 Hello everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host again for today's Field to Fork webinar. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. In fact, this is the ninth year we've done the series and we're really glad you joined us. We have archived all of the webinars, including the two previous ones and all of those years of webinars, so you can watch all day long. The link is always on the Field to Fork webinar page. The next slide shows the upcoming webinars and we hope you join these as well. You will get reminders every week and it'll tell you how to sign in. The next slide shows our webinar controls. Because we have a lot of participants, we invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat. So let's practice and find and use the chat box to tell us where you are. What city and state are you coming from? I'm going to ask you to ignore the Q&A box, the question and answer box. We're going to just use the chat. The next slide provides an acknowledgement. So keep telling us where you are, but I do have a special request. These programs have always been sponsored with grant funding from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, and I ask all of you to complete the short online survey that will come right to your inbox after today's webinar. And as a thank you, we are going to continue to provide prizes to the lucky winners of our random drawings. So be sure to include your complete address on the follow-up form. And one more note, as you go to sign in to do the quiz, you will need to scroll down to today's date, the ones from 2023 or first, and we're adding all the data together. So scroll down until you find our 2024 dates. Again, I welcome you to today's webinar, and I'm very happy to introduce today's speaker. He's a three-peat. He's done three webinars for us in the past. Byron Chavez is a food safety extension specialist at UNL University, Nebraska, Lincoln, where he provides training and technical assistance to food manufacturers in food safety, sanitation, and regulatory compliance. Byron is a native of Costa Rica, and he obtained his PhD in 2015 from Texas Tech University. So welcome, Byron. Thank you so much for the invitation. And like Julie said, this is not my first time in this Women Are Series, so I'm very happy to be back. And I hope that today's information will be useful to what you guys do. I'm very impressed seeing where people are located. I see California, I see Arizona, I see Alabama. And of course, lots of people in North Dakota. So like Julie said, I am Byron Chavez from the Department of Food Science and Technology here at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. And the topic for today will be understanding, product dating, food safety versus food quality. And so something that I'm going to use today is a program called Slido. You will see it in a little bit. But Slido is a software that we use to keep people engaged. And so if you are able to do it, I will want you guys to use your phones or your devices to answer a few questions and we will see in a little bit how that works. Just to keep it a little to keep it a little more interesting. You know, it is Wednesday when I was going to say Wednesday night. It's not it's Wednesday at 2 p.m. I am on my third cup of coffee, but apparently it's not working. OK, let's talk about food safety and food quality. Right. So when we think about food quality, that is really the sum of all of the characteristics that we can measure about a food product. We think about shelf life. We think about sensory and organo-elected traits of that food product, including texture and flavor and all of those things that make food delicious. OK, but we are also thinking of interactions of the food with the packaging material and with the environment, as well as nutritional composition and many more things. So food quality, very complex term. It has so many different angles and many different perspectives. And of course, we separate those, right? So we typically talk about nutritional quality. We talk about sensory quality. We talk about many different aspects of food quality. Now, food safety is, of course, a portion or a part of food quality. But when we think about food safety specifically, we are talking about the assurance that the food will not cause illness or injury in the consumer when it is consumed or when it is used as intended, right? So if a product was intended to be consumed, cooked or processed, then we are not expecting that form of the food product to cause illness or injury in the consumer. Now, a question that we can ask is can a high quality product make you sick? Right? And so remember that we have many different aspects of food quality. And so something that it's delicious and something that is nutritious can still make you sick, right? And so there is this little bit of divide between food safety and quality. But I just want you guys to keep in mind that food safety is just one of the many aspects of food quality. So now let's get into today's topic, which is product dating. And I am talking about dating on the labels, right? I'm not talking about dating in any other in any other aspects. Let's talk about product dating. Two types of dates that we can find on food products. And so if we take a look at labels, which hopefully you guys do, reading labels is one of the most interesting things that we can do as consumers, but also some of the most one of the most educational things that we can do, because we can figure out allergens that can be present in foods. We can figure out so-called expiration dates that we