Originally Posted by MickiSue

Not only baked goods with preservatives in them.

With produce, it's the opposite. Buy lettuce, especially the bags of "baby" greens at the grocery store, and you'll be lucky if they are still edible when you get them home from the store. At multiple times between the field and your house, they were not refrigerated, and it was probably a long time between the field and the bag. Even worse, between the bag and the store. A couple weeks, at least, usually.

Pick baby greens in your own garden, or even a big pot on your deck, and they'll be in the frig, after a light rinse, within the hour.

They'll last for the two weeks it took the bagged stuff to get to your grocery store, and then some, because you have controlled the environment, the entire way.

Of course, as they taste 100X better than the grocery baby greens, they'll never need to last that 2 weeks.