Never buying milk from Walmart again
I was in the middle of making dinner when this happened. I'm grateful I poured it into a measuring cup first. Thankfully I don't live too far from another source.
I remember milk staying good almost a week past its expiration date when I was a kid. Boy have the times changed.
218
Comments161
Walmart milk expires a few days before the date. Been that way for a while. Some agency should look into it. I mean under a less fascist regime
I didn't think about it until now but yeah you Americans should be more diligent about food standards and safety now that the standards and consequences for corporate negligence are so low. You wouldn't want to end up in hospital...
Yeah, it wasn't even great before and now they have an administration that'll bend the rules for any corporation willing to pay.
Yeah that's what I'm saying. We have the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) which is supposed to look out for us on things like that. But they can't be trusted, especially under Trump.
So, for all the bad things you've heard about Trump, not being an American — he does tend to have a certain pattern to who he places in charge of what organisation. For example the FCC (Federal Communications... Commission? Council?), he appointed a former Verizon (national mobile carrier) executive, someone who would regulate in favour of business. So if he installed someone at the FDA, they'd likely be a former Walmart executive — not very keen on enforcing Walmart's lax expiration dates!
Meanwhile my costco milk seems to want to last a week+ past the date making me suspiciously sniff and sip it every time after the date
That's nuts. I just finished a gallon that I opened 10+ days ago, which expired 5 days ago. Tasted just fine, no problems.
This was Rockview, though. It's one of the best tasting milks you can buy in SoCal.
Having worked the fresh department at Walmart, sometimes the milk would be delivered to the store spoiled. You can't usually tell without opening it, unless it's really bad you can smell it through the unopened container (or it isnt white anymore).
I don't know how much a problem this is with other grocers but nearly all the fresh products at Walmart are close to expiration by the time the store sells it to you. It's one of the ways they keep the prices lower than competitors.
I would bet the trucks and store refrigerators at Walmart are kept as warm as legally possible, to save money on electricity.
Even without adjusting the thermostat, those cooler doors are being opened and closed thousands of times a day, there’s no way everything inside stays chilled. Not to mention the folks who grab dairy products then leave them next to the beer or electronics when decisions were made…that milk with an Oct 31 date may have sat under a heater vent for hours before someone put it back in the fridge.
They’ve decided dealing with listeria outbreaks a couple times a year is cheaper than running the fridges colder.
They have driven out other grocers and created a food desert monopoly in some rural areas but yeah sure, let’s blame the people buying food and not the mega corp.
Not saying Walmart milk doesn't suck but have you checked your refrigerator temps? You wanna be sure you keep it as cold as possible. So in the back and not the door.
That was happening to our house and then we discovered that our fridge wasn't running at food safe temperatures.
Might be worth putting a thermometer in.
Bought a house (back when such things were still available to plebs). Hadn't moved in yet, cleaning etc. Chucked some drinks and snacks into the fridge. Next day, barely chilly. Put a thermometer in, 40-some degrees F.
A new fridge was just the first unexpected expense.
Your mistake was not expecting to need to replace all of the appliances.
FTFY
I make sure to keep the fridge just above freezing. I do this by actually setting it cold enough to freeze then raising it slightly until things stop freezing.
some whole milk has cream that settles at the top. Are you sure it was actually bad?
Edit: looks like you're not the only one with issues with this brand. If you keep the container you can get a refund from the manufacturer or walmart.
Pretty much all milk in the US is homogenized, unless bought from a specialty brand/store. I can basically guarantee that Walmart is not selling non-homogeneous milk in the US.
Walmart uses prison labor for dairy.
Ewwwwww sorry I can only drink milk from cows. Thankfully Walmart withdrew from my country
God, all you non-Americans really need to stop bragging. I’m way too jealous over here.
You know what I’m gonna brag even harder
Rude
RIP Frank Dwayne Ellington what a way to go
Pathetic. The soy milk I buy last for almost an entire year.
