The Jordan Harbinger Show - 646: Expiration Dates | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

How concerned should you be about expiration dates stamped on items you buy from the grocery store? Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and fact-checker, comedian, and podcast host David C. Smalley break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/646 On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: What really determines the expiration date that gets stamped on an item from the grocery store? Is there a difference between "sell by," "buy by," and "use before" expiration warnings? What federal regulations dictate expiration dates for the protection of the consumer? How dangerous is it to ignore an expiration date on something like a gallon of milk, and what variables might change this? Why most cases of food poisoning have very little to do with the lackadaisical observance of expiration dates, and how you should really be gauging if something is still fit for consumption. And much more! Connect with Jordan on Twitter, on Instagram, and on YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with David at his website, on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok, and on YouTube, and make sure to check out The David C. Smalley Podcast here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! If you like to get out of your house and catch live comedy, keep an eye on David's tour dates here and text David directly at [phone] for tickets when he comes to your town! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss the show we did with Molly Bloom — the woman behind the most exclusive, high-stakes underground poker game in the world? Catch up here with episode 120: Molly Bloom | The One Who Makes the Rules Wins the Game! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger, and this is Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of the Jordan Harbinger Show where fact-checker and comedian David C. Smalley and I break down a topic that you may have never thought about. We open things up and debunk some common misconceptions. Topics such as why the Olympics are kind of a sham, why expiration dates are nonsense, why tipping makes absolutely no sense, and lots more. Normally on the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people, and we turn their way. into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We have long-form interviews and conversations with a variety of incredible people from spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, thinkers and performers, and we want to help you see the matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker so you can get a deeper understanding of how the world works and make sense of what's really happening even inside your own mind.

Now, if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topics to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Topics like persuasion, influence, negotiation and communication, China and North Korea, crime and cults, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or take a look in your Spotify app to get started. Today on this edition of Skeptical Sunday, expiration dates. Are these legit? Do things expire? What does that even mean? And if things are expired, does it mean that I can't eat them or just that they're less tasty or delicious, maybe a little bit less safe than before? I don't know. Turns out, a lot of what we think

we know about this is just nonsense. Or it's marketing, or it's crafted more by lawyers than scientists, and sometimes it's just completely made up. So make yourself an expired egg omel. Pour yourself some curdled milk. Sit back and enjoy this premiere episode of Skeptical Sunday. David, I'm excited to do this show because, you know, I've got, kids, the two little ones, one of which is a super picky eater. The other one, you know, is fed by my wife, so isn't there yet. And I've got my parents in town. And it's like, we've got leftovers in the fridge and we've got all this stuff that we bought that we like didn't cook or didn't cook all of it. And I clean out the fridge. This sense of shame just washes over me, right? Because I'm throwing

things away, one that I bought that weren't cheap, but also that look perfectly fine. But with kids, You know, my wife's like, well, look, better safe than sorry. We've got little kids. They can't tell us if something doesn't taste right. So I end up throwing away so much food. And I was raised not to do that. So it's driving me crazy. And I want to know, are these expiration dates legit?

Or is it just like, hey, we want to sell more food so it goes bad fast? I mean, I've got all kinds of little stupid conspiracy theories running through my head. And as a lawyer, a little bit of maybe they just have to tell you this because this is the quickest it can go bad, but usually it lasts three times as long, but they don't want to get sued. I don't know. What's the right answer here? Man, you just summed up most people's thoughts on this entire concept of expiration dates. Now, I do have some data for you. I have some very specific things that I want to get into, and I'm going to address all of your concerns today about that.

I want to start by saying this. I'm someone, if you were to poll the people in my family, like who's the guy most worried about expiration dates or like spots on forks or like smelling food before I eat it? I'm the weirdo that's looking in the light to see if there's anything on the thing. Because I've always had digestive issues. I've always been sensitive to food. It's not that I have OCD or that I'm struggling with something. It's strictly about for years I've had stomach problems and I could never figure out what was going on. I finally did one of those food allergy tests and I have 29 food allergies.

And it's across the whole spectrum. It's like bananas and kale. There's chicken. You name it. It's probably on my list. Sometimes I have so many. Sometimes when I see something on a menu, I'll go open my test results to see and I'll be like, oh, yep, I knew it. I can't have hummus.

