Waitrose no best before dates ... helping their profits - not me ?

[jpaul]

“By removing best before dates from our products, we want our customers to use their own judgement to decide whether a product is good to eat or not, which in turn, will increase its chances of being eaten and not becoming waste.”

The move is also part of Waitrose’s commitment to help shoppers reduce food waste at home.

The grocer is a signatory of Wrap’s food waste reduction roadmap, with a target to halve food waste by 2030.

Waitrose will work in partnership with Wrap to phase out the use of best before dates.

Wrap director of collaboration and change, Catherine David, said best before dates on fruit & veg were “unnecessary” and created food waste because they “get in the way of people using their judgement” when food is still good to eat.

...
Use by dates will still be used across products for safety reasons.

Not sure this is for consumer benefit, I think the strategy is to just sell more product of questionable/anonymous freshness.

they remove a short term bbf date, which you use when selecting the product on the shelves that gives some indication when your piece of chicken won't be slimey, and replace it with a use by date - if at all.
articles suggest products have both a best before and used by date, not in my experience (least ways glancing in fridge celery/cheese just have a bbf, milk has a use by only)

I'll be shopping elsewhere(not that I shop there much), or, just more likely to return stuff if it doesn't meet freshness I expect.

(This is like the bar-code scanners they provide to be helpful - it's proven that customers who use them have more product engagement - you've spent more time thinking about/handling the product, and buy more.)

 

[jpaul]

Use by is literally that. Use it by the date. Or chuck it. Or don’t blame the seller if you die consuming it.

if you shop you know that depending how diligent you are on correct storage, dairy products can last way beyond use by date eg. decanting cheese/cream, or, returning milk to the fridge.
on the other hand vegetables which sit in a warm shop during summer time caulis/cabbages/carrots have a lot more variability on freshness, if you don't pay attention to selection you waste your money, or, if you fail to store them in the fridge. ... as he said V

The food I throw away are the ones that go off before the date, I either take it back for a refund or throw it away.

but I'm not sure that Scougar does, or he's using words he's not familiar with

just supermarket liability with respect to moral issue of food wastage ? I think his terminology is fine ...
but, if they are no longer going to provide a date, and it has gone off earlier than I expect I'll just return stuff/complain.

 

[jpaul]

on a different angle https://www.unep.org/thinkeatsave/get-informed/worldwide-food-waste

• Global quantitative food waste per year is roughly 30 per cent for cereals, 40-50 per cent for root crops, fruits, and vegetables, 20 per cent for oilseeds, meat and dairy plus 30 per cent for fish.

I'd like to see the monetary/dietary/carbon-footprint value of meat/dairy/fish wasted in just rich countries - are vegetables the real problem ?
use by date on farmed chicken often seems optimistic(chlorine wash may help that), but equally people who waste carcasses before they have stripped the meat off.

 

[jpaul]

How is food going off before the date was wasted by me? I am supposed to buy food for the week but eat it in a day or two. Think a bit.

you quoted yourself not magnolia but I agree with your critcisim of his accusation.

 

[jpaul]

I don't use Tesco but seems they already removed veg bbf, you just need to decode the code they now put on veg
seems it was something like a letter and two digits - month of the year and date eg C11 Mar11.

good comment in reddit

Tesco removes 'best before' dates on some fruit and veg

Posted in r/unitedkingdom by u/[deleted] • 221 points and 160 comments

old.reddit.com

They are looking to the time after Brexit when the cost of fresh food goes through the roof. They don't want to have to throw their manky old veg away, or sell it off cheap. They want to take the dates off, and sell the past-its-best old crap at full price.

so, as Dirk Gently said “The fundamental interconnectedness of all things”

 

[jpaul]

Yes potatoes are rather ironic - the this season maris pier from Aldi taste worse than some of their last years wonky varieties.

