[obfuscator]

Why should that be dangerous? I have never heard that.

I have always had my fridge at 8°C and never had something dangerous happen to me. I have never come across fridges that were way cooler, apart from fridges of friends in Canada and the US. What's the reasoning?

[lucb1e]

The recommendation I've always heard in the Netherlands is 7°C, it's more recent that I've been seeing 4°C on meat packaging in Germany (where I live now). I doubt anyone's fridge is consistently at or below 4° without freezing things constantly, so I've been assuming this is wishful thinking and/or ass-covering on the manufacturer's part and not what anybody actually does. Your 8°C is close enough that it probably makes little difference, though afaik this is an exponential curve (at 14°C it would last far less than half as long) so I'd not be surprised if things spoil a bit sooner than they otherwise would

Even if your products generally meet their "should be safe at least until" date (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum, idk if it's the same as "best before"), you might exceed that longevity more often than you do now and thus have less food waste by setting the fridge colder - if food waste is a thing you have in the first place (I'm the type of person that is hungry all the time, opens the fridge when hungry, and isn't super selective (among what I've bought anyway), so food I buy ~always gets eaten before it spoils, but then when I see food waste numbers, apparently that's not the case for everyone so I'm just throwing this out there)

Edit: trying to fact-check myself, I can't find any trustworthy source in Dutch saying your foodstuffs fridge should be more than 4°C. I measure new fridges when moving in and again at least once during the first summer to make sure they stay at or below 7°C when we had the door open a normal amount of times, so I know they're that (and not much cooler, to not freeze items or waste energy). So far, products meet their minimum shelf life date thingy and almost always exceed it. Strange. Maybe this recommendation I heard predates the internet (showing my age here), or maybe every page on the internet assumes that nobody actually measures it properly and so they recommend a value that's half of what's actually safe?

[hn_go_brrrrr]

> I doubt anyone's fridge is consistently at or below 4° without freezing things constantly.

My refrigerator is typically between 3-4°C, never had any problems with things freezing.

[obfuscator]

Thanks for that explanation!

The Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum is the deadline to which the item may still be sold by the vendor, iirc.