The one that most surprises me is the loaves of brown seeded bread I buy. The use by date is normally only a week from purchase, where as the bread is normally fresh for 2 weeks, and edible but starting to harden up to 3 weeks.
If I followed the use by date, I'd be throwing away half a loaf of bread every week.
You can't avoid things just because they could kill you.
You've listed the one exception to being able to rely on your senses, and it doesn't really correlate with best before dates, cooked reheated rice is the main risk.
The same should apply to food, there have been multiple food poisoning cases in the US stemming from salad, so following best before labels isn't going to avoid all risk. The best option therefore is to evaluate risks for yourself. I don't blindly drink milk based on the date. If it stinks and is lumpy, I don't drink it, regardless of whether it's in date or not.
Your salad example doesn't support your point, it counters it. We can't smell food poisoning, so suggesting that people just sniff the food to see if it's safe to eat is, by your own example something that isn't going to work.
In most cases that extends to using my senses, but if I'd left a bottle of milk outside for a week in summer, I wouldn't sniff it to 'check'.
Also the original comment mentioned best before, not use by. But use by dates are a useful tool, I'm saying you shouldn't just blindly rely on that.
When you sniff food and it smells bad you know that food can't be eaten, so you throw it out. When you sniff food and it doesn't smell bad can that food be eaten? You don't know.
That's why they have the dates: the dates take into account the most common food poisoning bacteria, and best practice storage in the home, and make a balancing act.
What you do with your own body is obviously up to you, but please don't use "I can smell if it's bad" if you're feeding children or old people because they are at risk of death or permanent harm.
Best before and sell by is a guarantee. Its the company saying this product will last until X date. Just like your car doesn't become unusable when the warranty runs out, neither does bread, especially when you make some attempt to store it properly, because best before dates are based on the opposite.
As I mention elsewhere in the thread, these dates do not have any legal meaning at all for the manufacturer. They do have meaning for the vendor (the grocery store), but that's not what people generally imagine is going on.
Even the phrasing "best before" explicitly doesn't guarantee anything; a manufacturer would be crazy to make such a guarantee.
I would expect bread consumed before the best before date not to be stale, if it was I would expect to be able to get my money back, I wouldn't expect the same after the best before.
One problem with food is that there are too many variables about how it's stored after it leaves the store. For example, bread can go stale if it's not stored in an airtight container.
The best before probably takes into account the worst case and is set low accordingly. I go to the effort to store bread appropriately so that lower bound is no longer particularly relevant to me.
Absolutely not, if you think bread going stale is relevant to the expiration date. (Which it isn't.)
If you leave bread exposed to the air, it will go stale almost immediately, long before a one-week expiration period has elapsed. The expiration date is obsolete as soon as you open the product.
There's not "one" exception. You can't smell the toxin caused by bacillus cerius; you can't smell campylobacter; you can't smell listeria; you can't smell samonella; you can't smell e coli; you can't smell C. perfringens etc etc etc.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/02/whole_...
You can't smell food poisoning!
You may well not come to lasting harm, but you could kill children or older people.
This tells you if the food is rotting. It doesn't tell you if the food is safe to eat.
Most of these people probably got sick eating unspoiled food: https://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm103263...
method 1: take the food out, stare at it for a few minutes. if it doesn't move, it's still good.
method 2: open the fridge and yell "BOOO!!!". anything that doesn't run away in fear is still good.
more seriously: keeping food edible requires proper storage conditions. as long as the bread is kept dry, it is good. if it starts to harden that is a good indicator that it was dry enough. even hard bread is still edible if soaked in liquid.
but beware of humidity. mold is treacherous and initially invisible. once i see any bit of mold on a bread, then the whole loaf is lost.
on the other hand, on jam or cheese i'll just cut the mold away generously and eat the rest. with cheese especially i expect that most of the mold is edible anyways. i still cut it away though, just to be safe.
also, to help food keep fresh longer i don't buy sliced bread or cheese for example. the slices have more attack-surface and go bad faster. it's less of a difference for bread because mold can get through anyways, and slices will only dry up faster. with cheese and meat however, the smaller surface really helps to protect the inside.