Little things like that. So going vegan helped me. I'm kind of a forced vegan and I do some of my state of comedy about, you know, I'm getting fatter as a vegan because I have so much more junk food available like tator tots are vegan and, you know, potato chips are vegan and skittles are vegan. And sometimes that's the only thing available to me without eating even healthier meats or foods. But I've gotten food poisoning twice and both times it was from really bad food. And the most recent time, I was violently ill. I ended up even passing out. And it turned out to be I'd eaten Miracle Whip that had expired by four months.

That's a decently long time to have expired. I know. So whenever we talk about expiration dates, most of these have to do with before you open the container. Okay? Okay. So let's just get into that piece. And I'll address it again later because, you know, once you open it, things definitely

change. The clock starts running. But I want to disclaim first, though, that like if we debunk some expiration date stuff, don't then go eat six-month-old miracle whip, for example, or a carton of milk that's three months old because you're like, well, Jordan and Dave said, like, no, you are on your own here. Like, we're telling you what we think they mean, but maybe there is a reason that that date is on there, and maybe you should follow it. So up to you, at your own risk, I suppose, right? And I'm going to, again, I'm going to provide some information. about where people can go to look up, how long things lasts, and some even phone numbers they can call about food safety. So we want you to be skeptical of these things, not completely take our

word for everything you're about to hear, and we're definitely not responsible if you get sick. That's right. But with all that said, most people just have no idea what the dates on foods mean. Not only do we not know what they mean, the amount of waste, like if I cleaned out my fridge and I'm mindfully trying not to waste food, and I habitually don't buy too much and go shopping more often, etc., etc. If I'm doing that, imagine what a restaurant is doing or somebody who has a humongous family or throws events, right? I mean, how much waste is there? Do we have any idea? Somebody must have done the math on this. Absolutely. 30 to 40% of food that is produced in the United States. And it tends to be upwards of 40%. Oh my God. That is producing the United States is wasted.

That's horrible. Completely thrown out. That's 160 billion pounds of food, $408 billion worth of food. That's about 2% of the entire U.S. GDP. Unreal. What you just did, when you're talking about throwing out food, every year the average American family throws out somewhere between $1,300 to $2,200 worth of food. And here's an even scarier part. 25% of fresh water in the United States goes toward producing food that goes uneaten.

And 21% of the input into our landfills is food. which represents a per capita increase of 50% just since 1974. So we are throwing away tons of food, most of it, way before it needs to be thrown away. Oh, that's so sad. So that's 25% of freshwater is being wasted. So is being used for food and then that's what's wasted? Or that's being used for food and then 40% of that is wasted?

No, no, no, no. 40% of the food that we produce in the United States takes up 25% of the clean water and then we throw that food away. Oh my God. So we're wasting 25% of the water and in addition to the food. That is horrifying. That's so horrible. Look, I looked at the food that I was stirring out and some of it was best by this date. Some of it was sell by this date. And that to me sounds like two different things. Sell by this date because they're going to eat it over the next week. Best by and it might be a little crusty on the outside but still fine. And then used before and then it's like, okay, so after this, don't even eat it.

Jordan, Jordan, none of this is real. It's all pretend. Listen, it's all completely made up. So here's the thing. Despite the fact that these dates are typically nothing more than freshness suggestions from the manufacturer. Okay. 36% of customers in the United States incorrectly believe that these are federally regulated food safety dates. I certainly thought that.

I'm about to bowl your mind. The FDA has no federal requirement on expiration dates on any food other than basic. baby formula. Like, there's not even a requirement on baby food, just formula. Nothing else is federally regulated. What about milk? Like, that definitely has an expiration date. We've all been there. Yeah, I'm going to get there. Look, Imperfect Foods is this website where they deal with a lot of these issues. They note that 80% of consumers, 80% report that they discard food prematurely because of confusion around these dates. And experts at refed estimate that standardizing our approach to expiration dates as a country, like on a federal level, could save over 398,000 tons or over 700 million

