I think this means it expires 349 months after the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
I bought frozen BBQ eel and the best before date says LJ349. What does this mean?
2 years ago by idunnololz to c/nostupidquestions
mechoman444 7 points 2 years ago
This makes the most sense.
_sideffect 10 points 2 years ago
Lol, I was going to say last June
ceenote 78 points 2 years ago
It might be the Julian date (I have no idea where the name comes from) which is just basically January 1st is 001, December 31st is 365, and the rest of the year is between. So this would be around December 15th.
We used it for food expirations on some things at the convenience store I used to work at.
alphacyberranger 25 points 2 years ago
He couldn't stop himself get stabbed in the back by his homies.
OpenHammer6677 17 points 2 years ago
Don't forget the child delivery method!
Jimmycrackcrack 10 points 2 years ago
He was a buay man with all the salad and calendar making and had no time to just wait around for a kid to come out whenever they felt like it.
Confused_Emus 10 points 2 years ago path: 0 9352016 9365134, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 1
ceenote 2 points 2 years ago
I suspect they did it so people wouldn't be put off from buying something close to expiration.
In fairness to the people I worked for, they only put it on stuff with a short shelf life anyway, so it was all fairly close to expiring. Also, it was a convenience store. Most people ate it right away.
idunnololz 1 point 2 years ago
This seems to be the most probable answer although I have no idea what year it is.
GladiusB 54 points 2 years ago
Former grocery manager here. There are companies that purposely sell these weird cryptic date formats. I would always need to go look for their certain code to figure out what it translates to. I can't remember why either other than it's not normal and we just dealt with it.
DragonTypeWyvern 11 points 2 years ago
More harmful than a literal code?
Syn_Attck 1 point 2 years ago
If you buy fresh tuna and the country of origin date code is MM/DD/YY while you're DD/MM/YY or YY/DD/MM or YY/MM/DD you could end up with year-old fish or worse. So yeah.
And no, it won't always be something easily detectable by look and smell like fish.
KevonLooney 12 points 2 years ago
You can easily write out the month: April 1, 2024. And don't say "people might not speak English" or Chinese or whatever. You know what language to put it in because the rest of the package has writing on it too.
Fredselfish 2 points 2 years ago
They do that with glues at my job. The code supposed to be used for quality control. Like first letter plant it was manufactured in and the second the month and so on. I think it dumb. Never seen it on food before.
AnUnusualRelic 2 points 2 years ago
Best sniffed before?
MrsDoyle 36 points 2 years ago
Some uk supermarkets have started dropping the use by date in favour of codes like this. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45786012 The article says it’s to reduce waste and that staff will have special training to know when to bin stuff. I imagine the training is in how to read the codes.
trolololol 32 points 2 years ago
What duck heads
Should I call customer support every time I'm about to cook dinner?
Cethin 18 points 2 years ago
I assume the point is the "best before" dates are mostly useless. They're useful for the store, but for a customer usually you should tell by smelling and looking at it. We evolved with senses to tell us when food has gone bad. Those dates aren't part of it. So much food is wasted because people think those are magic and should be obayed like a law.
T00l_shed 16 points 2 years ago
On the flip side, knowing the rough best before date helps people buy the freshest stuff, since I can't open the cream with a date that says jr402 I won't know if it should be good for a week or a month.
Cethin 2 points 2 years ago
That's the point. People will choose to buy the "freshest" stuff, meaning it created a lot of waste. If you can't tell what freshest then it will prevent older stuff from needing to be thrown out. If it's being sold at the store, it's fine.
TwanHE 5 points 2 years ago
Fresh produce has it here in there Netherlands as well. Or our supermarket has for the last few years, a letter specifies the day of the week (Monday = A) and then the week number.
Week number we printed on the sticker machines and stuck on the start of every isle just to make it easier.
KairuByte 10 points 2 years ago
Leave your beef out on the counter for a day and I assure you, the expiration date will be useless.
Expiration dates are 99/100 times a baseline for guessing if an item is safe to consume. If you’re not using your brain and actually checking, you’re gonna have a bad time.
