How long do you keep cooked meat in the fridge before you toss it?

[Rabflmom]

Originally Posted by charlygal

Exactly. I'm a bit disappointed that people don't know that food can be preserved for more than 3 days. Look at history. How do you think mankind was able to make long, nomadic journeys without first learning how to preserve meat? Modern refrigeration and food inspection/handling is so much better now.

No one grew up eating leftovers that were fine at the end of the week?

In the past everything was fresher when it got to your table. Meat in the supermarkets now can be 2 or 3 months or 2 old before it even gets to a store. Used to be the stores sold fresh cut meat now in many stores they do not even have meat cutters. Meat passes through lots of hands and is processed and packaged elsewhere in a lot of cases instead of at a local butchers bought from local farmers like in the 50s and 60s. Look at the numbers of recalls. In the past there just was not so many. I bet this will make you wonder too... If you buy a package of ham or bologna and it says ......Use by Nov. 30. It means you need to eat it by the 30th, right? Nope. That means when it is unopened and sealed tight it is good till November 30. But once you open that pound of bologna or ham it starts tasting funny by the 5th or 6th day and needs to be thrown out that week. Once a package is open use it all within 7 days or it gets risky.

I think also antibiotics in us and in the meat has changed the ballpark when it comes to getting sick from food. Used to be no one thought it was unsafe to go to a reunion, eat lunch, leave the food on the table, and then about 4 or 5 hours later eat supper from that same food. No one got sick. We ate week old stuff out of the refrigerator. We were not running to the doctor and getting antibiotics for every ailment or using antiseptic on our hands and air back then like now. We grew up drinking out of garden hoses, sharing food, eating without always washing our hands, etc. Shoot when we were little it wasn't weird to eat a little dirt off the floor or the ground when you dropped something and picked it up and ate it. Today our bodies get sick easier because we don't allow good bacteria to grow in our bodies and work on the bad bacteria like we did in the past.