pounds of food every single year. And it would also save 192 billion gallons of water from going to waste. But there is no regulation on the federal level. Notice these differences like you're saying sell by, best buy, use by, fresh by, use before, fresh until. And sometimes there's just a date stamped on it with no meaning behind it. And I know you're concerned about milk. Everybody's got to be like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, but milk. Definitely milk, right? You'd think so, but there are only 16 states that have laws forcing labels on milk. It's only 16. So it's actually a minority of states that even have laws around labeling milk. And they all vary, by the way, because none of them are scientifically based. There's a group called the Harvard Food Law Policy Clinic, and they released a short film called Expired Food Waste in America, where they address these kinds of issues. And this food scientist, Don Schaffner says, and I'm quoting from him, he says,

milk is pasteurized. So it should not contain pathogenic bacteria like salmonella or e coli. So the risks from drinking spoiled milk are virtually zero. And here's where it's important to point out the opening aspect of it, right? So what he's talking about, and they didn't really clarify this in the film. So I want to make sure I, because I fact check that film as well. That's if you buy a gallon of milk and stick it in your refurb. refrigerator or buy a carton of milk and stick it in your fridge and then don't touch it. And then

the expiration date comes, you come out the next morning and go, you haven't opened it yet and you go, oh, this expired yesterday. If you throw that away, it's a mistake. You should not throw that away because it hasn't been open. It hasn't been exposed to bacteria yet. More than likely, you're going to be fine. But once you open the milk and then you pour a little out and then you close it up, now that has been exposed to the environment, and over time, those small bacteria communities can multiply and eventually cause your milk to spoil and become dangerous. Oh, this is why I can have baby milk in a plastic container in a pantry for like three months. And I'm like, how is this milk just at room temperature in a container in the dark,

and this other milk that I bought from the fridge has to be kept cold and expires in a week? Like, what's going on? Exactly. It's the same with like the condensed milk canisters for people who like to cook, it'll stay good for a long time up there. Okay. So we kind of know that spoiled milk smells horrible. I assume that wisdom here is trust your taste buds or your nose, hopefully you never get that far. The stats on milk are pretty standard. I mean, those state laws are super weird about it. Just as an example, the milk thing, typically after it's pasteurized, scientists say milk is good

for about 22 days after it's pasteurized. But most milk is labeled for you to throw it away between seven to 12 days after pasteurization. So you've got an entire other week where milk is typically good if you haven't opened it yet, right? Again, if you haven't opened it. Now, once you open it, it's still probably not bad the day it's stamped on the thing. So you should look for certain warning signs. And so according to Healthline, just look for things like an unpleasant, rancid odor, which milk already has that, but whatever. But the specific scent is really hard to miss. It gets stronger with time. The taste begins to change.

The natural sweetness of fresh milk gets replaced by this acidic or sour flavor. And with enough time, the texture of milk and the color of milk are actually going to change as well. So it's going to develop this like slimy, chunky, chunky texture, dingy yellow. We've all seen spoiled milk. Yeah, I mean, milk is, I guess, the least of our concerns. You know, what I'm looking at are things like fruits. The fruit seems fine. It's fruit.

It actually will just most likely make you drunk. That's literally how they make. alcohol in prison is they save their fruit and they let it rot in a bag and then they eat it or drink it and get a buzz. It's very rare for you to actually get dangerously ill from eating foods past their date like that. That website I was talking about, Imperfect Foods, they post on their website this quote, well-intentioned people throw away food that's past its use by date because they believe old food will make them sick when in reality food-borne illnesses come from contamination, not from the natural process of decay. Dana Gunders explains that, quote, a common misconception

out there is that we get sick from old food, and that's not actually true. When you hear about someone getting food poisoning, it tends to be from a pathogen that was on the food already, like salmonella, e coli, or listeria. Okay, right. So like when you eat an egg and it's like, these eggs were expired, I've got salmonella, it's like, no, you ate an egg with salmonella, whether it was a fresh egg or not. Right. So it's very positive. that like the miracle whip I ate didn't make me sick because it was four months old. It's very possible. The jar had been opened multiple times and I'd used it for other foods. So what likely happened was I cross-contaminated the miracle whip by putting the knife in there or something

got dropped in there and then I closed it up and then it sat there for five weeks and it sort of grew into something that made it more dangerous as to where everything else was washed off. So I'm not trying to throw the miracle whip under the bus and say that four months after that date it's bad. I'm saying that it was likely cross-contaminated because it had been open to multiple times. And that's what the food experts tend to say. Got that chicken juice in there. Hmm. Something. Yeah.

