Will old meat really kill me?

One of my readers asked a question about the dates printed on meats purchased at the supermarket. I have always been afraid to eat anything after a few days. This neurosis was probably brought on by a Mom who was meticulous about food safety. My Mom had lived with her Aunt for a while during her college years and her Aunt was a Nutritionist. She never let me eat anything that wasn't washed. I mean anything...whole fruits that you cut into like cantaloupe or watermelon, canned food that you cut open with a can opener, soda in a can. After all, the blade cuts through the dirty part and then into the clean. Sounds a little crazy right?? However, Mom is actually right, you can get all sorts of nasty things from the rind of a cantaloupe. Of course in my rebellion, I let my kids eat strawberries right out of the container in the supermarket and I've managed to keep them alive! My Mom also used all meat within 2 days of purchase or she froze it. Again, Mom was right...imagine that! So here is some info on meat expiration..Sell By, Use By, Die By:
From www.Businessweek.com :
{According to Jeanne Goldberg, professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tuffs University, "It's a very inexact science since those dates include a wide margin of safety."
"Date Data: The dates, for one, mean quite different things. The sell by date is more of a guide for the store to know how long it can display a product for sale. The best before or best if used by date refers to a quality or flavor of the food. Use by works more like an expiration date, similar to that on medicines, and taking them after the date is not recommended." (More on that in a later post.)
"Worse, some dates can actually be quite misleading. For instance, when you buy meat, that even if the sell-by date is five days away, the refrigerator at home usually isn't cool enough to keep meat fresh for more than two days."(Go Mom!) "Usually raw meat is kept around 30 degrees F, while the home refrigerator's temperature is set around 40 degrees F to keep other things in the fridge from freezing. So, food safety experts suggest that whether its ground meat, or a pound of steak, or chicken consumers either eat or freeze it within two days of buying.")}

Now as a scientist, I also know that if you handle that spoiled meat correctly and cook it to the recommended temperatures, that you aren't likely to get sick from it. This is because heat actually kills the bacteria, rendering it ineffective in making you sick. However, I don't recommend eating cooked spoiled food, because it wouldn't taste good! Why waste the calories. :)