will see in a little bit, but that there's no such thing as an expiration date. We can take a look at ingredients and figure out what are the things that are given this product, a specific color or a specific flavor, those sorts of things. So I encourage everybody to read labels. OK, two types of dating that we get of types of dates that we can find on labels. The first one is called an open dating system or an open date. And this is typically a calendar date or, you know, something like what you see in the picture for milk. This one is a best by December 30th. OK, so that is an open date. The date provides information on the estimated period for which the product will be best will be of best quality and to help the store determine for how long that product is going to be on display. So very straightforward, we have a date. Now, there is another type of product dating that it's closed, that it's called closed dating, and this is a code that consists of a series of letters and or numbers that are applied by the manufacturer to identify the date and time of production. And it is very common in canned foods and box foods. We will see that we will see an example later, but you can see the comparison between open dating and closed dating in the picture in your lower right and the lower right side of the screen. So open dating, very straightforward, that is a date. And in the closed dating is a code. And more often than not, we will not know what the code means. Only the manufacturer and sometimes the retailer knows those things. OK, this is where I want you to pull up your phones or your devices and go to Slido.com. You can take a look at the screen once you get on to Slido.com. It will ask you for a number and the number is also on the screen 3960321. So I'm going to give you guys 30 seconds, well, maybe less than that, to get on to Slido.com. I see responses, responses coming, so that's good. There's one response. We still have many, many more responses. OK, people are participating. I'm excited about this. And I'm sure that some of you are already familiar with Slido, but I really like this program. It helps us keep it a little more interesting, keep it a little more dynamic. Thirty people have responded. Wow, OK, good. Yeah, keep them coming. And yeah, questions as we go, please put them in the chat. And Julie, we will be monitoring those just in case I miss any of those questions and when we can discuss at the end. OK, I'm going to let people continue to respond. But so far, OK, the question is is food product dating required by federal law? OK, so a lot of people are saying yes. Some people are saying no. The numbers are still changing a little bit. But let's look at the answer. OK, 80 people responded. Most people are saying yes, but we're going to move to the next slide and this is going to give you the answer. So unfortunately, the answer is no. Well, for those that got the answer correct, that is very fortunate. But dates are not an indicator of the product safety. So product dating is not required by federal regulations. There's really nothing in the regulation that will tell you that you have to put a date on your product. Now, there's always exemptions, of course, exemptions. And the one assumption in this case is infant formula. So, of course, it's a very high risk food commodity, so it has to have a best buy date, but that is really the only one that shows up in the regulation, whether it is for FDA or for the USDA. Now, for FSIS inspected products, which will be meat, poultry, processed eggs and catfish, dates are voluntary, right? So all of them can be voluntarily applied to a food label, but they have to be truthful and not misleading. They have to have a calendar date that it's expressed as a month and day of the month. And if the product has a really long shelf life, like a frozen product or a canned food product, then the year must also be added. OK, but the reality is that we don't need dating on the labels. Now, dating can be used for many, many reasons, but it is not required for federal law. It is a little bit of an expectation that us as consumers, that we as consumers have. OK, so let's move forward with this. So you might be wondering what factors influence the dating process, right? So if you've attended any of my webinars before, you've heard me talk about intrinsic and extrinsic factors that determine microbial growth and microbial stability of food products. And so when we think about intrinsic factors, those are factors that are characteristics of the food product, including the pH, the water activity and the chemical composition, but we also have extrinsic factors such as temperature, relative humidity and the packaging conditions, right? So whether we package something in, let's say in a vacuum versus a modified atmosphere environment, if we temperature abuse a product, if we do an abuse of the relative humidity, all of those things will have an impact on the quality of the food product. And of course, may have an impact not only on sensory quality, for example, but also on the microbiological safety of the product. For anybody that is developing food products as food entrepreneur, starting their companies where they are producing food, I will always tell them the same. The first thing that you need to characterize is your product. And that means, in general, measuring pH and water activity. OK. Now, the quality of perishable products may deteriorate after the date passes. And I will show you an example in a second, but they should still be safe if handled properly properly. So basically what this means is that even if we go past the so-called expiration date of a food product, the product safety may not be compromised. There are many other aspects of quality that we've already discussed, whether it is nutrition or flavor or texture that may be impacted. And so by the date that the product is to be used, it doesn't necessarily mean that microbes have started to grow or that there is a risk associated with consumption of that product. Now, there are, of course, situations when that is the case. We'll discuss those later. But you guys can take a look at the image on the screen. And so, of course, those are eggs. And so we know that the fresher the eggs, the yolk will be significantly more contained, and as the eggs age, the yolk and the whites are going to be a little more runny, so the yolk will not be as contained. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it is unsafe to consume that egg. So this is a really good example of just because the product is past the so-called expiration date, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to make someone sick. Now, in what cases would would the product make somebody sick? Well, if we see that there is microbial growth, that it's evident, right? So think about molds in bread. So if the bread is full of molds, obviously, we don't want to consume that because we run the risk of getting contaminated with microtoxins that may have been produced in that product by the fungus. And there are other examples where clearly it's not a good idea to consume that food product, but if the sensory characteristics haven't fully changed, if we don't see evident microbial growth on the food product in general, the product is safe to be consumed. The use by date, which is typically what we call the expiration date, is selected by the manufacturer, packer or distributor based on the product analysis to shelf life test and other technical and scientific information. So determining what is a use by or a best by kind of date is actually fairly complicated, especially for the variety of manufacturer foods that we have that are distributed under so many conditions of distribution or transportation and storage, and that is why every time that we enter a grocery store, for example, the environmental conditions are similar because we don't want the conditions at retail to affect the shelf life or the sensory characteristics or the safety of many of those products that are in display at retail. Right? So we walk into a supermarket. Typically, the relative humidity is roughly 45 percent, right? And that 45 percent, it's not a magic number, but it's a number that will prevent dry foods from absorbing water and it will prevent moist foods from dehydrating very quickly. And so we are preserving the sensory and other aspects of quality of those food products. But there's many other factors and we'll discuss those in a little bit. OK, when we think about descriptors for product labeling, we usually think about expiration date. And I already told you guys a couple of times that there's no such thing as an expiration date, but we have other descriptors. We have a best if used by or best if used before whatever date. But this is a date that indicates when the product will be of best flavor or quality. So this is, again, very driven by sensory characteristics. It is not a purchase or safety date. We don't have any of those things. The only one, like I said, is for infant formula. So this one, it's the most commonly used, right? It's the best if used by or best if used before whatever date. But we can also see a sell by date that tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management. It is not a safety date, right? This is just telling the store. You should probably sell this product by this specific date. And so that's when we go to the supermarket and we see things that may be on sale, right? Because they have two days. There's one day or two days before the established sell by date. And so the retailer wants to make some profit out of that product. And so it is now on sale. There's also a use by date that it is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at highest quality. It's not a safety date, except when it is used on infant formula, like we've expressed before. So the use by is just for quality, right? This is typically what we will see on eggs because of the chemical transformations that happen to eggs during storage and refrigeration. We typically have a use by date, which is when the eggs are going to be best for consumption, just from a quality perspective. No one wants to break an egg and find a super runny, runny content. Or at least I don't want to. So we take a look at those dates. OK. And then the last one, it's a freeze by. Right. So we typically see consume by or or or a use by or freeze by kind of combination, right? So the freeze by is if you didn't consume that product that was in refrigeration, then by this date, you should consider putting it in the freezer so that it lasts much longer. OK, these are the four most common product label in the scriptures that we have out there. Like I said, there's really nothing that calls a product expire, right? So a product doesn't expire. This the quality of the product, the subjective quality of the product may expire, right? So for not for everybody, a product is not hasn't lost. It's appeal or doesn't lose its appeal for everybody at the same time. Right. So there are lots of variations there. OK, another slide. Do you eat foods that are past their so-called expiration date? That is a question that I have for you guys. At two twenty p.m. on