Something could have dropped in there and made me really sick. And it was right before I went full vegan too. So yeah. Yeah, I'm not touching that stuff anymore. Yeah, I don't blame you. But like what Dana Gunders says in that article, she also mentions this on a podcast called Unwasted, which I definitely recommend if people want to get more up to speed on some of these

rules and laws and, like, ideas on how to tell when your food is, a little more questionable. She says, your body's well equipped to know when not to eat food, so you don't get a stomachache. So if it looks bad, smells bad, taste bad, don't eat it. If it looks fine, smells fine, taste fine, it should be fine to eat. And the research bears that out. Following your nose is just a fundamentally sound approach to doing that. There's a PhD named Sana Mujahide, and she's a manager of food safety research at Consumer Reports. And she says the best way to know whether a perishable food is spoiled is to just trust your taste buds and your sense a smell. So you're on the right track when you say you're looking at this food and you're like,

this smells fine, this looks fine, this should be okay, you're probably right. And I think back to all the times I look at the sell by date on the bread and it was yesterday so I throw the bread away or the cereal is expired so I throw it away or milk especially. If it went bad yesterday, I throw it out. I write the date on there. That's just not the way this works. I'm ranting, but there's one more person I want to mention is Jenna Roberts. She runs a food testing firm focused on a assessing the shelf stability of packaged foods. She said this on the Imperfect Foods website as well, and I'm quoting, if the food is consumed after its ideal quality date, it is not harmful in most cases.

A strawberry flavored beverage may lose its red color. The oats and a granola bar may lose their crunch, where the chocolate clusters in a cereal may start to bloom and turn white. I've seen tons of bars where, like, the chocolate's just white, and I'm like, that's trash. It's not. It's just the chocolate blooming, and it looks a little weird. What does that mean? It's exposure to the air.

Oh, so it's like oxidizing. That's what they're talking about. Yeah, okay. It may not even taste all that great. Chocolates get left out and they kind of get melting and you go, oh, no, this melted last night. I wonder if I can still eat it. According to her and imperfect foods, it's fine.

While it may not look appetizing and it may even taste a little weird, it's still very likely safe to eat. But then she admits, and here's the interesting thing about this, she admits that the difference between food quality and food safety is such a confusing subject that even some of her colleagues get confused. It's kind of hard to keep track of it all. You're listening to Skeptical Sunday on the Jordan Harbinger show. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. All those discounts and links, they're all in one place, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals.

Please do consider supporting those who support us. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So if the scientists are sometimes unsure, I'm guessing there's not much consistency among states or other countries. Like I imagine the EU probably has their guidelines around this, right? But if the scientists are even unsure, there's no way that different states and municipalities are going to get their act together and standardize this. Right, right. And that's why the people who really care about this issue are pushing for like a federal regulation on it. Here's a couple of examples. Only three states have laws on labeling meat and poultry. Three. So you're talking 47 states. Don't give a damn if meat is labeled

on there or not. 14 states have laws on labeling eggs. 25, this was the highest that I found. 25 states have laws on labeling shellfish. Now that makes sense. Shellfish can F you up so bad if you get a bad one. Right. But even then, only half the states have laws on labeling it.

Most states, this is going to get into your conspiracy piece of this, most states allow the manufacturer to choose the date. Yeah. Now, what could go wrong there? Of course, the manufacturer wants you to throw food out early because you have to replace it. Right. So they probably do this balance. They're like, well, we don't want it to expire so fast that people stop buying it because they can't use it in time.

But we don't want people to keep this around for three months when we can have them keep it around for like one month and then go buy more when it's half empty. And when it gets back to milk, it's down to weeks. Yeah. They cut the time in half. So here's one big example in Montana. There's a state law that milk cannot be sold or donated. Donated is another big piece of this because a lot of people want to. give out the food they can't sell. If it's got to sell by date, they want to be able to at least

give it to shelters in the area. Montana has put a strict law in place. It says you cannot donate or sell milk if it's been 12 days since the pasturation date. But like I said, the science says it's good for 21 to 22 days. So tons of gallons of milk get thrown away when it could easily be donated to these shelters. And that had been a while, so I went back and dug that up. I can't find any evidence of them changing that law anytime soon. That milk mafia influence, man. Definitely. You got some Capone going on.

