I was trawling around for food in my fridge when I found some chocolates. Wondering why I'd never seen them before, I naturally picked them out of the fridge. Casually, I checked the expiry date and realised that the chocolates were actually 3 months on the wrong side of them.
Now, I know some people will just chuck such things into the rubbish bin, but here I was thinking that it was such a waste. I have no idea what compelled me to ask my parents whether expired chocolates were edible, but here were their responses.
Me: "Daddy, are expired chocolates edible?"
Dad: "Yeah, I eat them all the time. They go in here and nothing ever happens." He then rubbed his belly as though to emphasise that expired chocolates were really harmless. Okay, point taken.
This statement was shocking for two reasons. Firstly, I had no idea that my dad ate chocolates. Secondly, I had no idea he had been eating expired chocs from the fridge all this while. Like seriously, that is quite a disturbing thought for several reasons, some of them being that it made me look as though I'm such a bad son because I wasn't caring enough to buy him non-expired chocolates, or that I didn't clear the fridge of expired merchandise so he could find them. Whatever.
My mom even had a theory about it. She said that expired stuff was still edible up to 6 months after expiry. According to her expired stuff is only really expired if it tastes funny, the date on the packaging doesn't matter.
I'm like what kind of age are we living in already. Food is everywhere and here we are wondering if expired stuff can be eaten. It wasn't as though we were living in the Great Depression or something. To be fair I think most expiry dates actually indicate dates much earlier than when the food actually goes bad, to minimise food poisoning damages companies might have to pay in the event their food is bad and somebody is stupid enough to eat it.
In any case food doesn't spoil according to the expiry date. For food like milk, it doesn't go like "oh I'm supposed to expire today, okay I shall make myself sour and curdle into lumpy little bits." As for stuff that sits around longer, like cereal, I think you'd be pretty dumb to chuck it if it were one day past expiry because honestly, the extra 24 hours don't make a difference if its already been sitting around 6 months.
Unfortunately, that does not work for computers and other electronics under warranty. You can bet that if your laptop has a 3 year warranty, on the day that it ends, within the next week your hard disk will develop errors, your monitor will have dead pixels, and the colony of random critters that has been hiding in your keyboard feeding on crumbs (you know you eat at your laptop sometimes) will suddenly surface from your keys while you're typing. It's just the way electronics work. Up to the warranty, they are mostly fine. Immediately after, they f*ck you up mother bad so that you have to buy a new one.
I just ate a pack of expired chocolates. I'm still alive. Expired stuff is edible, but really, go buy yourself something that isn't.