a Wednesday. It's still a Wednesday. Yes, it is. Right. Yes, I'm not crazy. OK, maybe a few more. A few more are. Responding. I'll give you guys 10 more seconds. OK, so I see that we are leaning towards the yes, right? Or as sometimes. Some people would never eat a food that has expired. OK, like like I said before, this is all very subjective, right? So we all have our own biases as to what is high quality foods. And so we make that choice, right? OK, so most people do eat food past their expiration date. And I would say that in general, this is good, right? Because when we think about dating food products, putting a date on the label, this also takes care of a lot of the food laws and ways that we find in the food production chain. It is estimated that 30 percent of all of the food supply, that is all of the meat and poultry and eggs and produce and everything that we find is lost or wasted at the retail and consumer levels. This is literally hundreds of thousands of tons of food that it's wasted on an annual basis. And yeah, one of the comments is actually funny. A lot of a lot of the people changing their minds on the I would never write. And, you know, again, we are all allowed to change our minds or change our opinion in, you know, in the presence of new evidence that something is safe or not. OK, but going back to this point, of course, we know that food is lost and wasted severely in the United States and many other industrialized countries. But the reality is that foods not exhibiting obvious signs of spoilage should be wholesome and maybe sold, purchased, donated and consumed beyond the labeled best if or used by dates. Right. So we know that those are dates that are recommended for quality of the product and not necessarily for safety, except, and you guys know already, for infant formula. OK. If the date passes during home storage, a product should still be safe and wholesome if handled properly until the time spoilage is evident. Now, sometimes when a product is manufactured and packaged, we don't know if there's any spoilage in that product until we open it. And of course, if we open it, we have to consume it, especially if it's way past the expiration date, because then now we do risk that the product is going to get spoiled. So think about canned foods, right? So if you think that a can has been abused or that might have signs of spoilage, that is a big no, right? Like those are things that we shouldn't consume. And I think that we will talk about that in a little bit. But if the product doesn't have obvious signs of spoilage or it may we have fresh produce that is a little spoiled, but there's a portion of the product that it's salvageable, I would do it, right? We are avoiding or we're preventing food loss and waste in that way. OK, food spoilage can occur much faster if the food is not stored or handled properly, right? So we have abuse temperature that it's the number one, number one driver for spoilage. Or if we abuse relative humidity, right? So if we put the product, if the product is supposed to be kept in a cool, dry place and we have it in a place where it's exposed to moisture and things like the example that I have here is that a changing color of meat or poultry is not an indicator of spoilage, right? So even for fresh products like meat and poultry, sometimes some of those sensory characteristics are rarely indicative of true spoilage of the food product. OK, let me take a look at the chat for a second and see what's in here. OK, there is a huge disagreement. Let's see, do federal food programs accept these definitions regarding whether food can be transferred to consumers at a food bank or pantry? The answer is yes. And I can direct you to some USDA guidelines for food donations. OK, there is a huge disagreement between friends that make salsa. OK, let's put this in context, right? So salsa typically made of tomatoes, spices, acids, right? So it is a typically a high acid food. High acid food. Some say that it is good for a year or so. And others say it is good forever. This is the right answer. OK, very specific. You guys must really be into salsa. So I would say it depends just like any food microbiologist is always going to tell you it depends because microbes grow under so many different characteristics and circumstances, right? So assuming that the pH of the product is below four point six, which is the pH that effectively prevents the outgrowth of clostridium botulinum, which is a very dangerous microbe and that the process that the product has been thermally treated to eliminate all of the vegetative cells of pathogens, then the product has, I wouldn't say any definite shelf life, but has a very long shelf life, right? Especially if it's canned or maybe it's in a glass and was maybe a septically packaged. So basically it was put in the in the glass container hot and then it got cooled down after that. So there's many different circumstances now for the salsa that we can make at home without having a pH meter, I would say, probably serve and consume, right? I wouldn't keep that product for for much longer. But we can touch on specifics later on. Yeah, and that is a good point, right? So check local requirements because there are different requirements that are local county or local municipality or health department may have. OK, so let's start moving on here. We've already talked a little bit about this closed dating that happens on cans and pouches, right? And so we can have like the first example that you guys see there. It's closed dating. It's a code and we can typically decipher the code for