Opened Food Reference Guide

Once you have opened a food product, you can no longer rely on the manufacturer’s “use-by/best-by” date. When the food item is first opened, spoilage can occur rapidly. If you open the product close to the "sell by/use by" date, do not exceed those dates and promptly consume the product. Harmful molds and bacteria begin to grow in an opened food package, even inside a refrigerator. The bad news is that they have no smell or taste in the early growth stages, so you and your family may be consuming mouth loads of them, putting yourselves at a serious risk of food poisoning

In her new book Poisons on our Plates: The Real Food Safety Problem in the United States (Praeger Publishers), Ohio University researcher Michele Morrone explores the reasons why 76 million Americans suffer from food poisoning each year. "What are you afraid of? Terrorism? Cancer? Flying in an airplane? What about bacteria? If you are like most Americans, you probably are more afraid of dying from cancer than dying from diarrhea. There are real reasons that this is the case, including the fact that cancer is more exotic than diarrhea and less familiar to us; most of us perceive diarrhea as curable and cancer incurable," Morrone writes in the introduction of the book