date? No. Why? Because its probably gonna sit in your fridge for a few more weeks and by the time you get to eating it, it will have turned.

If I was in a store, buying something to eat for lunch right then, I would buy a yogurt expired by a few days -- we all know those expiration dates are just a guide and that the food isn't necessarily bad.

This article is just riddled with terrible science.

usually i like to open up my expired milk and do the old smell check before i drink it. If i could do that at the grocery store it might make me more prone to buying expired products lol

I would imagine that when stores price discount products that are closer to their best before date that they would sell quickly. But given the choice between identically priced products, and a longer shelf life with one. Utility maximization will occur (you chose the one with the most "value"). Same with products in the fridge, you choose to maximize your utility - eat the one a few days past, or go to the store and get another and throw out this one. If its nasty you throw it out because being sick outweighs the going to the store.

The endowment effect may be true but I don't think it works with food. In fact I seem to be more attracted to food that isn't mine - the other person's plate always looks tastier. I think we tend to enjoy the things that we know we can't eat all the time more than the things we own and can eat whenever we want.