the one at the bottom. It does have a used by or a or a best by date, right? So that it's open dating. So we can see we can see both of those things on cans and pouches. Those numbers typically refer to traceability, right? So that we can trace back if there's a problem. Unless otherwise stated, the codes are not meant for consumer to interpret as a best if used by, right? So those are just for logistics and distribution and lots of other things that happen in the food industry that are not related to food safety necessarily. Now, this takes us back to the comment with salsa. Of course, salsa is not necessarily canned in the in the traditional way of using a can like what you see in the example. But we know that high acid canned foods such as tomatoes and fruits will keep their best quality for 12 to 18 months, after which we may not see a complete deterioration of the product, but the can may actually start deteriorating. And so that that limits the shelf life. But however, for low acid foods, so that that would be foods that are closer to neutrality in pH, they can last for much longer, typically for up to five years. Right? I've had cans in my pantry that I've had for five years and they are still good. Now, do I want them after that much time? Right? Because the way that I think is, well, if I didn't eat this for five years, do I really want to eat it now? And so then, of course, that is a contribution to two food laws and food waste and so then keeping in mind the amount of food that we keep in a pantry is important. Now, one thing that I really want to say about cans right here is that cans that are dented, rusted or swollen should be immediately discarded. We don't want to consume that product. Can anybody place in the chat maybe? Why is it that we don't want to consume product from cans that have been dented, rusted or that are swollen? What is the problem with that? So in the meantime, I'm going to check the chat. I would say in the case of the pasta sauce that expires, is that true? As it is mostly tomatoes, I would mostly think that that product is not acidified to a point that will maintain microbiological stability for a long time. How long is it to say consume salad dressing once they are open? OK, you know, that is a really good question. Salad dressings like ranch and things like that are very stable. But you will start seeing if you don't consume it in a period of time, I would say, without, not without within four weeks is two things. One for quality, right, where the faces separate. So you will see separation of the separation of the faces where some of the solids will be will just separate from the liquids or the oil and water mixtures will start to separate after some time. And so you will have to just shake it vigorously. And the other one is that on the very top, the one that it's closer to the opening, you will see yeast that will grow, right? So salad dressings, the most common spoilage organism is yeast. Yeah, botulism, great. So botulism is so many people telling me, botulism, you guys are on point. So botulism is the problem with dented cans. OK, let's keep going. So otherwise, I'm never going to finish. And I'm sure that you guys don't want to listen to me all afternoon. OK, coats on egg carnage. Eggs are another perfect example. There's no expiration dating that it's required, right? We've already established that by federal law, but many states may have different requirements for eggs. OK, so check your local and state. Well, check your state, local and tribal regulations, depending on where you are located. Now, what we see on eggs is the example that you have on the screen. So there are multiple numbers. One is the pack date. One is the sell by, which we know is, of course, for quality. And the other one is a planned number if this is a facility that is inspected by the federal government. So the pack date is the day that eggs were washed, grated and placed in the carton using the guidelines from the USDA agricultural marketing service, which is the agency within the federal government that creates eggs, right? So grade A, grade A eggs that are the ones that are placed in retail. OK, why do we refrigerate eggs in the US? This takes takes us to something that it's not necessarily related to to labeling, but why is it that we refrigerate eggs in the US? Pretty much anywhere else in the world where we go, eggs are just kept at room temperature. Yeah, great point on the seam. It's the most hazardous, that is for sure. Because that is where potential openings have been made. OK, yeah, our eggs have been washed, right? So in the US, the way that eggs are processed is that eggs are washed. And in the washing step, the outermost protective layer of the eggs is compromised. It's called a cuticle and that cuticle has a lot of protective effects, right? So we wash the eggs, sometimes we wax them. There's a lot of things that happen. And so in order to prevent introduction of microbes into the egg, then we put them in the fridge to delay that process of microbial proliferation on the surface and preventing the eggs from spoiling, right? We also prevent or delay the exchange of gases, which is what happens when the egg inside becomes really, really runny. It's because there's there's been a lot of release of carbon dioxide. And then the contents of the egg just become really runny. OK, maybe you guys can also tell me in the chat, what is the microbe that we care about the most when we think about eggs? I should have put that on the slide also. Salmonella, yeah, OK. Wow, you guys, Julie, you really have the best audience. My