Green Giant product codes

As I mentioned earlier, I picked up some cans of Green Giant veggies on sale. When it came time to store them away, I got ready to write the expiration dates on the cans. Imagine my surprise (not) when I found that 16 out of 20 cans had no expiration date printed anywhere on the cans!

Happily, GG provides a toll free number for consumers to call. I called it.

A nice lady named "Jo" explained the codes to me. For my purposes, the important numbers in the long product codes stamped on the bottom of the cans were the first two. The first number, actually a letter, stands for the month. A is January, B is February, and so on through L (for December). The second number is an actual numeral, and it stands for the year. A 7 would mean that the product was manufactured in 2007.

The next thing we need to know is how long the cans are good for. According to Jo, the whole kernel corn and green peas are good for 3 years, the cut green beans for only 2 years.

It took a little longer to get these cans labeled because of having to decode the product code and calculate the year, but it turns out to be a good thing that I took the time. The 4 cans that did have an expiration date printed on them were cut green beans, and all 4 cans were manufactured this month with an expiration date in 2011 (not 2010, as one would expect). This is another question that I will now have for GG consumer affairs. Also, while all of the cans were purchased at the same time from the same store, they had several manufacturing dates, and some will have an expiring shelf life in less than a year.

Now I just have to figure out how to store them!