I bought frozen BBQ eel and the best before date says LJ349. What does this mean?

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

I think this means it expires 349 months after the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
- This makes the most sense.
This is the most sound flogic I have ever witness, I shall now bow down to the Grand Nagus of flogic as I am not worthy to stand with thee
L stands for leap year, so that tracks.

Late June in the year 349

Actually I have no idea, it's an odd bunch of initials

Lol, this doesn't make any sense at all.

It's Late July obviously
- lol
Lol, I was going to say last June

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.

The name comes from the name of the person who first proposed the Julian Calendar, Julius Caesar.
- Wow. Calendars AND salads? Is there anything that man couldn't do?
Seems useful if you’re trained to read these, but it seems like a kinda shitty system to be slapping on stuff for sale to the general public.
- 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.
This seems to be the most probable answer although I have no idea what year it is.

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.

Because of the other writing on the package, I'm wondering if because its sold on the international market and dates would get very confusing and possibly harmful.
- More harmful than a literal code?
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.
- Best sniffed before?

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.

What duck heads

Should I call customer support every time I'm about to cook dinner?
- 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.
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.
- Genius!

I mean... Expiration dates are mostly a lie anyway. Just do the sniff test, probably fine.

But, on topic, I do appreciate the post since that's weird.

Expiration dates give a clear and easy way to know if something is definitely still good.

Only after the expiration date do you have the need to do the sniff
- I've seen food expire before the date stated, so you should also take into account where you live and the regulatory entities that manage your food and stuff.
  
  I'd say always do the sniff if you are worried.
- 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.
- They assume you store the food properly, obviously.
- Is milk an exception? Because the moo juice always smells a little off to me. I usually have to resort to the take a small swig and pray technique to tell.
It's frozen, so it's edible as long as it stays that way. It's "good" until it's too freezer burnt though.
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.
- 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.

At least it doesn't say LV426...

??
- That's the planet they go to in the original Alien movie. e: and the sequel as well

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.

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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.

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?

Asian grocery in Quebec maybe?
- 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.

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?

Are you guessing?
- OP was pretty clear on not actually knowing.

I'm no expert but I think that's the planet from Alien and Aliens.

Close... That moon's called LV426

Live Journal user id 349

In order to determine the best before you'll need to solve the emo's riddle.

It refers to the year of our Lord J-town 349.

349th day of Lindon B Johnson's term.

That looks like a failure to regulate and standardize expiration date format which ultimately benefits corporations and fucks the consumer.

It's best before the amount of time it takes to do 349 Oh Long Johnsons.

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.

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.
- Thanks GPT, very useful
- 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

Julian date format, Dec 14th (349th day of the year)

The LJ prefix is some manufacturer code, not relevant to exp date

OP! Can you please let us know:

If you found more clues?
Decided to eat it? And if so, how you are doing!?!

Thanks!!

I mean, it's frozen, so the best before date is pretty loose at best anyways
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.
Permanently Deleted

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)_/¯

Maybe it’s “Lichtjahr”? So as long as you stay within 3*10^15km of earth you should be fine 👍

nom the chinese eels, op

This may be No Stupid Questions, but there sure are a lot of stupid answers.

It means:

"Take it back to the retailer and get your money back."

Or:

"Eat me for a personal food poisoning experience."

Take your pick..

Stands for “Alan please add best by date”

Would LJ be the year code and 349 the Julian date?

Ooh maybe?
- Where I work, we use a date like that. The only difference is the letters are at the end.

It says "meilleur avant" so I think LJ is "Lundi-Jeudi"

wat
- I think it's french for Monday-Thursday.

Do you plan to take a flight at some stage?

in the year of our Lord Jesus 349

That's pretty soon

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.

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.

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.

"Best Before" doesn't mean anything. Only "Use By" is an indicator of expired food.

Maybe December 2022. But who knows.

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.

Year 349 since the return of Late Jesus.

It's about 500 years in the future I think

This site says to use it in 1-2 months: https://rivieraseafoodclub.com/products/unagi-freshwater-eel

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”.

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.

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.