
Expired food: how best-before dates create a waste mountain - snaky
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/17/the-truth-about-expired-food-how-best-before-dates-create-a-waste-mountain
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kwhitefoot
Here in Norway yoghurt pots have Tine's new slogan:

    
    
        Best før, men ikke dårlig etter.
    

In English:

    
    
        Best before, but not bad after.
    

Shops are also required to reduce the amount of food that they throw out which
results in every supermarket having a chiller with almost out of date food
marked down by 40 or 50 percent. I buy a lot of this.

~~~
dominotw
they would get sued to oblivion in USA.

~~~
jpatokal
_Almost_ out of date food, which is commoly sold at a discount in the US as
well.

~~~
zip6
I think they were referring to saying that a product is "not bad after" it's
expiration date.

~~~
thaumasiotes
A vendor could be sued for that in the US, but not a manufacturer. Expiration
dates have no legal meaning for manufacturers.

(A manufacturer actually was sued when, after encountering production issues,
they recovered by simply relabeling the expiration dates on existing product.
But the manufacturer won that suit decisively.)

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ChrisRR
I've never paid attention to use by or best-before dates. I think generally
trusting you nose, eyes and instincts does you fine.

The one that most surprises me is the loaves of brown seeded bread I buy. The
use by date is normally only a week from purchase, where as the bread is
normally fresh for 2 weeks, and edible but starting to harden up to 3 weeks.

If I followed the use by date, I'd be throwing away half a loaf of bread every
week.

~~~
londons_explore
Just a single gone-off meal can kill you, so you can't try all that many times
and hope to find the limit of survivability. Damp gain and rice based things
are particularly hazardous in that regard - sure it's unlikely to be bad, but
when it is bad, it can be very bad.

~~~
benj111
A single crossing of the road can kill you. A single car drive can kill you,
hell you could go to sleep one night and never wake up for many many reasons.

You can't avoid things just because they _could_ kill you.

You've listed the one exception to being able to rely on your senses, and it
doesn't really correlate with best before dates, cooked reheated rice is the
main risk.

~~~
thereisnospork
It's about the statistics, same reason we have seatbelts and helmet laws. If a
less aggressive sell-by date means one in a million loaves of bread gets
moldy, that might kill a handful of people a year. If nothing else, allowing
people to die from preventable sales of expired food is bad politics.

~~~
benj111
How many people a year die from moldy bread?

Best before and sell by is a guarantee. Its the company saying this product
will last until X date. Just like your car doesn't become unusable when the
warranty runs out, neither does bread, especially when you make some attempt
to store it properly, because best before dates are based on the opposite.

~~~
DanBC
Each year about 3000 people in the US die from food poisoning. About 100,000
people are hospitalised, and some of them will have been caused permanent
harm.

~~~
thereisnospork
To add: even if we throw out a few hundred million dollars worth of food,
that's more than a fair trade for a few thousand lives and 40x that in
hospitalizations.

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avar
Why don't stores offer work the expiration of goods into the price? E.g. a 5%
discount on things 25% into their expiry, 10% for 75% etc.

It's a common technique to pay staff to stock shelves in such a way that the
goods about to expire are at the front, savvy customers will dig at the back
to get the new stock. Right now there's no price incentive _not_ to do that.

~~~
zip6
In the UK, some supermarkets do this. At my nearest supermarket, they can have
very large discounts (maybe 75% or more) when an item's expiry date is today,
and occasionally they do increase the discount over time like you suggested.

Each time they change the price, they put a sticker with the new price and
barcode over the old one, on every discounted item. The employee time required
to do this is non-trivial. I imagine that in some places, stores would decide
that it's not worth the effort, since a discount might not increase sales
enough to match the reduced profit per item (especially in affluent areas
where customers can easily afford the full-price item, and maybe turn their
noses up at items near their expiration date).

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tomatotomato37
I use eatbydate for all my perishables, which usually buys me another week or
two on the refrigerated food. I also keep a labeler by the fridge, so I can
relabel opened containers with the reduced date instead of trying to remember
when that jar of alfredo was last used

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grawprog
One of the perks I remember from working in a grocery store many years ago was
free pickings of stuff that was going to be thrown out that was past the
expiry. Got a lot of free food. Never got sick or had any ill effects once.

~~~
londons_explore
But is a small chance of dying from eating toxic bacteria worth it?

Best before dates act like a 'hard cutoff', but the reality is the risk of
eating food is typically an exponential increasing from the time it was made.
It just starts from a very low value.

Just a single gone-off meal can kill you, so you can't try all that many times
and hope to find the limit of survivability.

~~~
jpatokal
Genuine question: are there any foods that go bad in such a way that you can't
see, taste or smell it, but it can kill you anyway? (Emphasis on "go bad":
things like listeria were there from the start.)

~~~
onion2k
If you have a condition that means you'll react very badly to something that
would most other people nothing more than an upset stomach, yes. For example,
if your immune system is already compromised (from HIV, cancer, etc) something
as simple as mild botulism can kill you.

About 3000 people die from food poisoning every year in the US.

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Merrill
On youtube there are plenty of videos of people eating old military rations.
The oldest is from the Boer War. But here is "1942 WW2 US Army Field Ration C
B Unit MRE Taste Test Vintage Meal Ready to Eat Oldest Food Review" at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm8f5Kj_CrY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm8f5Kj_CrY)

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towb
I just bought some fancy chocolate for almost nothing the other day. Best
before was end of january but it tasted very good! If I didn't know old
chocolate goes white I might have throw it away.

~~~
ValentineC
> _If I didn 't know old chocolate goes white I might have throw it away._

It's called a bloom: [https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/36380/test-
if-wh...](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/36380/test-if-whitish-
chocolate-has-bloom-or-is-spoiled)

~~~
towb
Good to know! Things that has gone bad usually doesn't taste that great either
so that's a good way to find out!

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m-p-3
I usually keep stuff like bread for a little longer and I usually don't waste
most of it. If I'm not sure I'll eat it in time I'll freeze it even though it
won't be as soft.

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chewz
Last night I ate skyr (kind of yogurt) with expiry date at February. So far I
am OK.

~~~
benj111
Well yoghurt is already off milk.

~~~
ValentineC
Yoghurt is also acidic, making it less hospitable to mold, and moreso to
lactobacilli and other similar bacteria that are generally safe to consume.

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neiman
Dumpster diving is a way to both mitigate it and increase social justice.

But the problem is that many big stores lock their garbage bins in an almost
evil decision.

~~~
derefr
No, the _problem_ is that people can sue (and win!) if they eat food from a
company’s garbage bins and then get sick. Remove the liability, and you remove
the motive to protect against said liability at the expense of the commons.

~~~
neiman
Hmm, I can't find (in one minute searching, busy, sorry) someone winning such
a case..

I find it a bit strange. First, because many people do dumpster diving.
Second, because it is mostly the big companies locking their bins, so why do
the smaller ones don't if it's risky?