Congress tried to address this in the 70s, but, shockingly, for some reason, it failed. Huh. You know, anytime something gets brought up about it, it gets pushed aside. Any guesses as to why Congress wouldn't immediately jump on this and fix this problem? It seems like there's a lot of money. If it's 2% of our GDP that we're wasting, then it's a hell of a lot more than that that we're not wasting. So I'm guessing money.

Absolutely. And almost any time we're wondering why there's some kind of fishy, science going on with something, it's almost always money. Food companies spend about $16 to $18 million a year on getting their favorite candidates elected through lobbying. And then in turn, those politicians refuse to put regulations on those companies or industries. And obviously, making people throw food away before they have to means they have to go buy more than they would have. And if we only bought the food we ate, if you think about it, food companies would lose billions. It would be like 40% of their profits almost, assuming that expiration dates are the primary reason people throw food out,

they would lose billions. So they keep the politicians in place who refuse to restrict them. But I think it's also important to kind of insert into this conversation what that would actually do to labor costs and how that would affect unemployment. If companies suddenly lost 40% of their profits, they would probably lay a bunch of people off. We have a spike in unemployment. And there are billions of dollars wasted, but there is somebody getting paid an hour. hourly rate to make the food that they're going to go buy and throw away, right? Sure. Okay.

It could have a negative effect on it if we did, quote, unquote, the right thing. I'm curious as to your thoughts on that. Well, I don't think we should have elevator operators because those people need jobs, too. They do need jobs too, but they shouldn't be operating an elevator when I can push the button myself. So I'm not one of those people who's like, hey, we need to keep these jobs around because otherwise what are these people going to do? The answer is retraining.

We don't invest in that nearly as much as we should as a company. country, but that's really the answer. We can't have people whose job it is to do all kinds of things that technology can do just because those people need to be employed. That doesn't make any sense. A hundred percent agree. And more often than not, communist countries do that. You ever been to Russia or something like that where there's like a woman at the top of an escalator and a woman at the bottom and they're in the little booth? And that's their job. That job doesn't need to exist. It only exists because a communist country needed to employ everyone. So they made up a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't need to get done at all, and they put people in those positions

so they could justify paying those people to exist. I absolutely agree. I don't think they should, and if we think about it, a lot of these companies have billions of dollars in profits anyway. So if they were fair about it, which I know that's a pipe dream asking corporations to be fair, but they were fair about it, they would most likely just take a cut out of their profit and keep people employed. But I don't think they would operate that way. But I'm 100% with you. If it's food waste, if it's water waste, we need to cut down. And if we don't need that many people working in the food industry because we're buying 40% less food, then let's retrain, let's get them other jobs that are more beneficial for the overall economy.

I don't even know if it's a matter of fairness. I mean, look, the free market sort of decides, well, this is where you and I may be different, but the free market decides all the time what's necessary and what's not. If somebody can bag 80 turkeys a day and now they're bagging 60 turkeys a day, they're still doing a full day's work, most likely. Maybe they leave an hour early or they spend more time loading a bag machine or they take a longer break, but like you can't just get rid of those people. But it wouldn't be 80 to 60. It would be 80 to like 48 or 50 or it would go from a hundred a day to 60. Yeah, maybe you do need less people to do that,

right? Then again, a machine might bag turkeys. So it's kind of hard to say. It's like we have to let the economy in the market get rid of people that are not doing anything. The answer is not to keep them employed. It's to make sure that they don't die of starvation in other ways. But now we're getting into a philosophical argument that we probably don't need to get down when we're talking about spoiled milk over here. That's more for my podcast. You want to come on and we can have that philosophical debate. That's for your bleeding heart liberal podcast.

I would have an issue with people bagging turkeys to begin with as a vegan. So we could fight about that. There you go. Yeah, we can bring back to first principles. How dare you bag a turkey? But where did this all start? I mean, who came up with the idea and was like, all right, I got it? We're going to make people throw away food.

Or was it like, man, all these morons without working noses keep eating, spoiled stuff and dying in the streets? Where did this come from? Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned milk mafia a moment ago because there's a fun story behind where the expiration dates came from and it's got a touch of legend in it, but it's one of these legends that could be true. And as the resident fact checker, I spent hours trying to figure out if this story was true or not. And I can't really find it to be conclusive either way. But the story goes that Al Capone had a relative get sick from drinking spoiled milk when his family was involved with the dairy industry. so he started pushing for expiration dates.

