Never buying milk from Walmart again
I was in the middle of making dinner when this happened. I'm grateful I poured it into a measuring cup first. Thankfully I don't live too far from another source.
I remember milk staying good almost a week past its expiration date when I was a kid. Boy have the times changed.
Why did you nuke the year from the expiration date? Is it from 2024???
Walmart milk expires a few days before the date. Been that way for a while. Some agency should look into it. I mean under a less fascist regime
I didn't think about it until now but yeah you Americans should be more diligent about food standards and safety now that the standards and consequences for corporate negligence are so low. You wouldn't want to end up in hospital...
Yeah, it wasn't even great before and now they have an administration that'll bend the rules for any corporation willing to pay.
Yeah that's what I'm saying. We have the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) which is supposed to look out for us on things like that. But they can't be trusted, especially under Trump.
So, for all the bad things you've heard about Trump, not being an American — he does tend to have a certain pattern to who he places in charge of what organisation. For example the FCC (Federal Communications... Commission? Council?), he appointed a former Verizon (national mobile carrier) executive, someone who would regulate in favour of business. So if he installed someone at the FDA, they'd likely be a former Walmart executive — not very keen on enforcing Walmart's lax expiration dates!
That's nuts. I just finished a gallon that I opened 10+ days ago, which expired 5 days ago. Tasted just fine, no problems.
This was Rockview, though. It's one of the best tasting milks you can buy in SoCal.
Meanwhile my costco milk seems to want to last a week+ past the date making me suspiciously sniff and sip it every time after the date
Walmart uses prison labor for dairy.
That's not Walmart, that's on the dairy farm and the FDA not doing proper inspections.
Could very much be walmart if they aren't unloading pallets in a reasonable amount of time and shit is just sitting around warm.
RFK Jr would drink it, you pussies.
That was happening to our house and then we discovered that our fridge wasn't running at food safe temperatures.
Might be worth putting a thermometer in.
Bought a house (back when such things were still available to plebs). Hadn't moved in yet, cleaning etc. Chucked some drinks and snacks into the fridge. Next day, barely chilly. Put a thermometer in, 40-some degrees F.
A new fridge was just the first unexpected expense.
I make sure to keep the fridge just above freezing. I do this by actually setting it cold enough to freeze then raising it slightly until things stop freezing.
Not saying Walmart milk doesn't suck but have you checked your refrigerator temps? You wanna be sure you keep it as cold as possible. So in the back and not the door.
Best before Oct 31 what year?
Pathetic. The soy milk I buy last for almost an entire year.
Indeed. I order unsweetened soy milk once a year so I don't have to carry it from the store and never run out. 80 1L packs. Still good after a year, no animals were harmed in the process. Even after a year I can leave an opened pack which is far passed it's expiration date in the fridge for a week without it going bad.
some whole milk has cream that settles at the top. Are you sure it was actually bad?
Edit: looks like you're not the only one with issues with this brand. If you keep the container you can get a refund from the manufacturer or walmart.
Pretty much all milk in the US is homogenized, unless bought from a specialty brand/store. I can basically guarantee that Walmart is not selling non-homogeneous milk in the US.
If it doesn't come in a bag, it ain't real milk. True story
Tell me more
Canada
Tip: Lactose-free milk tastes the same, is easier on your digestive system, and doesn’t expire for over a month.
Lactose-free milk is much sweeter than regular milk and expires in the same amount of time unless you're buying the long life version.
Yep. That’s because they don’t actually remove the lactose. They add lactase which cleaves the lactose into simpler sugars, increasing the sweetness.
It doesn't taste the same. The lactase breaks the less sweet lactose into glucose and galactose, which are about twice as sweet as lactose (all are less sweet than table sugar.)
Also lactose free milk is typically ultra pasteurized, which gives it the longer shelf life, but ultra pasteurization does impact taste. It gives it a "cooked" flavor.
It's also not entirely lactose free. Ask me how I know.
Cries in lactose intolerance
Tip: Oat milk is yummier.
lol no
Got to get that extra creamy.
Is your lactose free milk prepared/packaged differently from your regular milk? The two keep for just as long here.
