A few years ago, in October, my brother and I found a pack of mini probiotic Asian drinks for 50 percent off at a grocery store. Obviously, the discount seemed suspicious, so we checked the expiration date: November. We bought the pack of eight and went home, only to discover that the expiration date was actually November of the previous year. While it is true that my brother and I should have read the full date of the expiration, it seems as though our experience was not an isolated incident.

In not only the US but also the world, consumers are finding that their products are often not up to quality standards. Recently, Coca-Cola was forced to recall more than 70 thousand cans of soda because of metal contamination: in other words, people reported finding metal fragments inside their soda. Additionally, quality issues similarly occur in other products besides food and drinks. Neutrogena, for example, recalled makeup wipes due to potential bacterial contamination with Pluralibacter gergoviae, which typically does not have a significant effect on healthy people but can cause severe infections in people who are immunocompromised.

Although recalls are normal and are actually preferable to companies secretly keeping health concerns to themselves, there may be larger issues at play than simple mistakes.

Companies, which exist to minimize costs and maximize profits, commonly do so by turning to the cheapest materials and labor possible. In an ideal world, this wouldn’t be an issue, but because the cheapest is also often not the best — and, in some cases, can violate human rights and fair labor conditions, as with sweatshops — quality and our morals tend to degrade. It can be easy to excuse labor exploitation by repeating that “everyone does it,” but that passive dismissal does not erase the very real human lives being directly impacted. Instead of spending time justifying to ourselves why fair labor complaints don’t affect us, we should look into other companies that actually value human rights.

Beyond cheap labor, companies also often turn toward the short-term pause button on their problems rather than long-term rewinds to target the cause. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recommends that airplanes engage in ‘electrical power cycling,’ which is essentially just turning off power and then turning it back on: it’s like rebooting a computer. In fact, the FAA requires that Boeing 787s reboot every 51 days to prevent system overflow. If they don’t, the planes can encounter incorrect data displays, which drastically diminish pilots’ abilities to fly safely and effectively. Companies don’t ‘fix’ their planes’ data issues by building them with more room for data storage — they just hit reset every once in a while to avoid catastrophe.

For consumers, these are difficult circumstances. However, despite the fact that we don’t all have the ability to change airplane design, we are able to act as responsible consumers for those products and services close to us.

We need to be aware that not everything is exactly as it appears. 

For instance, federal laws don’t always represent what protects consumers. There are no federal laws that require products to have expiration dates, and, federally, almost all food can still be sold after it has expired.

Therefore, to keep ourselves and others safe, we should read the labels on food, clothes, and services. Avoid using products that have missing expiration dates or that rely on exploitative labor. Don’t choose services that have histories of risky safety policies. Above all, if something seems off, it probably is.

After all, as my brother and I deduced, it’s better to not buy and keep the money for something else than to buy and regret it.