And then, of course, while it never took on the federal level, word got out and states started doing it themselves. Now, I refuse to believe Al Capone came up with expiration dates, but continue. I mean, listen, that's what's reported on multiple websites, including the Smithsonian. Wow. But they all acknowledge that this is the best story we have, and it's not independently verified, but nobody else has an independent story as to how we came up with expiration dates. So right now it's like everyone's best guess.

and it's kind of fun to spread around. So that's the best guess they have. And Al Capone was involved in the milk industry or the dairy industry at the time expiration dates started. Okay, so this is crooked from the jump. That's what it sounds like. Right, and that's probably why there's no federal standardization on this, is that it was just a grassroots thing

and we just haven't put any pen to paper on it. We talked a little bit about how we can tell if food is already bad, you know, smell, maybe the first bite's not so good and you spit it out. But what about things like we hear all the time? There's preservatives in there. Isn't that supposed to make the food last longer already? Exactly. And that's why, for the most part, and as we've already done our legal disclaimer, so I'm going to speak

freely here, more than likely, the food after the date is just going to taste a little weird. It's going to lose some of its flavor. It's kind of like you hear with medications, right? And I could do a whole other show if you want on the expiration dates on medication. Most people think that if you take the medication after the date, you die. Yeah, I thought that. I looked it up. When in fact, yeah, mostly it's just less effective.

Right, yeah. Probably not going to hurt you. I looked it up. I won't get into details as to why, but I had some old emodium or something like that or antibiotics in a night kit. And I really needed to take it, but I was like, it's a year old. And then I was furiously Googling and it was like, eh, it might just not work that well. And I was like, that I'm taking four instead of two.

Yeah. And here we are. Live to tell the tale. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of the same thing with food. And by the way, you mentioned kids. Kids can usually withstand a little bit more than adults, I think, when it comes that kind of stuff. Their bodies are so healthy. They bounce back. They're really quick.

I don't know about babies necessarily, but for sure, seven, eight-year-old. Yeah. Got that expired food? Shovel it down your kids' throat. They're not even to know. They'll be fine. Listen, they eat dirt and fall down for a living. Like, that's their job. So just, they're going to be fine. But for the most part, food, it might look a little weird. It might be a little discolored. Don't eat mold. Don't eat, you know, things that are obviously making you gag. But, you know, chances are it's going to be fine. And the reason is going to be fine is because of all of the crap and preservatives and chemicals that we allow to be pumped in the food. And this is the part of this conversation where most people are like uncomfortable to go, right?

So there's tons of stuff in our food, especially in America, that's already killing us well before the expiration date. So I can't lie to you today and say something like red meat is safe after the sell by date. It's going to be fine. Because in 2015, the World Health Organization classified processed red meat as a group one carcinogen. That's the same group that includes tobacco and asbestos. Really? I'm screwed. Yeah. So it's more accurate for me to say something like if you eat red meat after the printed date, it's not likely to make you immediately sick, but it will still give you the same amount of cancer it was planning on giving you the day you bought it. Great. But we have tons of chemicals in this country that are banned. And I think that's for an entire other episode of this

podcast, but things like, you know, the yellow and the blue five and yellow six and all these color things that make our food vibrant and bright. They're so toxic that they're banned in the EU. And so we are just eating cancer sticks left and right processed and pumped full of all these dangerous chemicals. And then we're going, wait, what's the date on these talkies? Yeah. It's made of neon and it makes your face glow. Why are you worried about it being a day or two after the expiration date? If you're going to eat the poison, eat the poison. These asbestos tacos might be a little over their expiration date, but damn are the yummy. Oh, my gosh.

Right. So, like, I don't want to just bitch, right? I want to also offer some solutions and some takeaways for people to have. Fundamentally, we just need federal standardized expiration dates that are scientifically based because all these states mostly let politicians and the corporations go to lobby as to when to do it. And that's definitely the wrong way to do it. It makes a lot of people a lot of money, but it's not very good for us. as a whole, because we're throwing away tons of food. We need the federal regulations on it.