Indeed. I order unsweetened soy milk once a year so I don't have to carry it from the store and never run out. 80 1L packs. Still good after a year, no animals were harmed in the process. Even after a year I can leave an opened pack which is far passed it's expiration date in the fridge for a week without it going bad.
It’s Walmart, what did you expect?
'Great Value' lol
Friendly reminder that white label (store brand) stuff is pretty much all made at the same place for all the big stores.
But with different levels of quality control and potentially ingredients - not trying to dimmenish white labels, they serve a role, but its always been absurd to me that just because something is made in the same factory that those products are identical - a few items might be - but you can taste white label and brand name side by side and they taste different even if they have the same manufacturing marks and have different failure rates (and sometimes the white label even tastes better!)
Oh for sure, they make things to order basically.
It's just one of those things most people never know, that's all.
Why did you nuke the year from the expiration date? Is it from 2024???
I've had milk two weeks past that still smelled good. I poured it out anyway. The secret to milk is that it has to stay cold. If it warms even a bit the shelf life is cut way short.
Edit: Even if you buy the milk and it ice cold doesn't mean somewhere in the distribution process it hasn't been allowed warm up. I have bought milk that went bad within a day.
I just had one where I didn't use it at all for a few weeks, and it was a few days past the expiration date. This may help, but it wasn't opened yet. My wife was like, "Throw it out!" And I was like no ill take the risk. Decided to have cereal the next morning and was pleasantly surprised it was perfectly fine and was able to use it all within the next 3 days.
Then again, I have had times where i just got it, and 2 days later, it was super gross. Here's looking at you stop and shop store brand milk... got burned twice like that, and I have never purchased it again. I hate that store so much.
Milk is so easy to tell if it's spoiled, no reason to throw it out without a sniff test.
Not necessarily true. As soon as your crack the seal on pasteurized milk, the Bacillus cereus spores start to germinate even if cold. There is a strain that thrives at fridge temps and within a few days the milk is now full of cereulide toxins. Badtimes at the hospital.
UHT milk would kill the spores though at the factory so it's safer to keep longer.
Isn't UHT ultra high temperature? isn't that the same as pasteurization?
Pasteurization is only about 75°C for about half a minute. This kills any living bacteria in food. That's why milk packing has warning on how to store it and how to use it. But if the pack is labeled UHT you have more leeway. UHT is high pressure and temp to get up to 130 to 150°C but for only about 3 to 5 seconds. This kills bacteria spores which can survive boiling at 100°C. Yes really. Like the above bacteria mentioned, only UHT can kill the spores. It evolved so that once the temp and moisture is right the spores breakout like Alien from the egg and start multiplying bacteria immediately, within hours.
Note that heat cannot deactive the bacteria shit aka toxins. So even though the bacteria colony can be dead when u recook spoilt food, the toxins will still kill you.
Neat, thanks for the explainer ! I had incorrectly assumed pasteurization was done at the boiling point of water... Cheers
Stop wasting food.
Don’t drink 2 week old milk in the name of not wasting food. It’s not worth the hospital visit. Just adjust your purchasing if you always have milk you’re tossing out.
No.
If a perishable product comes in an opaque plastic container, that’s a deliberate choice. Always be suspicious of it.
It does help a bit with spoilage issues (by blocking light coming into the product) but what you said is totally valid as well.
Bought milk, got half made cheese /j
German tetrapacks in the chat
I didn't like any part of that. I'd rather just keep buying milk from my neighbour with a cow
What was scrubbed out in red next to the used by date? The year? You held onto that bottle for a year for a social media clout? :P
Lol, quite the imagination. I scrubbed out the identification numbers that could be used to track down where I live because I don't trust none of y'all or the government.
Lol I do have a very active imagination and good thinking on the ID numbers. I definitely would've flown thousands of miles to verify this rotten milk.
I know most people here are pussies and talk a big game while thinking they're anonymous, but I've had my life threatening multiple times since joining this platform.
