Java Date cut off time information

The recommended way to do date/time manipulation is to use a Calendar object:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(); // locale-specific
cal.setTime(dateObject);
cal.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
cal.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
cal.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
cal.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
long time = cal.getTimeInMillis();

Have you looked at the DateUtils truncate method in Apache Commons Lang?

Date truncatedDate = DateUtils.truncate(new Date(), Calendar.DATE);

will remove the time element.