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

jpaul - No. The intent is to avoid food wastage and what you, Mr Wong, and Scougar are showing is that the problem is not with the supermarkets but with yourselves.

arknor - No, you are missing the point. An unnecessary security blanket might hoodwink you for a short while but it shouldn't be a long term requirement.
 
[FnG]magnolia said:
arknor - No, you are missing the point. An unnecessary security blanket might hoodwink you for a short while but it shouldn't be a long term requirement.
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and what's the point? they want people to handle all the fruit and veg to decide if it's fresh enough or not rather than using their eyes and looking at dates?

all it does is increase the chances of stuff sitting on the shelves cos no one wants to touch it unless it looks to be in pristine condition
 
Mrwong said:

[FnG]magnolia​

jpaul - No. The intent is to avoid food wastage and what you, Mr Wong, and Scougar are showing is that the problem is not with the supermarkets but with yourselves.

arknor - No, you are missing the point. An unnecessary security blanket might hoodwink you for a short while but it shouldn't be a long term requirement.
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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.
 
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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.
 
[FnG]magnolia said:
Regulatory concerns would have been a better answer rather than the litigious angle but different countries and different appetites yadda yadda yadda (this is also a food joke, thank you). Do you see any good from this change in practice or are you being victimised, even though Waitrose do not have any stores in PA, USA (Orig UK)?
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1) I'm so sorry I didn't meet your super perfect answer /rolleyes1 . 2) So I cannot comment because I'm in the USA? /rolleyes2. (The only person throwing insults is you.)
 
Tephnos said:
Foods which can poison you will be given use by dates. Foods which have best before dates will just taste naff.
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TBF, pretty much anything can poison you if it goes off, or is allowed to harbor excessive bacteria. Crisps.... well... those are just special super food ;)
 
XeNoN89 said:
I use plenty of stuff past the best before date so this doesn't bother me. If it looks and smells ok it's normally ok
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I have plenty of stories of 'mother' giving me food from the back of the cupboard that was welllllll past the date. Cans/packets etc. You haven't lived till you get given a flat drink that is 10 years old, or a sauce packet that is so far gone it tastes like vineger. LOL.
 
planty said:
If you bought the food when it was edible and threw it away some days later, you wasted the food.
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1st The food went off.
2nd read the original post.
3rd Do you go shopping every day? how much petrol do you use up? I go once a week and I do all the shopping for a week, I make sure my shop has a long date if the food goes off before the date then I take it back to the shop.
The dates on the label are supposed to give me a reasonable amount of time that the food would last, if they go off before then they have given me old food newly packaged
 
Mrwong said:
1st The food went off.
2nd read the original post.
3rd Do you go shopping every day? how much petrol do you use up? I go once a week and I do all the shopping for a week, I make sure my shop has a long date if the food goes off before the date then I take it back to the shop.
The dates on the label are supposed to give me a reasonable amount of time that the food would last, if they go off before then they have given me old food newly packaged
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I read the post - you bought the food when it was edible, and some days later you threw it away once it had gone off. So you wasted the food. Someone else could have bought that same product and used it before it went off.
I go shopping once a week.
 
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
old.reddit.com

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 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 said:
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)
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As I think has been covered, there would never be a UB and BB on the same product. You sometimes get, or used to, a Display Until with a Use By. The shop would have to sell by the DU, you should eat by the UB. This is sometimes shown as a UB with a number in brackets after. So, UB 9th Aug (7). The shop would need to sell by the 2nd. This is usually on products that you don't consume so quickly, like maybe butter. Bread used to be UB (2) for example.
Puzzled said:
was in a store the other day and the reduced discount was so small that you might as well buy something longer dated. Put a decent price reduction on them and they'll fly out the store rather than going in the bin.
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Yes, so they probably weren't in a hurry to clear through that line. I think most stores these days have algorithms to calculate the necessary reduction. X amount of product and Y amount of hours to sell means Z% reduction at this time.
Mrwong said:
these days I have notice food going off faster. Change is always for the company, not the consumer.
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This is often because less chemicals etc are used to lengthen the life of the product. You think that's done for the store, not the consumer? You think the store thought, "nah, let's make a nicer, healthier/better product that we have less time to sell"?
 
arknor said:
If I'm buying 1kg of potatoes as a single person that is jacket spuds every day for a week almost.... I ain't risking no dates... in that case start selling spuds with dirt on them so they stay fresh like in the old days.
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Those potatoes could be up to a year old anyway before they even hit the shelves, and you're worried about a few days past the BBE ;)

The "fresh" food we are buying isn't always quite as fresh as we think.
 
Mrwong said:
The dates on the label are supposed to give me a reasonable amount of time that the food would last, if they go off before then they have given me old food newly packaged
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I've never had something go off before the date on the packet. It actually lasts longer than the date and so I've not had to throw anything away that went bad before the stated date.

Perhaps a change of storage method may help?
 
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