Welcome to the party, Food and Drug Administration!

(Via the Drudge Report)

Serious preppers have long understood that the “Use By” and “Good Until” dates on most packaged foods are actually more suggestions than anything else.  Discussion boards across the Intertubz have thread after thread of asking “How long is x really good?” and “I just opened a pail of my Y2K storage food and it’s still good!”  While some items, such as brown rice, don’t store so well, items like pasta, sugar, salt and many others can be stored pretty much for years with only minimal extra preparations.

Now comes the FDA, who has determined that the reason a lot of food is wasted in this country is because people are taking those dates a little too seriously.

Queue the conspiracy theories in 3, 2, 1….