I think you dropped this
Why would anyone want to track you?
Privacy is good, m'kay?
Let me go though your phone real quick, if you have nothing to hide it shouldn’t be a problem right?
I meant that poster specifically, they're clearly talking shit
I found that odd for a Lemmy post but also, one year milk is in much worse condition than this image. Unless they froze it for clout? Why go through the trouble?
But that just makes me wonder even more why that is blocked out, lol.
Tip: Lactose-free milk tastes the same, is easier on your digestive system, and doesn’t expire for over a month.
Lactose-free milk is much sweeter than regular milk and expires in the same amount of time unless you're buying the long life version.
Yep. That’s because they don’t actually remove the lactose. They add lactase which cleaves the lactose into simpler sugars, increasing the sweetness.
It's also not entirely lactose free. Ask me how I know.
Cries in lactose intolerance
It doesn't taste the same. The lactase breaks the less sweet lactose into glucose and galactose, which are about twice as sweet as lactose (all are less sweet than table sugar.)
Also lactose free milk is typically ultra pasteurized, which gives it the longer shelf life, but ultra pasteurization does impact taste. It gives it a "cooked" flavor.
I’ve never noticed a change in taste, but I mostly buy 2% milk. Fairlife does taste creamier to me than other brands, likely due to its “ultra filtered” process however that works. I do wish that brand came in cartons instead of plastic bottles though.
The 2% is the hardest to get out
Tip: Oat milk is yummier.
Got to get that extra creamy.
lol no
Is your lactose free milk prepared/packaged differently from your regular milk? The two keep for just as long here.
Not really. All I know is when I buy Lactaid, or Fairlife, or one of the many other lactose-free brands in the US, their sell by date is usually around 30 days. “Normal” milk is usually sell by 7-10 days here.
The brands I see that produce regular milk also make lactose free milk here, so I'm guessing they're all processed the same way within the brand but just with added lactase at some point. Different brands probably do things differently. It's usually 2-3 weeks for both regular milk and lactose free.
Sell by isnt a standard or gov controlled. I used to keep milk till smelled bad or became chunky. I have noticed that lactose free milk does seem to last longer comparably however, sjnce i switched more recently due to body deciding to be full lactose intolerant
What exactly am i supposed to see here? Just looks like normal milk to me?
I think there's chunks in it
Ah i see. With full fat non homogenized milk you always have a big chunk of separated out pure fat/cream sitting on top, but i guess that not it in this case? If in doubt just taste test it, a few droplets of spoiled milk wont harm you.
I don't think I've ever seen non-homogenized milk in a jug like that.
Yeah me neither. I buy it in glass bottles, but considering the fact that canadians have milk bags i dont doubt that this exists too.
That doesn't look bad. That looks like it didn't get homogenized. The "chunks" is just cream. Put the cap back on and shake it up.
Virtually all supermarket milk in the US is homogenized, this is almost certainly curdled due to spoilage.
It doesn't look curdled, though. The liquid doesn't look yellowish and semi transparent enough.
And it's possible that this batch simply missed the step. I know people who threw out glass bottled milk because they were too yuppie to know any better. Glass bottled stuff is often not homogenized, so I know what it looks like. OP didn't mention any smell, so I'm not convinced.
I don't want to get into the intricacies of milk processing for mass commercial scale, so I won't explain the whole thing, but in short: no, it absolutely could not have missed that step.
I too can assert a thing without evidence.
I'd love to show you a video or something but everything I'm seeing online is super vague and the couple I watched to completion to see if they showed what I'm talking about ended up being "dairy industry cares about cows" propaganda. The milk is moved from place to place by pipes, not by humans dumping it into vats who could make mistakes.
The only way it could make it through the whole process without homogenization on a standard line meant for homogenized milk is if the ultrafine mesh the milk is forced through to homogenize it were for some reason missing and the batch were sent through anyway, which shouldn't be possible if proper Service In Place procedures are being followed (lockout tagout for out of service lines).