German tetrapacks in the chat
The American version of those are fun. Two months before the expiration date, stored in a dark space around 50F or less, they separate into globs. Not spoiled, just separated. Globs settle in the bottom of coffee. Once you get enough air in there, you can shake the everloving shit out of it, and the globs break apart into a delightful foam that floats on top.
I've had milk two weeks past that still smelled good. I poured it out anyway. The secret to milk is that it has to stay cold. If it warms even a bit the shelf life is cut way short.
Edit: Even if you buy the milk and it ice cold doesn't mean somewhere in the distribution process it hasn't been allowed warm up. I have bought milk that went bad within a day.
Stop wasting food.
Don’t drink 2 week old milk in the name of not wasting food. It’s not worth the hospital visit. Just adjust your purchasing if you always have milk you’re tossing out.
No.
I just had one where I didn't use it at all for a few weeks, and it was a few days past the expiration date. This may help, but it wasn't opened yet. My wife was like, "Throw it out!" And I was like no ill take the risk. Decided to have cereal the next morning and was pleasantly surprised it was perfectly fine and was able to use it all within the next 3 days.
Then again, I have had times where i just got it, and 2 days later, it was super gross. Here's looking at you stop and shop store brand milk... got burned twice like that, and I have never purchased it again. I hate that store so much.
Milk is so easy to tell if it's spoiled, no reason to throw it out without a sniff test.
Not necessarily true. As soon as your crack the seal on pasteurized milk, the Bacillus cereus spores start to germinate even if cold. There is a strain that thrives at fridge temps and within a few days the milk is now full of cereulide toxins. Badtimes at the hospital.
UHT milk would kill the spores though at the factory so it's safer to keep longer.
Thankfully I don't think we have Walmart store brand milk here in Canada. We also don't allow hormones either.
If a perishable product comes in an opaque plastic container, that’s a deliberate choice. Always be suspicious of it.
It does help a bit with spoilage issues (by blocking light coming into the product) but what you said is totally valid as well.
What exactly am i supposed to see here? Just looks like normal milk to me?
I think there's chunks in it
Ah i see. With full fat non homogenized milk you always have a big chunk of separated out pure fat/cream sitting on top, but i guess that not it in this case? If in doubt just taste test it, a few droplets of spoiled milk wont harm you.
That doesn't look bad. That looks like it didn't get homogenized. The "chunks" is just cream. Put the cap back on and shake it up.
What was scrubbed out in red next to the used by date? The year? You held onto that bottle for a year for a social media clout? :P
Lol, quite the imagination. I scrubbed out the identification numbers that could be used to track down where I live because I don't trust none of y'all or the government.
I found that odd for a Lemmy post but also, one year milk is in much worse condition than this image. Unless they froze it for clout? Why go through the trouble?
But that just makes me wonder even more why that is blocked out, lol.
Whole milk will go bad very quickly, especially once opened and if not kept below a certain temperature. 2% lasts a lot longer. Also changing the location in the refrigerator makes a huge difference, the door area is the warmest part. If you haven't had an issue before, then it could be that at some point in handling from the store or you the milk was allowed to warm a bit too much. Again, for whole milk it doesn't take a lot, and any perishables from Walmart is taking a risk vs. other groceries. Find a store that gets local farm stuff if possible, and try 2%, it's possible to wean off that sweet whole and buy some time and health.
I know these solutions cost more but if you're having trouble with frequent spoilage this might save you $$
You can't tell the difference between almond milk and cow's milk? More power to you, but I find that hard to believe.
It's not a dealer's issue or has anything to do with changing times. Everyone will or already has had that experience at least once. You're just too inexperienced. There are many reasons why milk can go sour, as we call it here. Most depend on how you as a consumer handle it. Some are just bad luck. For example, if there was a thunderstorm, it's more likely to turn into an ugly buttermilk mess. Don't blame Walmart or the milk, because you can't be sure if it wasn't your fault.
Quite a lot of assumptions you're making. I'm probably older than you.
Noone older than 12 who drank milk since he was a kid would be astounded or angry about self made buttermilk 🤣
I’m not sure why but for me it seems like milk goes bad faster if you open and use it but then leave it unused for many days even if it's before the expiration date.
That is how expiration dates usually work for anything moist/liquid/perishable. You open it and then you should consume it within a short time. Typically a few days at most, bit more for marmalade.