And until we get those, it's important to note that expiration dates are completely different from leaving food out at room temperature. So bacteria can start to form on your food at around the two-hour mark. So you order pizza for a meeting and you flip it open and everybody starts eating. Once that pizza cools down, there's a timer going. And once it gets to around two hours, you're supposed to throw that out. So you're talking live bacteria, oxidized, exposed to the air. It's not good to have food sitting out on your stove for six or seven hours and then come

take a bite before you go to bed. That is very much more likely to make you sick than eating something after its expiration date. What I want people to do is visit foodkeeper, which is fmi.org. That's what you need to keep in your back pocket. It's the Food Marketing Institute. And that's a great place for real information on the shelf life of non-meat food items. Or you could always call the Food and Drug Administration toll free. It's 8887233366.

If you have any questions about food safety. They must love hearing from people that aren't just screaming at them about the COVID vaccine. So if you call and ask the question about food safety, they're probably like, oh, thank God. Let me tell you everything I know about food safety. Yeah, please. Let's talk about that instead. How much time do you have? We're accusing them of fake numbers in COVID.

And yeah, I bet they get all kinds of stuff. They're probably going to welcome your conversation. Regardless, folks, please stay skeptical of expiration dates. Well, I'm going to go have a three-week-old chicken sandwich and wash it down with some nice, hot, expired milk. Good look. See in the hospital. If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show

to sink your teeth into, here's a trailer with Molly Bloom who ran infamous underground poker games in Los Angeles and New York that were attended by A-lister's mobsters and eventually landed her in hot water with the FBI. If you've seen the movie Molly's game, You'll know she was a master of psychology and used a lot of the tactics and techniques that she taught us here on the show. I went to L.A. and needed to get the first job that I could and got hired by this guy who was a pretty demanding boss. I was his personal assistant. He said, I need you to serve drinks

at my poker game. So I'm like, okay, great. And I bring my playlist and my cheese plate. And I'm thinking, you know, the players are going to be these overgrown frat boys. But then Ben Affleck walks in the room and Leo DiCaprio and a politician that was very well recognized and heads of studios, heads of banks and all of a sudden I had this light bulb moment that poker's my Trojan horse.

I just need to control and have power over this game because it has this incredible hold over these people. Why do these guys, with their access to anyone and anything, come to this dingy basement to play this game? What is the most money you've seen someone lose

in one night? $100 million. How did the mob get involved? Around Christmas, door open and this guy that I'd never seen before, pushed his way in, stuck a gun in my mouth. Then he beat the hell out of me, and he kind of gave me this speech about how, if I told anyone about this or if I didn't comply,

then they would take a trip to Colorado to see my family. Then the feds got involved, and the first thing they did was they took all my money. I moved back to L.A. had gotten a pretty decent job. Ten days later, I get a call in the middle of the night. This is agent so-and-so. from the FBI, you need to come out with your hands up. I walk into my hallway. When my eyes adjusted to the high beam flashlights, I saw 17 FBI agents, semi-automatic weapons pointed at me.

If you want to learn more about building rapport and generating the type of trust that Molly Bloom needed to run her multi-million dollar operation and hear about how it all came to an end, check out episode 120 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. That does it for the first episode of Skeptical Sunday. Would love to hear what you think about these. This prime. probably isn't something we're going to do every single week, but I'd like to know if you think it's worth doing it all. Of course, topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday are always welcome. Email me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. Let me know what you think about Skeptical Sunday and what you'd like to hear on the show as well. A link to the show notes for the episode

can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find David Smalley at David C. Smalley on all social media platforms at David C. Smalley.com, or better yet, on his podcast, the David C. Smalley Show, links to all that in the show notes as well. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson,

Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. You might want to check the expiration date on the advice, if you know what I'm saying.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful, you know somebody who throws away a bunch of perfectly good food, maybe you share this episode with him. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like Podcast?

If you're looking for a new show to add to your rotation, something that'll make you stop mid-d dishwashing and go, wait, what that actually happened? You got to subscribe to What Was That Like? It's real people telling the most surreal moments of their lives and they're not just giving you the highlights. They're walking you through it from the inside as a person who actually lived it, which means you're basically getting a front row seat to the chaos. One episode is about Scott getting locked up in a foreign jail for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, Scott. Another is Sue's parachute failing. Wow, I'm surprised she was around to tell that story. And then there's

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Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format.

Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something You Should Know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting.

So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, Itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.