ArmoredThirteen 4 points 2 years ago
You don't even have to leave it on the counter sometimes. I had a steak a bit ago in the freezer, thawed it, smell test, it had gone bad. Best guess is some point in the store or transit it got stored improperly and it was bad before it got to my freezer. Always check even if in the expiration date food poisoning is awful
Confused_Emus 3 points 2 years ago path: 0 9355180 9362064 9364989, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 2
jetsetdorito 12 points 2 years ago
pour some in a cup then smell it, sometimes it's just the dried part by the cap that smells
Confused_Emus 1 point 2 years ago path: 0 9355180 9362064 9364989 9365834 9368725, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Ookami38 4 points 2 years ago
Hard to do a sniff test on an unopened item in the store. I know that's not this exact scenario, and best by dates are iffy at best, but I'd like to have some notion of how long the product I'm about to buy has been around.
bitchkat 0 points 2 years ago
At the homebrewing store I used to frequent, I always picked through the cooler for the youngest yeast. Then they moved the cooler behind the cash registers and they clerks would just grab the one in the front. Then stupid Northern Brewer shut down all their retail stores.
orwellianlocksmith 1 point 2 years ago
??
FiniteBanjo 33 points 2 years ago
Companies are allowed to do this in some nations as long as they also distribute the cipher to grocers. For example, literally every chewing tobacco I've seen. This leads to higher sales because lazy employees don't take the time to check the printout and remove expired product.
NeatNit 44 points 2 years ago
I have no reason to doubt what you're saying, but I really have to say this is the dumbest bullshit I've ever heard. The whole idea of putting expiration dates on products (and nutritional info for that matter) is for consumers to be able to interpret this stuff. Not manufacturers and not store managers. Consumers. There's no excuse for allowing this.
FiniteBanjo 35 points 2 years ago
No arguments that it's shifty and dumb, but it's better if the store can be held liable for selling bad product. That said, almost anything with "best by" as opposed to "expired by" is still safe to eat for probably decades.
Nibodhika 7 points 2 years ago
No, best before is for the market, it was never intended for customers, that's not the date the food goes bad, it's the date it starts to be different from their best, e.g. a bread might become harder than intended, so it's meant to have the store sell it on pristine condition. Use by date is the one that is for customers.
AngryCommieKender 5 points 2 years ago
Well, that would be the reason if they were legally required to do so, but Baby Food is the only product in the US legally required to have an expiration date.
So, all the other food manufacturers voluntarily put expiration dates on, and they want you to buy more food, so the date on most packages is functionally meaningless
LemoineFairclough 3 points 2 years ago
I don't know about today, but in the past New Jersey required that "expiration dates" be stamped on bottled water: https://nj1015.com/...
Even if similar markings are not required by law everywhere in the USA, food manufacturers are probably afraid of getting sued due to violating local laws, or even international laws if the food is transported across borders, so it's probably negligent to neglect printing them.
Cethin 2 points 2 years ago
Like the other comment here says, no it wasn't. It's useful for the store to guarantee it's good, but customers should be ignoring them as using the senses we evolved to use to detect bad food. A store can't rely on this, partially for liability, partially for speed and consistency, but also largely because they can't open the packaging to smell it or look at it better.
NeatNit 3 points 2 years ago
If I as a buyer can't tell the difference between fresh and expired food before I buy it, then what's the store's incentive to not sell me something a few days or weeks after its sell-by date? Even if they want to, they can't keep track of every product on the shelves (I've encountered items past their date on shelves a number of times, sometimes significantly so) and they certainly don't check each item's date at checkout. If customers can't do the check as they shop, there's no way to protect against it. And just kick the shop, customers can't open the packaging before they buy.
I do realise based on your comment and others that I may have been wrong (probably country dependent), printed dates might be intended more for stock keepers than for consumers, but that doesn't mean it's okay to hide this information from buyers.
Krauerking 29 points 2 years ago
Did you know you can store smoked salmon at room temp pretty much indefinitely in an unopened package?
Food storage has gotten really good, all the tricks of smoke, sugar or salt of our ancestors with now radiation sterilization and other cool tricks with science.
All that to say. It's probably fine. You just bought it and I'm sure this was made to last as long as it can as reliably as it can so that they don't lose money.
Most best buy dates are just made up anyways and not based on much. Check for gas build up, a weird odor, extreme discoloration, or foreign objects or growths. That will get you through pretty much every rotten food type without having to taste it.
That's said, where are you shopping that has a mixture of Japanese, Chinese, French, and robot codes?
Krauerking 8 points 2 years ago
Oh shit, English and French required, arbitrary expiration date because it's not required.
You should be a detective I bet you nailed it in one.
halcyoncmdr 25 points 2 years ago
Not sure about LJ... but 349 could simply refer to the day number. Day 349 this year is December 14th.
This is using the Julian calendar (standard calendar for most things)... maybe the J in LJ?
idunnololz 17 points 2 years ago
I looked around the packaging for other clues as suggested by another Lemming but I didn't find anything. In fact I found the same thing printed on the front.
