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Milk Factoid

Submitted by erin on Tue, 2007-10-30 21:01

A while back we posted about organic milk . It's a fairly detailed post and worth a peruse for anyone curious about organic versus non organic milk. Anyway, our local paper recently demystified the whole "sell by date" thing. I found it helpful and interesting.

Summary:

  • The sell by date is the LAST day on which the milk should be sold -- Duh. Nothing too revealing here. This date also takes into account that one may not use the milk immediately, so there is some padding for how a normal household would consume/store the white stuff.
  • This "padding" to take into account consumption is why a gallon of milk may have an earlier sell by date than the smaller quart--because it takes longer to finish off the gallon.
  • If you open the milk prior to the sell by date, which I think nearly everyone does, it should last at least 5-7 days before starting to smell funky. Let your nose make the decision.

    • Bottom Line: The key is when you OPEN the milk, not so much the sell by date. This is especially helpful since ultra-pasteurized milk may have a date nearly a month or two in the future (click the link to learn more about UHT milk). Yet the sell by date clearly indicates a degree of freshness. Who doesn't reach toward the back of the shelf to wiggle out the milk with the "better" date?

    *Milk is best stored at 34-39F.

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