When I was a kid, my mom would take me grocery shopping with her during the summertime. The cool air of the grocery store felt good after being out in the heat of a northern California summer day.

While it was fun to browse the aisles, I was also learning about being an adult and how to take care of oneself.

Food Shopping Tips: Learned from Mom

My mom would always look for expiration dates on items.  This was back in the 1980s, so the only things that had expiration dates were perishable items. Milk, eggs, and meat were on the hit list.  Pretty much anything refrigerated had to be inspected.

A few weeks ago, I was grocery shopping at Cub Foods and was going through my mom’s checking the expiration date routine with some ground beef. I was inspecting dates and rejecting meat because it had expired two to three days prior.  An older gentleman next to me saw what I was doing and was intrigued.  I showed him the dates on the meat.

Now, meat is usually not expired on the shelves, but I check anyway just in case someone at the store is not on their A game.

Sadly, though, stores are not always managed well. I tend to blame managers because they are the ones in charge. They are the ones who are supposed to set examples for their team members and make sure things are running smoothly.

For example, that same Cub Foods had almost an entire selection of expired Pillsbury items. As you can see in the above photo every one of the Pillsbury bread sticks were expired.  I dug through quite a few and finally just gave up and finding anything edible