Food items have expiration dates for safety reasons. Beware of the Discount Foods store in Littleton and food pantries in surrounding areas. Food pantries do NOT check donations to see if any of their items are past the expiration date. Many people that donate to the food pantries use that as an excuse to clean their cupboards of expired items they themselves would not consume. Discount Foods knowingly sells expired items, has for years and claims that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Eating expired food can cause serious illness such as Botulism. Different foods have different micro-organisms they produce when they start to expire and decay. Diseases caused by these organisms in spoiled food include dysentery, salmonella poisoning and other intestinal diseases. These micro-organisms may be present even if they do not affect the taste of the food immediately. It is with time; as they multiply that the texture and taste of the food changes. Initially, you may consume the food and not know that is infected. Other infecting micro-organisms include streptococcus (causes strep throat and meningitis), rhizopus (causes serious and often fatal infections), pseudomonad, etc. Botulism is a nerve toxin and that causes blurred or double vision, muscle weakness, headaches and paralysis. Symptoms for Botulism do not appear until 12-36 hours after consumption of infected foods. Establishments that knowingly sell or do not check expiration dates on items are not worth shopping at to save a few dollars. It costs more than a few dollars if you end up with meningitis or botulism or some other nasty issue that could have life-long symptoms.