How long is frozen pizza good for after best by date? 

Related

Everything You Need To Start Your Culinary Career

If you're captivated by the art of cooking and...

Why You Should Consider Going to a Wine-Tasting

If you've never attended a wine-tasting event, you may...

Investing in Gold: Tips for Beginners

Investing in gold can be a highly lucrative venture...

Sauna Kits: Everything You Need to Know

So, you're thinking about getting a sauna for your...

Share

Does frozen pizza go bad – Food is the basic necessity for survival. Whether it is man, animal, or plant we all need to consume something to live. This consummation requires certain elements that are usually found in nature.

Mankind was the first species that started to change the process of food. We saw that many animals decided to take their food and store it for later. This storage of food required them to build nests, and that is where we got the idea of a house.

We started building civilizations to preserve our heritage, and as men started thinking, we started to evolve our food as well. It is actually debatable on the idea whether man is a herbivore, a carnivore, or an omnivore.

We all know that we can eat both types of foods, and it is actually possible for humans to eat literally anything in the world as long as it is moving, has carbs, or is mineralized.

Food doesn’t last long in the wild, and we started the process of preservation of food by various techniques. Preservation of food involved physical and chemical techniques. Salting, drying, freezing and chemical reservation were some of the methods to preserve food.

When we talk about the word food, the first thing that comes to my mind is pizza. Whether it originated in Italy, Spain, or America, I don’t care. What I do care about is the taste of a cheese burst pizza.

Even pizza is not available every time, and it is better to buy frozen pizza to store it like our ancestors. Sick right? However, what are the chances you forgot to eat pizza, and you checked the label and realized that the date of it’s expiration has already gone? Let us discuss this in a question and answer format below.

What is the ‘best by’ date?

If you work in a manufacturing company, or even in pharmaceuticals, you would know “best before” , or “best by”. Even if you haven’t worked in any of these companies, you would still know about expiry dates.

Expiry dates do not mean the date where everything goes bad and you cannot consume anything beyond that. It just means that you won’t be able to consume the material to its fullest capacity, taste, essence, therapeutic value.

Let me tell you the example of medicine, as that would help you to understand what “best before” or “best by” or expiry date clearly means. Working in a pharmacy, you would understand that there are many chemicals that have a certain half-life.

Half life is the term used for the time period that is hurt and chemical but takes to degrade. Half life means that the chemical would no longer be able to provide the therapeutic effect of a certain level that it should provide.

When we make medicines and label it’s expiry date, it denotes that the medicine would only work about 90% of its original therapeutic range. Even after months of its expiry, it is still going to work at least 50%.

This is the term that is used for medicines, and there are many different things that have an expiry date, but they still work after it. Also it does depend upon material to material so do not apply this term everywhere.

When it comes to our topic, frozen pizza is also tagged with a “best by” or “best before” date. This “best by” and expiry date does not define the actual day where the pizza would rot, it still has a long way to go. The best way to check it is the Asian method of tasting a small piece of it, or smelling it.

Does frozen pizza go bad after best buy?

Yes it can. Everything can. But that does not mean that it can go bad in just a few weeks. A study has revealed that frozen pizza can go as long as 18 months before losing even 10% of its freshness.

There are a lot of things that decide the freshness of a pizza. So many factors including environmental factors, physical conditions, chemical factors, the quality of the dough used, the type of cheese, topping, etc. decide the condition of the pizza. Another factor that affects the quality of frozen pizza is where you are buying it from.

For example, if you are buying a cheese burst pizza from Domino’s, Pizza Hut, or any other outlet, and you are freezing it, then it would last for about four to five months. Let me clear this fact that the temperature at which you freeze should be below zero degrees celsius, because the water molecule inside should remain solidified.

However, if you are buying a frozen pizza directly from the store, then the conditions differ. Frozen pizza that is sold in the supermarket could last you for around 18 to 20 months. They could even last you more than 20 months if you keep it in proper conditions.

The degree by which the pizza can go bad also depends upon the manufacturing date, and the manufacturing method. For eg, if the pizza is prepared by a machine, and not with hands, then it is a completely different process.

It would not be touched by any human hands, therefore reducing the chances of bacterial or microbial contamination. 

What are the various things that can make your pizza go bad?

There are so many different things that determine how your Pizza should be, and how it is stored so that it does not go bad easily. The first and the most important thing that you need to understand about frozen pizza is the fact that it should remain frozen below zero degree celsius.

It should also be stored in an airtight container, so that is no space for microbial contamination to happen. If you happen to see discoloration of any sort on the pizza, it is better to throw it away than to consume it and harm yourself.

Most of the time these discolorations are seen in dark leathery patches, or like brown rust. There are also times when you would not understand that the frozen pizza has gone bad, but there is a very small thing that you need to notice here.

Look out for the ice crystals that are forming on the top and crust of the pizza.  If this happens, this means that it was not stored perfectly, and chances are that it would haven’t gone bad.