audience is never as engaged as this. You guys are very knowledgeable. OK, excellent. Salmonella is a hazard recently likely to happen in egg products, right? And so it is it is definitely a hazard to consider. OK, let's move on here. Other codes that are used in packaging. I'm not going not going to go into detail of this, but there are many other codes that we can see on packages and that is typically related to logistics of the manufacturer and the retailer. One of those is the universal product code and the other is the stock keeping unit. And we may start seeing many more types of barcodes or numbers that will help us trace product or that will help us, let's say, identify quality characteristics. Or if there is a recall of the product, there will be other codes that will be added in the future. And so manufacturers have already started playing with this where you can just scan a code and it will tell you if the product has been subject to a recall or if there's an outbreak or if there's any issues with that with that product. But in general, many of the things that we see are honestly related to logistics and manufacturing and transportation and have absolutely nothing to do with safety. So talk about product dating and you, you as the consumer and you as food entrepreneurs and you as people that may be thinking about developing food products. So the first thing that we want to do, like I said, is to know your product. We want to know the intrinsic properties of the products such as pH and water activity. And you may be wondering, where do I do that? You can send samples to a lab, right? And us as extension specialists, Julie or myself or anybody in extension that you reach out to, should be able really to point you in the direction of where to send your samples to be tested. That is number one, right? We want to know what it is in your product. I forgot to mention this or to put this on the slide, but you also really want to have a consistent recipe, a consistent formulation of how you make your products. Let's say the example of salsa. You change the variety of tomatoes and your pH is always going to be different. There's so many varieties of tomatoes. And once you process them, the pH will always be different. And so you really want to standardize those characteristics. The second thing that we want to do is to determine the conditions of storage, transportation and common handling for the food product. How are people using that product? How is it going to be transported? What are the conditions that will affect quality during transportation? Could it be that the product is going to be temperature abused? How long is it going to be in transportation? All of those things we really want to know, right? Even if we just take it to the convenience store down the hallway or down the street, right? Where what is the condition of temperature and relative humidity in that environment? Now, something really important about that, that bullet number two is including the unintended uses. And as food entrepreneurs and food producers typically fail to consider the conditions under which the product is not supposed to be used, but the consumer will use it in that condition, right? So consumers may do something to the product, may, I don't know, open it and not refrigerate it or the consumer may abuse the product in some some specific way or the product is supposed to be cooked at certain temperature, but the consumer doesn't like it at that temperature and they will cook it at a lower temperature. All of those things happen. I'll get back to the question in a second. So we need to also understand the unintended uses of the food product. Number three, prioritize your own quality parameters and conditions, right? So under which characteristics of temperature and relative humidity is your product best, right? So you made your product, you know, what are the sensory characteristics and what is the expected high quality, relative expected high quality that you have for that product? So you can also start setting specifications on how you want your product to be stored and be handled. You can run your own observational study. And of course, this is just observational and it's a little bit it is a little bit anecdotal, right? It's a little bit of just an anecdote of things that you see. But you can process your food product. You can leave it at the normal conditions that you would use for storage. And you can also temperature abuse that product or do an abuse of relative humidity or damage the package in some way and see what are the things that are happening to that product. Of course, at the end of the day, we would want to have a shelf life study that somebody else has done for us, whether that is a third party testing company or a university consultant service, those sorts of things where where we have maybe more objective information of what are the quality parameters and how conditions of the environment and temperature are affecting the product. Let me take a look at the check. Well, you guys maybe think of other questions or anything. OK. Do you know where to find information referring to the codes on cans means you said most are not correlated? I would say that a lot of those things are a lot of those things are company specific, right? So lots of internal traceability, lots of internal internal logistics codes related to the country of origin. There are some codes for country of origin, but in general, we find on the label if the product is imported or most of the contents are imported, the product will say product of Costa Rica or product