Eew! Don't eat that!

I really enjoy cleaning out my boyfriend’s fridge. This may sound odd, but I’m a bit of a neat freak and find solace in making a jam-packed fridge turn shiny and organized. While I am cleaning, I’m always looking at expiration dates, and sometimes what I read is rather alarming. How is it that you can keep tortilla shells for two months? Doesn’t that seem ridiculously long for something that you want nice and fresh? How are we putting this shit in our bodies that won’t rot as long as it’s refrigerated for months at a time? Take a look in your fridge and look at how long you can keep the following:

•     Egg substitute- supposedly healthier for you than the actual egg and lowers your cholesterol...and you can eat it for three months after you buy it! Eew.
• Shredded cheese- the block cheese goes moldy, but as for the shredded kind in the bag, toss that on your tacos for about four months without worrying. Eew.
• Bread- when I say bread I don’t mean like from the bakery. I mean like the stuff shipped from the bakery and sitting in my bread box for three weeks before things start to change color. Eew.
•   Barbeque sauce, and for that matter any condiment stuck in the door- Who knew these things actually had an expiration date? I recently found a bottle of bbq sauce in the fridge that expired in the summer of 2010…whoops. Eew.
• Coffee creamer- I constantly check this in fear that the creamer has gone bad and will cause chunks in my coffee (yes, this terror happened to me as a child with a milk carton at school. Chocolate milk in a carton will never be the same for me.) Never fear, this concoction takes a good couple of months to spoil. Eew.

The conclusion that I’ve come to is this junk cannot be good for us. I’ve never been one to be all about the organic or natural, probably because I live on a teacher’s salary and enjoy most food no matter if it was fed pure grains or saturated in mineral water.  However, my cleaning has led me to believe that no matter how pasteurized or aged these things are, it is just not normal. Oh yeah, and will someone tell my mom that it’s also not normal to eat things past the expiration date.