Whole milk will go bad very quickly, especially once opened and if not kept below a certain temperature. 2% lasts a lot longer. Also changing the location in the refrigerator makes a huge difference, the door area is the warmest part. If you haven't had an issue before, then it could be that at some point in handling from the store or you the milk was allowed to warm a bit too much. Again, for whole milk it doesn't take a lot, and any perishables from Walmart is taking a risk vs. other groceries. Find a store that gets local farm stuff if possible, and try 2%, it's possible to wean off that sweet whole and buy some time and health.
If it doesn't come in a bag, it ain't real milk. True story
Tell me more
Canada
Thankfully I don't think we have Walmart store brand milk here in Canada. We also don't allow hormones either.
What if she let's a little moan slip on accident?
Straight to jail
that's a sex worker. whores can be found in congress.
specifically dirty whores.
what would a cow with no hormones look like
Artificially supplied >_>
Mostly without pus in the milk.
Not sick and not giving yellow green milk.
Best before Oct 31 what year?
That's not Walmart, that's on the dairy farm and the FDA not doing proper inspections.
RFK Jr would drink it, you pussies.
Could very much be walmart if they aren't unloading pallets in a reasonable amount of time and shit is just sitting around warm.
Butter and cheese are the only civilized ways to consume milk. Caesar would agree.
I’m not sure why but for me it seems like milk goes bad faster if you open and use it but then leave it unused for many days even if it's before the expiration date.
That is how expiration dates usually work for anything moist/liquid/perishable. You open it and then you should consume it within a short time. Typically a few days at most, bit more for marmalade.
Reason: food contains microbes/spores. Preservation processes slow down growth, and/or reduce initial amount, but not to zero. Microorganisms in food grow exponentially over time, and the best before date is a statistically determined date by which 99.x% of food samples are still good to eat if unopened. Open it, and you expose the food to the much higher load of microbial life from ambient air and whatever you stick in there (spoon, butter knife, drink from the bottle). Boom, microbial growth explodes and food perishes within a short period.
Same goes for interrupting a cooling chain or exposing e.g. milk to sunlight.
Expiration dates on food in the U.S. mean nothing once the food product has been opened. Once opened, most perishable products will last for only a very short time... and this is what you should want.
I know these solutions cost more but if you're having trouble with frequent spoilage this might save you $$
For cow milk, try and buy organic in a container that blocks light. I find these to have extra long expiration dates compared to plastic jug regular milk... Often 2-3 months from purchase and it is often unspoiled past that.
Try unsweetened original almond milk. I find it hard to tell the difference and the almond milk I buy can last 4-5 months in my fridge if I don't use it sooner.
You can't tell the difference between almond milk and cow's milk? More power to you, but I find that hard to believe.
Time to go to the farm shop and get a bottle from the vending machine!
There one I’m working at is soon to switch to delivering their own milk, rather than t g Lee. I’m expecting this is happen more in our area going forward. Their dc is further away and the turnaround time on processing will be longer.
Don't you have ultra high heated milk? It keeps fresh for several months at room temperature as long as it's unopened. It usually tastes a little less great than normal milk but that's especially not much of an issue if you use it for baking or cereals.
To be fair, to most of those who are used to fresh milk find the taste of UHT milk off-putting, myself included. North Americans do tend to drink more milk too so they go through a bottle long before it goes bad.
For us the reason for going UHT is that we don't have the fridge space for all the milk we consume. We would have to buy new milk every few days.
And it actually is possible to make UHT milk taste almost like fresh milk. Those are usually just more expensive.
I'm baffled that America insists on selling milk by the gallon. That's so much milk to finish after opening.
The maximum size we used to get while I was growing up where I live was 1 litre. Then came the big milk, 1.5 L. Now we have this even bigger one that's 1.75 L, I think. Seems like it's going to converge on 2 L. 😄
You can buy it in half gallons and quarts, too, but a lot of families go through a gallon in a couple days.