of Canada, right? So those things will typically be on the label and not necessarily on a code. OK, so if there is a scenario where a family restaurant wants to produce and wholesale their special sauce, do they need to be processing the recipe in a manufacturing plant in order to bypass the seven day requirement that the FDA or local health departments would look for? I would say I'm not familiar with the North Dakota food code, but more likely, yes. So if the moment that you start actually commercializing a food product, well, you put it on display at a store, even if it's just the front store of your restaurant and sell that and assume that the stability of the product is higher, yeah, you will need to check your regulators and make sure that the product has been adequately treated. Elevation, it's a great consideration. I totally agree, right? And there's multiple guidelines out there on processing temperature and time, right, based on elevation, because those things, of course, have an effect. OK, I have something else on this slide, and it is that keep in mind that product dating is not mandatory unless you are producing infant formula like we've said a number of times. But I would encourage you that if you are developing a recipe, developing a product that you follow these steps, right, that the first thing that you want to do is to test. And there was a question in the chat about where to test, I believe, do you need to test pH when canning jams and jellies? Oh, that is a good one. For me, that's a good question. Number one, because I don't know exactly if you need to do that. So I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to play it safe and I'm going to say I don't know to the question of the jams and jellies, the amount of sugar that it's present in those products. It's typically very, very high. And so the microbial stability is high. Maybe Julie knows the answer to that. And so she can help me out. Yeah, OK. OK, very good. OK, let me see what else I have for you. OK, this is not necessarily related to product dating. But Julie did mention that you guys or some people in the audience have been curious about what vegetables can be stored together. And really, the answer to that is when I started looking this up is which, by the way, I took this from a Purdue University Extension Service. Really, the answer to this is the things that we shouldn't mix are things that are high ethylene versus high versus low ethylene. So ethylene is the maturation hormone of plants. And some fresh produce produce much more ethylene than others. And so in general, fruits produce much more ethylene than vegetables. And so we don't want to keep those things together right side by side, just because of the amount of ethylene that it's produced in the fruit that it's going to, you know, mature the vegetables, it's going to reduce the shelf life of the product and can lead to spoilage, even in refrigerated state. OK, let's see. The guidelines here are ripened on the counter first and then refrigerate for a lot of these fruits, right? And the refrigeration will slow down the production of ethylene, but it's still produced, right? It's a gas that produce that fresh produce produce for maturation. And there are recommendations on store only at room temperature, and that is mostly for quality purposes. I am one of those people that refrigerate all of their fresh produce mostly because I don't consume them quick enough. And I feel like I need to like I need to refrigerate them. So something that I typically do is wash and dry, right? Especially if it's something like berries, right? I will typically wash them and add them dry and then store. And of course, once you remove the moisture from the surface, you will extend the shelf life of that product. But I wanted to put this out there. You can you can find this this Purdue extension. If you look for storing fruits and vegetables, information from them. OK, so that is what I have for today. Let me go ahead and stop sharing and then I'm going to take a look at the chat. I did one that maybe you've had in your state. Is there a scenario where a family restaurant wants to produce and wholesale their special sauce? Do they need to be processing the recipe in a manufacturing plant in order to bypass the seven day requirement that FDA or local health departments would look for? Yeah, so this is a great question. Let's assume that the sauce has a pH of below 4.6. Let's talk about two scenarios. One with the product is acid or acidified and one where it's not. Right. So if the product is low pH 4.6 or below, OK, the pH is maybe effectively helping prevent the outgrowth of the stream. We put it in the fridge if necessary. But what typically happens is that we find a lot of these sauces at room temperature, right? And we don't really know if the microbial stability is kept at room temperature. Right. So we go to a lot of restaurants and that actually recently happened to me where I went to a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant. You go to a fridge, you grab the sauces that you want. They have three for different sauces that are made in-house. You bring them to the table and then you can be there for a couple of hours eating and drinking with your friends and you still have those sauces at room temperature, right? So I I'm a little I would be a little cautious about that. I would ask the health department or, you know, whatever jurisdiction you have to make sure that the pH is sufficient to make that product shelf stable and that if it is refrigerated, maybe what needs to happen is that