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How To Know If Yoghurt Is Spoiled
If you are going to check out whether yogurt is spoiled or not, taste, smell, and color are good indicators. It will give off an unappetizing smell. Dark visible molds begin to grow on spoiled yogurt. Spoiled yogurt may have a bitter and rancid taste. You can also observe a notable change in the texture of yogurt.
Comparing yogurts shelf life with its best-by date gives a pretty good indication if it is safe to eat. If the yogurt looks completely fine, but has passed the sell-by date, you may want to perform some testing before consuming it. Regardless of the yogurt being past its expiration date, check any one of these other factors to see if it is gone bad. Now that you know how to tell if yogurt has gone bad, be sure to store it correctly and consume within its recommended timeframe.
Like any other food, if it is not stored correctly, or it is past its use-by-date, yogurt will spoil and can lead to food poisoning. If yogurt cannot meet these standards for the factors, it may turn sour quicker than you would expect, even before the use-by date. While yogurt has a few differences compared to sour cream and other dairy products, it will deteriorate just as quickly as those products do over time. Because yogurt can still become stale, even when it is still well within its intended shelf life, a lot of people mistakenly eat spoiled yogurt.
To learn about How Long Does Greek Yogurt Last In The Fridge, then check out my another article.
While slightly spoiled yogurt can give you a rumbling stomach at best, if you ingest it unattended, you can end up getting really sick, though not deadly. In either of those cases, the spoiled yogurt is going to taste terrible–meaning, chances are, you would not want to eat it to begin with. If your yogurt is so bad it is irritating your stomach, then it is probably going to taste off-key to the point where you do not even want to eat it. Do not worry if you really have to taste your yogurt to know whether it is spoiled, because eating small amounts of spoiled yogurt does not make you sick, in any way.
| How to identify a spoiled yogurt | Shelf Life |
| A spoiled yogurt has an excess amount of water and a notable change in the texture. | 1-2 weeks (properly stored and refrigerated) |
| The most common way is to look for molds on the surface of the yogurt. | Frozen yogurt lasts for up to 3 months. |
With that being said, there are a few main ways that can help you determine if yogurt has gone bad, or is still fine to eat. To know if yogurt has gone bad or expired, or can still be consumed without problems, there are several things that we can look at.
When you find an old container of yogurt while you are going through your refrigerator looking for something to eat, you need to be sure that it is still safe to consume. If you have lots of yogurt you are not going to get around to eating before it goes bad, you may even want to freeze your yogurt to extend its shelf life. While you can keep yogurts in the freezer, you have to keep in mind that freezing this dairy will significantly alter the taste and texture. Although yogurts texture may get separated slightly when freezing then thawing frozen yogurt, you can use a spoon to stir it up nicely, and this does not impact its creamy flavor at all.
By the way if you are interested in How Long Can Sealed Yogurt Be Unrefrigerated, then check out this article where I cover things in detail.
If you would like to thaw your frozen yogurt more quickly, you can place it in lukewarm water or in a microwave, then eat it right away before bad bacteria get a chance to ruin your yogurt. When yogurt is kept in room or warmer temperatures, it gets spoiled more quickly, as it is the perfect environment for the bad bacteria and molds to grow and spoil yogurt. After consuming open yogurt, you should seal it tightly so you do not infect any bad bacteria which may spoil the yogurt contents.
With an opened yogurt containing fruit, after the yogurts expiration date, the fruit may be spoilt by molds and yeast. You need to inspect the opened yogurt carefully before eating such expired yogurts, so you do not consume any spoilt ones. Just keep in mind, that you are allowed to consume the expired yogurt, but you cannot consume the spoiled one, which is definitely bad for your health.
Whether the yogurt is not even opened, if you are able to smell it getting bad or it is moldy, simply do not eat it, throw it away. While the capture may not necessarily ruin your yogurt, it will definitely impact the overall flavor or smell of that treat. Since that whey is not an indication the yogurt is spoiled, you can just stir your yogurt bowl and enjoy your treat the same way.
While you may have noticed that good yogurts always tend to have some sort of liquid at the top, too, that liquid is packed full of various nutrients, so all you have to do is stir it with a spoon, and you will instantly begin to notice that yogurts texture is returning to normal.
The point is, yogurt is packed full of good bacteria, but this does not magically make it immune to growing bad ones, either. Because of your yogurts water content, yogurt that is been sitting too long in the fridge is susceptible to fungus…and it is going to make you sick.
Generally speaking, yogurt lasts for about 2 weeks in the fridge once you go past its best-by date, as long as you store it correctly. In reality, according to Eat By Date, it will last anywhere from one to three weeks past the best by date on the carton. The thing is, everybody knows the best by date for yogurt is a pretty relative thing, because yogurts are allowed to be consumed right after their designated expiration day. As you can see, opened yogurts may have significantly shorter shelf life compared to those which are not opened, whether you keep them frozen or refrigerated.
If a cold chain has been maintained, and yogurt has been kept refrigerated properly, authorities do not believe there is any health threat to eating it past the best-by date listed on the lid. While regular yogurt will not keep for a year in the refrigerator, according to the U.S. Department of Agricultures FreshKeeper app, yogurt is usually safe to eat up to two weeks after purchase. If you think you followed all of the best yogurt-storage practices, but you still get an odd feeling about that quart of yogurt sitting in your refrigerator, simply follow these cupping tips, and you can discern where it falls on the freshness spectrum.
Does yogurt go bad in the fridge?
Yogurt must be kept in the refrigerator at or below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and yogurt has a seven to fourteen-day shelf life when stored properly. If you keep your yogurt in the fridge for any longer, mold, yeast, and slow-growing bacteria can develop and ruin it.
What happens if you eat spoiled yogurt?
However, if it tastes horrible enough that it bothers your stomach, you generally won’t really like to eat it. However, eating yogurt that has been unsealed and gone bad might result in a foodborne infection and give you diarrhea, stomach pains, and vomiting. But once more, it won’t taste good.
How long does it take for yogurt to go bad?
Yogurt has a storage life of seven to fourteen days when properly kept. Yogurt that has been stored for a prolonged period of time will become spoiled by mold, yeast, and slow-growing bacteria. Yogurt may be safely put back in the fridge to be eaten later if it’s been out of the fridge for no more than two hours.