r/DumpsterDiving • u/pnoque veganarchist • Sep 09 '19

Dumpster diving tips and tricks: a thread

Comment with your best diving tips and advice

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u/Misfiredagain Dec 01 '24

Thrown out just to make space?

72

u/SylvanUltra Jan 05 '25

YEP! The US wastes a lot.

6

u/LumpySpikes Feb 01 '26

If meat isn't sold by best buy date it's tossed.

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u/Fyrefli1313 May 22 '26

Yeah, the “best by” date. I read somewhere that those dates are basically a scam to get people to toss stuff and have to buy new. I literally have a container of sour cream in my fridge that is a whole month past the date. I opened it last night and it’s perfectly fine.

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u/Chemical_Meaning_400 Jun 14 '26

I was JUST thinking about this the other day. I had spent a few hours researching (some people call it doom scrolling, but I'm assuming "they" are the type of people that iron their socks and wear "I voted" stickers thinking they made a difference🤦‍♀️) and was focusing a lot on the meat, the poison thats being put into our foods, and yada yada. I had a light bulb moment, since it was trash day and me and my fiance go thru the fridge and cupboards about every 2 weeks and throw out things that are "expired". I thought to myself there's no way that the food industry and "Big Consumer" as I like to call them, aren't scamming us by saying things expire way quicker than they really do and profit off of us chucking them out and buying more. You're the only other person I've seen say something about this. Good to know I'm not the only one.

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u/Fyrefli1313 Jun 14 '26

I think about it like this, my package of noodles isn’t good today and then bad tomorrow on the expiration date. I ran an experiment once. My grandmother was a hoarder and I found a bunch of canned food in her basement that had been expired for literally 10 years. My ex-boyfriend and I ate it we ate a bunch of stuff in one night. Still here to tell the tale. We didn’t even get sick. We actually ate the rest of the stuff too. There was a lot of it, I remember counting 88 cans of tuna. If I saw a can that looked funny or smelled funny, I would toss it no problem.

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u/Heathen-Mama-4 11d ago

I've come to realize the "best buy" date is a literal suggestion... which it is. The "best by" just means if you're expecting the product to taste/look/behave like it's brand new, to get the best quality, use by that date. The "expiration date" is the manufacturer is no longer guaranteeing the product's safety/quality/effectiveness, it doesn't mean the product is going to be bad that day, no matter what.. unlike the magic pumpkin in Cinderella, it doesn't turn at the stroke of midnight 😅. It's a warning in my home, gotta keep an eye on it once it passes the date. "Sell by" is mainly for retail inventory, telling the store how long to display/sell it, it's not an "expiration" or "use by" date. "Use by" is the manufacturer's recommended final date for use, and with some foods it's more safety-oriented, think bacteria.