Download Article Show Download Article Lots of food items, beauty products, and medications are thrown away every year because of misunderstood expiration dates. Learn the difference between an open-date code, which gives you a recommendation on how long a certain item will be good for, versus a closed code, which tells you when an item was actually manufactured. By learning to read these different codes, you’ll better understand how long your food will stay fresh, how long the medicine in your cabinet will be potent, and how long your beauty products will be most effective. This will help you be a better consumer, and it’ll ultimately save you money since things won’t be going to waste!
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Advertisement About This ArticleThanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 520,444 times. Did this article help you?How do you read coded expiration dates?Read these codes as MMDDYY, where "MM" refers to the month, "DD" refers to the date, and "YY" refers to the year. This is one of the more common codes that you'll see on food items. For example, "121518" would be read as December 15, 2018.
How do you read a food date code?Look for a 3-digit numeric code on perishable foods.
The three digits represent the day of the year that the food was manufactured. For example, 001 would be January 1st while 365 would be December 31st. Perishable foods like eggs and milk have a 3-digit code because the food will go bad in under a year.
How do you read the 7 digit expiration date?This is a 7 digit code you will find on the back of your bag or box to help you identify when it was produced. The first 3 digits tell you on what day of the year the bag or box was produced. The next 2 digits indicate the year, and the final 2 digits are our SunRidge lot number.
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