Out of date? It's not too late. Best before? It's not the law.

What do you think folks? The "best before" date on food is only a guideline isn't it, not a religion? If the tuna pasta claims to be BEST before the date shown, then I have always believed that it'll still be pretty damn good a few days later, even if not the best it could have been. The incontrovertible "use by" date is intimidatingly less ambiguous however, which always makes me a little uneasy when daring to trust my own instincts at dinner time. The ominous sentence fragment anticipates the threat of "or else..." challenging me to bow to the fridge-guardians' authority.
Well hang on just a cotton picking second here, forgive me for taking affront at so trivial a matter, but somehow there's an edge of condescension to those bold two words "use by". In a recently long-forgotten world, food didn't come from tesco and it was up to us to decide what was edible. Surely we can't be losing such crucial judgement down to food standards fear-mongering. As a student let me advise you that eating around the mould does you no harm, and staleness merely adds to the texture. I ate a week-old lasagne with relish yesterday to no ill effect, and am impatiently considering that a more careful person may have thrown such perfectly good food away. I suppose it's no remarkable feat considering most microwave meals could survive a nuclear war, yet I would urge you all - if it doesn't smell too bad at least submit to a taste. Maybe you can't trust a reckless youth, but surely you can trust yourselves?