by demigraff » August 11th, 2005, 2:09 pm
[quote="sandy82"][quote="missypuss"]This forum is obviously well past its sell by date.[/quote]
LOL, missypuss, "sell by" is much more straightforward UK English. Here, things are "best before... ." I guess that means the manufacturer or packager never admits to reponsibility; he merely informs you that the biscuits are better if you don't wait five years to eat them. :wink: [/quote]
Depends what the item is. Some things have a "sell by", some have "use by", some have "best before". As I understand it, there are rules about which label to use based on how a product degrades. For example, if you leave chocolate in the cupboard for a year, the ingredients may separate out and it tastes weird, so they put a "best before" date on it. If you did the same with a packet of fresh meat, it would actually be dangerous to eat so they have to say "use by" instead. I think for things that just say "sell by", you are supposed to add on either 2 or 3 days to get a "use by" date, but I'm not too sure about that one. I notice that recently, a lot of supermarkets are marking food with both "sell by" and "use by" dates.