Reason: food contains microbes/spores. Preservation processes slow down growth, and/or reduce initial amount, but not to zero. Microorganisms in food grow exponentially over time, and the best before date is a statistically determined date by which 99.x% of food samples are still good to eat if unopened. Open it, and you expose the food to the much higher load of microbial life from ambient air and whatever you stick in there (spoon, butter knife, drink from the bottle). Boom, microbial growth explodes and food perishes within a short period.
Same goes for interrupting a cooling chain or exposing e.g. milk to sunlight.
Expiration dates on food in the U.S. mean nothing once the food product has been opened. Once opened, most perishable products will last for only a very short time... and this is what you should want.
Time to go to the farm shop and get a bottle from the vending machine!
Milk alternatives seem to have a longer shelf life.
maybe you should just stop buying the mammary fluid of tortured animals altogether! edit: looks like this suggestion has upset some folks who think breastfeeding from an animal with no choice is super cool, no matter what it does to said animal, their own health, or the climate; do better.
Nah, it's your sanctimoniousness that earned you your downvotes. Had you just said, "Try oat milk, it lasts longer without spoiling" or something like that, people would be more likely to respond positively than when you roll in just judging people. Prick.
Don't you have ultra high heated milk? It keeps fresh for several months at room temperature as long as it's unopened. It usually tastes a little less great than normal milk but that's especially not much of an issue if you use it for baking or cereals.
To be fair, to most of those who are used to fresh milk find the taste of UHT milk off-putting, myself included. North Americans do tend to drink more milk too so they go through a bottle long before it goes bad.
For us the reason for going UHT is that we don't have the fridge space for all the milk we consume. We would have to buy new milk every few days.
And it actually is possible to make UHT milk taste almost like fresh milk. Those are usually just more expensive.
I'm baffled that America insists on selling milk by the gallon. That's so much milk to finish after opening.
The maximum size we used to get while I was growing up where I live was 1 litre. Then came the big milk, 1.5 L. Now we have this even bigger one that's 1.75 L, I think. Seems like it's going to converge on 2 L. 😄
You can buy it in half gallons and quarts, too, but a lot of families go through a gallon in a couple days.
Kids drink lots of milk i used to think people who bought multiple gallons was crazy...
Now I'm at the point we use a gallon in about a 2 days...
I used to go through 2gallons a week
Dairy is heavily subsidized in the US. 1 gallon (3.8L) barely costs more than 1/2. Might as well buy the whole gallon and turn what you aren't going to otherwise use into yogurt or cheese.
I can go through a whole gallon by myself before it goes bad. Now, I might just barely be able to do it most times, but still. Between cooking, drinking, and cereal, I can usually find a way to use it all. I mostly drink it though.
In the UK we have (in UK pints, 1 pint = 568ml): 1 pint, 2 pints, 4 pints and 6 pints. We also have slightly smaller metric sizes (1L, 2L) that are typically seen in convenience stores or on branded milk.
I would say that 4 pints (2.273L) is the typical size that most would buy for regular use, with smaller sizes popular for those that don't have cereal/porridge. I find that milk from the supermarket tends to keep well, so it's not that difficult to get through a 4 pinter, unless all you use it for is adding some in your tea - in which case you can just get a 1 or 2 pint jug.
There one I’m working at is soon to switch to delivering their own milk, rather than t g Lee. I’m expecting this is happen more in our area going forward. Their dc is further away and the turnaround time on processing will be longer.
I take it it’s not pasteurized? I’ve never had milk go bad on me. But then I’m living in a country that takes food safety seriously.
Are you sure the container was sealed when you bought it?
The US and Canada are really anal about pasteurizing and homogenizing milk. It's basically nearly impossible to buy any that isn't. Most often it's also just a reconstituted milk product instead. At the same time UHT is nearly unheard of.
If anything, OP should avoid shitty products in general, not because they've had this particular experience. Brand loyalty is stupid.
Hope you were making yogurt
Check your fridge temp
I do find it a bit telling that Lemmy would assume I'm some lying shill rather than Walmart milk being ass.
Edit: here's the unedited version. My local store isn't listed on the jug. I'm not worried about y'all tracking me down.