Kids drink lots of milk i used to think people who bought multiple gallons was crazy...
Now I'm at the point we use a gallon in about a 2 days...
I have two kids, and I drink milk as well. The three of us that drink milk in the household might finish a gallon or so during a week. Maybe a gallon and a half.
I still maintain that a gallon is a lot for one person though. But sure, people will have their anecdotes about consuming lots of milk. 👍
I used to go through 2gallons a week
Dairy is heavily subsidized in the US. 1 gallon (3.8L) barely costs more than 1/2. Might as well buy the whole gallon and turn what you aren't going to otherwise use into yogurt or cheese.
I somehow doubt you can do much with pasteurized and homogenized 1% milk.
There's a reason that most dairy products in Europe are made from raw milk.
Yogurt is super easy to make with any (dairy) milk.
There are some cheeses that are better with unpasteurized milk, but it still works with pasteurized milk. I think most cheeses made with unpasteurized milk are just done that way because the pasteurization is an unnecessary step. Cheeses that are aged long enough have the pathogens die off. In the US, that threshold is 60 days. In the EU, tradition is deemed more important than safety, so there is no waiting period. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12146498/#fsn370409-bib-0006
Homogenization is a challenge for curd formation with some cheeses, but you can counteract it with some extra calcium chloride.
It's common to add cream to milk to boost the fat content for some cheeses.
You wouldn't make rennet-based cheeses of the leftovers from a jug of milk, though, cause that's not enough bang for your buck. I just make what's essentially like a ricotta. All you have to do is heat it up, and add a little bit of distilled vinegar or lemon juice which cuddles it, and then you strain it through cheesecloth.
Amazing. Thanks for the info.
Any ideas on how I'd make dry cottage cheese out of it at home?
From what i understand "cottage cheese" is a cheese made from milk treated with rennet, lightly strained, and mixed with a little bit of cream. I'm sure there's regional variation in the terminology and process.
From like 2 minutes of searching online, I seems like what people call "dry cottage cheese" is basically just what I described. Heat milk, acidify it, and strain. Typically what I do is strain it with a cloth until it's fairly dry, then I'll mix back in some of the whey until I get the texture I like.
The fancier version involves fermentation with bacterial cultures to create the necessary acid, but that's not something you are going to do with a half jug of milk you want to just use up before it goes bad.
I can go through a whole gallon by myself before it goes bad. Now, I might just barely be able to do it most times, but still. Between cooking, drinking, and cereal, I can usually find a way to use it all. I mostly drink it though.
In the UK we have (in UK pints, 1 pint = 568ml): 1 pint, 2 pints, 4 pints and 6 pints. We also have slightly smaller metric sizes (1L, 2L) that are typically seen in convenience stores or on branded milk.
I would say that 4 pints (2.273L) is the typical size that most would buy for regular use, with smaller sizes popular for those that don't have cereal/porridge. I find that milk from the supermarket tends to keep well, so it's not that difficult to get through a 4 pinter, unless all you use it for is adding some in your tea - in which case you can just get a 1 or 2 pint jug.
We use it for drinking directly from a glass. Typically about 1 dl per children's glass, 2 dl or so per adult glass. So do that once a day, that's 2.8 litres a week for us. That makes 2×1.5 L/week enough. One gallon for one person is a lot of milk IMO but people obviously manage. I just find it baffling to consume that much. 😄
I go through a gallon of milk in 2-3 days and I live by myself. I'm a bodybuilder though so...
When I was a kid my family of four would go through a gallon a week.
Yeah that sounds about right
Hope you were making yogurt
Check your fridge temp
I do find it a bit telling that Lemmy would assume I'm some lying shill rather than Walmart milk being ass.
Edit: here's the unedited version. My local store isn't listed on the jug. I'm not worried about y'all tracking me down.
Junior, lmao lick my balls.