Speculater -62 points 2 years ago
On a Chinese food package, "Best Before LJ349" typically refers to the expiration date, although the code "LJ349" doesn't follow a standard date format. In this context, "LJ349" is likely a batch code or internal reference used by the manufacturer. The manufacturer uses this code to track production specifics, such as the location or production line and date.
Speculater -19 points 2 years ago
I thought it was helpful in the sense that there's likely no way to relate the date code.
Confused_Emus 5 points 2 years ago path: 0 9351024 9351136 9351269 9353266 9365059, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1
zammy95 11 points 2 years ago
It's Japanese not Mandarin too. I see うなぎ - unagi, which is definitely Hiragana
Edit: Now that I think about it though, Unagi is written in katakana I think? ウナギ, so maybe it is Chinese and they just poorly tried to translate
Aatube 6 points 2 years ago
It's not a loan word so it's written in Hiragana.
That said, OP's screenshot has some culinary instructions written in Traditional Cantonese (so probably Macau), so I think it's Chinese.
zammy95 5 points 2 years ago
Ah, fair! I only very recently started learning some Japanese, so beyond hiragana and katakana, I recognize basically nothing. I absolutely wouldn't be able to recognize the others as Cantonese!
Albbi 17 points 2 years ago
It's best before the amount of time it takes to do 349 Oh Long Johnsons.
SuperRecording 15 points 2 years ago
Julian date format, Dec 14th (349th day of the year)
The LJ prefix is some manufacturer code, not relevant to exp date
Usernamealreadyinuse 10 points 2 years ago
OP! Can you please let us know:
- If you found more clues?
- Decided to eat it? And if so, how you are doing!?!
Thanks!!
RvTV95XBeo 11 points 2 years ago
I mean, it's frozen, so the best before date is pretty loose at best anyways
idunnololz 4 points 2 years ago
I bought it today and I'm not planning to eat it for a few days. I can only hope/assume it's still good.
GeneralTeetius01 10 points 2 years ago
Looks like a Julian date. 349 would reference the 349th day of the year. So assuming this year 2024, it would be best by December 14. Normally it would have the year at the end of the 3 digits (3494) for BB Dec 14 2024. Best guess I have. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
TowardsTheFuture 9 points 2 years ago
Stands for “Alan please add best by date”
harrys_balzac 8 points 2 years ago
Would LJ be the year code and 349 the Julian date?
harrys_balzac 1 point 2 years ago
Where I work, we use a date like that. The only difference is the letters are at the end.
Hugh_Jeggs 8 points 2 years ago
It says "meilleur avant" so I think LJ is "Lundi-Jeudi"
idunnololz 3 points 2 years ago
wat
Decency8401 2 points 2 years ago
I think it's french for Monday-Thursday.
AFKBRBChocolate 7 points 2 years ago
Chinese dates have two word years that equate to animals (see the options on this date converter), but they don't have an 'L' sound, so none of them are going to start with that. No clue unless it's a typo.
Aatube 3 points 2 years ago
Only the second word is an animal. The first word is a quantifier from the Chinese words for thing A, B, C, D and E. So whereas you might say "Person A buys 32 watermelons" in a word problem, the chinese would say "Jia buys 32 watermelons". Most word problems use saner names nowadays, though.
Zier 6 points 2 years ago
L is probably the factory code J could be the number 9, if A=0, so the last digit of the year. So a guess would be Dec 14th 2029. Which seems like a long way off. Unless A=1, that means J=0, so 2020 and it's expired, but maybe 2030.
feedum_sneedson 4 points 2 years ago
Maybe December 2022. But who knows.
Extrasvhx9he 4 points 2 years ago
Damn this one is tough my best guess LJ is like how the manufacturer tracks it internally or something like that and the 349 could be like eat before the 349th day of that year. Again this is just a guess probably contact the manufacturer to be 100% clear what that means.
CaptainBlagbird 3 points 2 years ago
Year 349 since the return of Late Jesus.
It's about 500 years in the future I think
credo 3 points 2 years ago
This site says to use it in 1-2 months: https://rivieraseafoodclub.com/...
As many have said, the numerical digits probably refer to a Julian calendar date. Also to consider, some products list the pack date rather than the expiration date. So it’s possible these were packed in December and are already “expired”.
skankhunt42 3 points 2 years ago
I mean, is there something to the right? I think not because the français is below so I guess good luck. I'd personally eat it unless you bought it months ago.
idunnololz 1 point 2 years ago
I bought it today. I realized when I was unloading groceries that I forgot to check the best before on it.
Edit: also good point I'll look around the packaging for other clues.
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J3 is the 3rd month that starts with J so it's July. 49 is the 49th day of July so August 18th. easy peasy
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