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> That means it had been a year since the apples he bought were actually picked

I've been saying for a while that instead of focusing on "best by" dates, food suppliers should be forced to put on the harvest or manufactured date.

"Fresh" Apples being sold after a year is nothing compared to how old some of the food you by in the freezer, or boxed section.

Manufacturers and store owners are the ones that benefit the most from keeping food on the shelves longer.

> If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them.

I noticed this also when i was buying a "farmers box" that promised to deliver fresh produce from a local farm. Upon closer inspection almost all of the organic farmers market type produce delivery services buy from other suppliers and sell as if they grew them themselves.




Frozen vegetables are often blanched and flash frozen at the peak of freshness. In many cases they are “fresher” than what you find in the produce section


many of the "fresh" verities are also grown explicitly for hardiness and transportability, and are often also not great in terms of taste or texture.

freezing meanwhile can preserve them on the spot and ensure the less transportable types can make it to consumers.


Rory Sutherland makes this point, that because some products are cheaper to manufacture and keep in stock (like frozen veggies), they're perceived to be less healthy than "fresh".


I discovered Rory Sutherland this year and he’s awesome. I recommend to anyone checking out his TED talk or book.


If you want a real 'farmers box', look into Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). I've never seen those programs not be local seasonally-appropriate food. The change in produce over the year is part if the fun.


I wouldn't expect a logistics company to actually own farms. They are promising to buy some standard of produce (organic , local, fresh, whatever they promised...) and get it to me.


Well, it's not like the barista bakes the bagels.


Honestly i think this would just lead to more perfectly good food begin wasted.

It's one of these things that would be good to know as a consumer but as a society it would be detrimental, imho

"Safe to eat" i think it's the best metric, you can do a 1+1 for certain products if you want (like olive oil has a 18m shelf life, etc)

On the same note i think "best by" dates should be illegal imho.




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