Damn both of y'all getting really hardcore in the comments over some milk.
Again? People buy food from Walmart?
You mean the largest retailer in America has customers?
I'm shocked. SHOCKED!
i personally never go there. But I live 7 timezones away from the nearest one.
I expect them to have customers, but food? Really?
They've had food for at least 3 decades why is that at all surprising? Hell, our Home Depot has a bbq night it would be honestly weirder if they didn't sell food.
I wouldn't know, I think I have been in walmart maybe 3 times in my life (they never have anything worth buying I noticed).
But I have followed their business plan pretty closely, and choosing the cheapest lowest quality everything makes me think food is the last possible thing I would buy from them. I am shocked they even carry food frankly.
You've been there 3 times and didn't notice the food so I'm going to go ahead and say you don't sound too observant.
The "pantry" side of the business is easily a third of their profits. How do you follow a business plan without knowing their revenue streams?
Because their business plan is reduce the price, create cheaper knock-offs and eliminate the original competition.
That's a business model and either way they would include expected revenue streams.
maybe..... they're the same thing
It's not a dealer's issue or has anything to do with changing times. Everyone will or already has had that experience at least once. You're just too inexperienced. There are many reasons why milk can go sour, as we call it here. Most depend on how you as a consumer handle it. Some are just bad luck. For example, if there was a thunderstorm, it's more likely to turn into an ugly buttermilk mess. Don't blame Walmart or the milk, because you can't be sure if it wasn't your fault.
Quite a lot of assumptions you're making. I'm probably older than you.
Noone older than 12 who drank milk since he was a kid would be astounded or angry about self made buttermilk 🤣
I take it it’s not pasteurized? I’ve never had milk go bad on me. But then I’m living in a country that takes food safety seriously.
Are you sure the container was sealed when you bought it?
The US and Canada are really anal about pasteurizing and homogenizing milk. It's basically nearly impossible to buy any that isn't. Most often it's also just a reconstituted milk product instead. At the same time UHT is nearly unheard of.
If anything, OP should avoid shitty products in general, not because they've had this particular experience. Brand loyalty is stupid.
maybe you should just stop buying the mammary fluid of tortured animals altogether! edit: looks like this suggestion has upset some folks who think breastfeeding from an animal with no choice is super cool, no matter what it does to said animal, their own health, or the climate; do better.
But my own mammary glands don't work 😢
Serious question, I wonder if a healthy lactating human mother's milk could be substituted in recipes. I'm sure there must be a non-zero chance in the course of history that someone has tried it.
It's still milk. Tastes different though. Probably has a different consistency. Can't say I've had any recently though. So, works as a simple milk substitute, kind of, maybe works for other dairy products.
If she lives in a patriarchal society, then the culture doesn't allow her to truly consent to giving up her milk for anyone but her own consumption, and that's assuming she doesn't do work or volunteering that somehow furthers the patriarchy.
Or something unhinged like that.
I remember in a random German movie it being a minor plot point that a mother uses her own milk for her coffee
Human milk tastes different. Some say it tastes a little like canteloupe juice. I thought mine made my coffee taste...odd. Never tried it in baking though.
that would be so hilarious if it weren't reliant on the violent victimization of another sentient being; so close!
This is why so many people ridicule vegans. Cows are probably pretty happy with the arrangement. Don't have to deal with predators or lack of food. Bulls, well, probably not.
yea, super pleased to be passing blood and pus along with the milk intended for the baby that was taken from them within hours if they're lucky, love that you're so plugged into this issue.
No problem!
there is no evidence cows have intention for their milk. it's a secretion like saliva. it's only intended for whatever the farmer intends.
holy shit, what a take. you sound like you drown cats for fun.
no, u.
Nah, it's your sanctimoniousness that earned you your downvotes. Had you just said, "Try oat milk, it lasts longer without spoiling" or something like that, people would be more likely to respond positively than when you roll in just judging people. Prick.