Making Mealtime Meaningful: Discover how we're giving back with the 12T Cares program →

Expiration dates are usually provided on packaged foods, but often we forget to check and are left to use our senses to help us determine if food is good or gone bad. Our touch, smell, taste, and sight can help us know if a food product has turned sour, and should be thrown away. Some foods are more obvious than others; sour dairy products are fairly easy to detect, but what about eggs? Before you rely on taste to help you determine if food as gone bad (we don’t want to get sick!) you can use other sensory evidence, and a clever trick or two, to know if the food you’re about to eat has gone bad.

Eggs

Eggs can be tricky; they might still look good, but in fact be quite “fowl” (pun intended). If you’re not sure about your eggs, dip them in water. If the egg sinks, it’s still good! If it floats – throw it away.

Bread

Bread is pretty obvious. If you see mold, don’t eat it!

Dairy Products

Cheese is another one that can turn moldy and while certain cheeses are meant to be moldy, like a blue cheese, unless otherwise intended to be moldy – throw it out!

There’s nothing worse than a big gulp of sour milk, so if you’re not sure, give it a sniff and pour into a separate container to check for any curdling.

Check out the video for ways to detect when food has turned bad. Do you have any tricks for checking to see if a food item has reached its expiration?