Tesco's had apparently pioneered bbf remove.. no data on whether that has been ecologically successful ? (other than to their shareprice)
veg seems the tip of the iceberg and not where resource should be allocated , waste from dairy&meat/fish by shopping basket value/carbon footprint swamps it

Proportions of wasted food & drink (‘edible parts’) by food group:
• Fresh vegetables & salad – 28%
• Drinks – 15%
• Bakery – 11%
• Meals – 9%
• Dairy & eggs – 9%
• Fresh fruit – 6%
• Meat & fish – 6%
[The remaining 16% is made up of other foods such as sauces, pasta, rice, cakes &
desserts, oils & fats and confectionery]
Top 10 most wasted food and drink items in UK homes (that could have been eaten):
• Potato (fresh)
• Bread
• Milk
• Meals (home-made and pre-prepared)
• Fizzy drinks
• Fruit juice and smoothies
• Pork / ham / bacon
• Poultry (chicken, turkey, duck)
• Carrots (fresh)
• Potato (processed)

 

[jpaul]

Problem is the green grocers of old did not have the aforementioned hibernation/preservation strategies used today for food, so they decayed at natural rates,
sprouts are particularly pernicious now, & irradiation of soft fruit like strawberries (now we are out of the eu) I believe decay is not accompanied by familiar smell/texture.

Probably too obscure - but it's like what happens to Ursula Andress in the classic film She (incidentally starring bernard cribbins)

 

[jpaul]

what we have here is a failure to communicate in classic literature knowledge

 

[jpaul]

mansplaining aside ...
if you have vegetables in a plastic bag where you have no indication of how long it has been sitting in the shop , who isn't going to spend more time in selection.

What the hell goes on in your head?

mansplainng - adding to your cultural education https://graemeshimmin.com/she-by-h-rider-haggard-book-review/
Ayesha [blackout]tells Leo that they will marry soon. Then he will bathe in the ‘Pillar of Life’, a fire that confers long life, great beauty and incredible powers.

similar to eternal life, lot's of modern black magic for the preservation of life of vegetables gases/temp/radiation (bananas/potatoes/appples ...) ... and meat for that matter, and they (more) quickly degrade when removed from that environment

 

[jpaul]

Not into lateral thinking then
... I suppose some of the fresh vegetable purchase could be offset with frozen .. maybe you get that.

 

[jpaul]

Article doesn't explain what specifically they bought .. if you realised the waitrose online shopping was not delivering same quality of goods as shopping in person, then you'd stop using the service, and eventually figure out for yourself why it's poorer quality.

If the online service had a premium, maybe you would expect better quality (i'm sure fortnum&maisons would be good), but otherwise it grates that there is no reduction for shopping in person, we subsidise the onliners, and, personally, with 70% purchased via low carbon transport(bicycle) I think footprint is less than ICE delivery vans.
(high carbon bicycle is reserved for sport/leisure)

 

[jpaul]

shelf stock... Home delivery must be a god send too, for selling older, high value meat/fish, with use by dates;
are the pickers instructed to do this, or productivity demands will ensure it.

noted that the deliveroo instant grocery delivery fad during covid is officially a fad. .. people discovered increased cost of living.

 

[jpaul]

[

Once it goes out of date you bin it or take it back for a refund? What the actual ****. Why would you do that?

he didn't say he waited to see if it edible on the bbd

]

Well... Elmlea lasts a longer than that I think, but it's not proper cream (I just google'd Elmlea cream and it comes up with 'Elmlea Double Alternative To Cream' ). Proper fresh cream, shorter. And no, I've never seen them change shelf life...

yes - I assume only reason people buy it is because they prefer the taste(!), or they are really paranoid about shorter bbf date of cream
when served some a week ago, I had thought it much cheaper than cream (and you now need a mortgage for that) ... but it's more expensive, perverse,
evaporated milk is more pleasant.

Maybe elmlea's got eco credentials, like oat milk, so people are prepared to give the company a big wedge, versus buying milk and a carbon credit.

 

[jpaul]

further surreptitious price increase

Lidl to sell misshapen drought-affected vegetables​

Last week the National Farmers Union (NFU) urged supermarkets to accept more "wonky" produce and be flexible with growers.
Farmers have been forced to lower their prices for smaller-than-usual fare, while some vegetables like cauliflowers haven't grown at all.
Mr McDonnell said Lidl would not be labelling drought-affected vegetables as "wonky veg"- as some supermarkets do - saying it creates a "false market".
In a statement, the supermarket added that remaining "flexible with variations" of vegetables at different times of year would ensure "perfectly good produce isn't going to waste"

if I thought the shape was the only thing impacted, I might not be concerned, but, we now have a product of poorer quality/durability on the shelf, 'anonymously', for the same price;

if you've inspected cauliflours recently you can already see this in action