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Comment by hentrep | Hacker News Reader

Here’s the actual USDA article describing the difference between “sell by, “use by”, and “best by” terms: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-...

I don’t have time to find a source that supports this, but I understand that these dates also refer to the durability of the “food safe” container/packaging. Ever drink water from an unopened plastic bottle that has been stored for awhile? That taste is not from the water decaying or otherwise breaking down.

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I wish regulators stopped trying to be poetic and just use clear English.

What's "best by?" You need to write "do not eat after." Nobody needs to be explained what that means.

But thats the point, none of these actually mean that you cant eat it after te cutoff date.

That 5 year old box of unopened crackers will almost certainly not hurt you but they may not taste very good.

"Clear English" is using as few words as possible.

If they make sense yes, but clearly people don't understand this.

When safety is on the line, the goal can't only be "as few words as possible"

Here's something to blow your mind: Most Americans are not literate.

Yes, I'm serious and I say that as a fellow American. We are not literate.

So use as few words as possible and a date. Honestly we could probably do without the words, just the date.

Is minified code easier to read? No. It’s the same with regular language; shorter sentences are not always more comprehensible.

The likelihood an American will read something decreases with each word written.

Seriously: We hate reading. The fewer words the better.

Maybe, but if increased concision also decreases comprehension, there is a balance to be struck, not just a value to optimize.

"best buy" is pretty plain English. It means the manufacturer beleives the product will be at its best up to that date.

But you submitted "best buy" rather than "best by". Sort of invalidates your point.

it doesn't though since we all know what they meant. We all know the store doesn't use "best buy" except on coupons or sales circulars or it's a store named Best Buy.

"best by" and "do not eat after" are not the same thing. Best by just means optimal freshness. Maybe you're thinking of "use by". "Sell by" is the thing giving people issues, as the food is still good but it's time for the -store- to rotate it out of inventory because it's not going to be as fresh after that date, and that leads to complainy customers.

None of them means 'do not eat after'.

I wonder if Best Buy use best by dates.

Those cheap plastic water bottles should be banned. They’re one of the greatest sources of micro plastics in our bodies. (Not to mention unstudied nano plastics)

They can't be anywhere even close to synthetic textiles.

Presumably you're not chewing on or eating from synthetic textiles. Meanwhile an enormous amount of food is shipped in, and even cooked in, plastic directly.

Of course you're right in the sense that when it comes to our general environment textiles produce far more environmental microplastics than most other sources. Particularly in our water systems.

…water systems that supply our drinking water.

I think synthetic fabrics shed very small particles into the air every time they are disturbed, eventually wearing out entirely. We breath a lot of that in. Clothes, furniture, sometimes even bed sheets; these all shed fibers into our living spaces.

Or car tires..

I don’t personally normally buy bottled water but the alternative is probably to go back to glass which means higher consumer prices, increased fossil fuel consumption for transportation, etc.

Why not aluminum cans? There's still some plastic in there, but you can mostly recycle them, they must be fairly cheap, and they're quite light. As an added benefit they stack higher in transit with less extra packaging, at least if they're shipped like beer.

I literally just saw those for the first time. As I understand it they’re still plastic lined and the energy efficiency depends on how much recycling takes place. It depends if eliminating plastics is what you really care about or not.

>They’re one of the greatest sources of micro plastics in our bodies.

Source?

Have you ever drank from one of those bottles?? It literally tastes like plastic.

Yeah, but I don't taste the plastic.

Even if it's true that those bottles shed plastic and you can taste that plastic, that's not a source for the claim that the bottles are one of the foremost sources of the microplastic in our bodies.

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