H-Mart, watch out for their soon to expire sales items

Dreamrider wrote: ↑ I saw instant rice on their flyer this week, 12pk box for $9.99
Pretty handy for those days I come home to empty rice cooker.
I stop by to pick up couple of boxes, all the boxes are marked best before Jan 2 2021.....

I see this so often at Hmart, especially with instant noodles, huge sale on Nonshim ramen, expiring in couple of months....

the2ndme wrote: ↑ Those are "best before" dates not "expiration" dates.

HghSsociety wrote: ↑ There's a huge difference in best before dates and expiry dates and it still baffles me that so many people confuse the two so much. That rice with the best before date of Jan 2 2021 is still going to be good 6 months past that date if not longer because it's... rice.
My wife is guilty of this as well. She would think that rice magically went bad at 12:01am on Jan 2nd and wouldn't touch it.

The best before date is simply the date that the manufacturer guarantees that there is no loss of taste or quality before that date. Some things will lose some quality shortly after that date, others will have virtually no detectable taste or quality difference well beyond that date. Rice being one of those things, same with pasta canned foods etc

The best before date is in no way an indication that a product is "bad" as of that date. There's already a built in buffer for those dates anyways on most things. Some items get manufactured and slapped with a best before date 18 months down the road. I would eat rice with a best before date from a year ago and not even bat an eye. However, things like bread can have a noticeable decline in taste and quality even before those best before dates arrive