you have smaller containers that people can take to the table that you don't return to refrigeration for other people to use. Does it have to be produced in a manufacturing plant? Not really. OK, let's see. What else do you refrigerate bananas? So I don't because I don't like to eat cold bananas. But bananas can be refrigerated, but it doesn't. They continue to respirate in refrigeration, right? And bananas are one of those fruits that produce a lot of ethylene. If you want to ripen something really quickly, put it next to a banana, right? So bananas will produce a lot of ethylene. I think, Julie, you should you know more than me on those things. So hopefully I'm not making this up. No, you're good. You're good. There's another new question. Eat by date site specifies length of time safe after eat by date, still tasty website does not specify. Wonder wonder if their time periods are shelf life from manufacturer. So I've never seen an eat by date. And I would also advise that this is not an expiration or a safety situation. This is, again, some descriptor that the company is using to say you should have this product, usually this product by this state, otherwise it's not going to taste great. And so that also helps the manufacturer say, you know, prevent a lot of complaints, right? Because if you taste a food product and it doesn't taste optimum or optimal, you might be willing to or tempted to call that manufacturer and say, hey, this doesn't taste great. Well, one of the first questions that they might have is did you consume it within, I don't know, seven days or whatever? So so I think that it's also a way for manufacturers and companies to push their peak quality parameters on the consumer. OK, National Center for Food Home Food Preservation's website for safe home canning is from the University of Georgia that is 100 percent correct. And they are they have a new person. Her name is Carla Schwann, and she's been trying really hard to update recipes and and lots of things. So there's a lot of information, hopefully, that's going to come out of the center again. OK, not date. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. They have a new website. So if you've never been to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, they have a brand new website. So check that out. OK, very good. I haven't checked it out. So I'm going to have to. OK, let's see. Not date related, but can you address condiments such as ketchup that isn't refrigerated, but label says refrigerate after opening? Is it safe to say this is only quality related or are there cases where it's safety related? It's a great question. OK. It is mostly quality related. What is the issue with ketchup? Ketchup oxidizes really quickly. And so you put you put you leave the product out. Well, let me back up there. One of the quality issues with ketchup is oxidation. The oxidation changes the flavor really quickly. It doesn't necessarily have to with safety. In that case, it is more for a quality parameter. Now can refrigeration really stop oxidation? Not really, but there's other quality parameters that may be affected. I don't know the pH of ketchup. I would anticipate that it's not particular. I mean, it is acidic, but I don't know if it's below four point six. I would actually I don't think so. Julie, I don't know if you know the pH of ketchup. It's an acidified food. So it's probably three point so below four point four. Yeah. OK. So it is it is very shelf stable. That product has also been thermally treated. I would say the refrigeration is for quality. OK, once I have a leftover like chicken and I put it in the fridge, I put a date on it. Usually I throw it out after four days. Is that OK? Yeah, that is great, right? So I would say four days, sometimes seven days for cooked foods is OK. I would say for animal protein, four days is what you want. Yeah. OK, let's see if we have time for a couple more questions. Yeah. Yeah, there's a common common food canning in in fresher canning. Yeah, Nebraska came up with the four day throw away message. OK, that was probably before my time or maybe not. I don't know, maybe just haven't been paying attention. But the four day rule is a really good rule. The USDA, however, will tell you that cooked foods or leftovers should be thrown away away within seven days. I think it's what they said. OK, well, I feel like we've addressed Julie, most of these questions that you guys were excellent. Excellent. They all get an A. Yeah, yeah, certainly. You guys really put me to work in this in this presentation. So I appreciate that. So I have a question for you. I was in Costa Rica one time and had the most delicious coffee ever. So were you drinking coffee from Costa Rica today? At home, yes. So in December, when I went to Costa Rica for Christmas and New Year's, I brought back a lot of coffee. But the one that I use in my office, which I just drank a cup, it's just curic, normal curic. That's for the afternoon. When I don't care about the flavor of the coffee, I just care about caffeine. But in the mornings, definitely Costa Rican coffee. Yeah, very good, very good. Well, we'll let you get back with your day, but I certainly thank you for your time. And I loved your interactive activities. That was a lot of fun. So thanks to everyone for joining us again. We'll be back same time, same place next week. And be sure to fill out the survey and slide down, scroll down to the twenty twenty four dates so you're answering the right question. So again, thank you, Byron. Thanks, everybody, and hope to see a lot of you next week. Thanks, everybody. Bye.