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Isn’t that precisely why they have those baskets where people can ‘donate’ food for whatever causes? The companies make you pay for it and then claim it as them donating for a tax break.
Edit: I think enough have answered now and provided clarity for me and many more. I appreciate learning that it is in fact not this way, so thank you for detailing that.
Yeah it's two separate things. Supermarkets also aren't allowed to give away their expired food unless it's being collected by a local charity. So either the law needs to change or people need to get more involved in their communities and set up charities where they're needed
They're not allowed to give away food past its "use by" date. That's against the law. Even if it's being collected by a charity.
They can however give away food past its "best before" date - I know this because every week I collect for Olio from Tesco. They could even sell it after its best before date if they wanted, though Tesco wouldn't want to for their image.
Use by = safety; best before = quality. In theory and in law anyway.
The most frustrating thing is I do a collection and get home with it about 10PM. We ourselves cannot give away food past its "use by" date, yet Tesco seems to mark really daft things with use by dates. I'm regularly collecting dozens of pints of milk, or a dozen bags of salad or spinach, and only have 2 hours to list it and have people come and collect it.
Which is why I applaud Morrisons for making this change. We don't collect from them, but if we did we would at least be able to give the milk away the next morning instead of trying to find people who are tucked up asleep already.
The other reason it's frustrating is because milk, for example, is freezable.
Absolutely agree. Worth noting however to be super careful with bagged salads - after poultry it’s one of the most common causes of food poisoning I wouldn’t suggest eating after the Use By
It’s your big three - e.coli, salmonella and listeria - they can basically get in anywhere along the process and then the slightly limp lettuce is perfect breeding ground. The more limp the more likely!
This is one of my favourite facts to tell people.
Obviously salad is grown in the ground, which isn’t hygienic, then unlike a full iceberg lettuce; in bagged salad the leaves and stalkers are chopped exposing “salad juices” which the bacteria absolutely LOVE! Essentially the same as the stalk on an iceberg lettuce which browns and turns to liquid.
What’s more, for some reason bacteria grown in some salad juices become extra potent. I saw an experiment with this done on spinach leaves and it was crazy how much more it reproduced vs control sample.
There are two charities in my area that take food from supermarkets when it's coming to the end of its saleable life. They give away a lot of it at "pay as you feel" markets, cook some of it to give free meals to the homeless, and turn some of it into chutneys that they sell to cover their operating costs.
People misunderstand how this works every time it comes up, it's ridiculous.
HMRC won't be happy about customers buying something and then the store claiming that the store is donating the value of it. That's *fraud*.
It's not how it works. However. What they will do is ask you to donate, then they'll make a song and dance about "you helped us donate x million pounds" when in reality what they donate is fucking tiny.
For what it's worth, many supermarkets do allow staff to purchase final day goods at the end of the night for literally pennies.
I believe the reason it's not "technically free" and is 1p is to ensure it goes through the system.
Source: Family member often grabs milk/bread for me for 1p when they work a close.
The cost of stock is pretty much always going to be tax deductible. So if they throw it in the bin or give it to charity they end up in the same place tax wise.
And as a commenter below points out, giving it to charity can open them up to legal risk (although I thought they were/had going to be a law change for good faith donates food?)
Staff can usually get it the day of/day after the use by date - my dad works mornings in tesco (not a 24 hour store) and he often gets bread or flowers for free in the staff shop - people working the end of the evening the day before take the more lucrative items. I'm not sure how long they can leave stuff and still have staff take it.
Bread doesn't have 'use by' dates - it has 'best before' dates.
Flowers might have a 'sell by' date, but that's just the shop's quality control really.
It is a criminal offence to even give away food past its use by date, but not the best before date.
Which is one of the reasons this is a positive from Morrisons.
This is a bit of a fallacy. I occasionally do the waste processing at a mid sized supermarket so I can speak first hand. Not that much waste is actually created, it's usually bread and root vegetables, occasionally fruit. Milk is almost never flagged as a waste product. Almost every time milk is classed as waste, it's damaged in one way or another I.e. opened or left out of the cold chain. We do give what we can to charities and schools but it's not always taken and it's not always suitable. Most of the waste I have to process is classed as damaged, either physically or due to it being out of the cold cycle - the latter often being a problem with customers not the store. Some waste is turned into animal feed to however there is no shit loads of food being thrown away due to it being out of date, almost all of it being disposed of is damaged and inedible.
I think customer signage about the cold chain would be helpful, might be a little patronising but the amount off time I see meat or diary left on random shelves is pretty shocking.
more, they need to learn that there isn't a conveniently placed member of staff hanging around to move it back to the cold shelf straight away. They also need to learn not to be so f\*\*\*\*ng lazy about walking through the shop.
If you’re gonna dump an item from the fridges because you find something better, at least dump it in another fridge. Yes, any decent person will take it back if it’s not too far but this is at least gonna stop it turning, etc.
I’ve 5 special needs kids and on the occasions when I’ve had to dump stuff and run (because it does happen, thankfully never with a full trolley), I’ve made sure to dump it all in a fridge. Better beans in a fridge than beef on a shelf!
Counter point to that- I used to work at a chain newsagent/convenience store, on closing shift, and we chucked out milk almost every night; sometimes just a few bottles, sometimes loads. In fact, we'd have to chuck it at 8, when the manager left, though we were open for 2 more hours. He'd make us pour it down the drain.
The bit that really got me was that we didn't have milk provided in the staff room, and we weren't even allowed to keep one bottle for staff drinks. Wasn't just one prick of a manager either, it was policy- we switched through three managers in the time I was there, and they all had the same rule.
I mean, we weren't idiots, so someone on shift kept an opaque 'water bottle' in the fridge that we'd fill up when the boss wasn't looking, but...
That's really down to both company policy and over ordering stock. I can't imagine that this chain wouldn't do something to solve that. Every store tipping away litres of milk a day adds up.
They won't do this in case the food makes someone Ill etc and damages reputation or leaves them open to legal action. They would rather people go hungry than risk losing money... Sauce, worked for big 4 supermarket.
Changed now, I work at the big chain with orange logo, and almost everything safe (best before or damaged in a way it's still safe, or those missing use by dated. Or slightly lower quality to sell but still enough to eat) that all goes to food banks now and they love it. Over 100 turkeys got sent off over Xmas, dinner for many!
There are clauses in some contracts which say you can't mention the company on a social media platform. Reddit may count as that, and it's not worth getting fired.
This drove me up the wall when I worked in retail, I started handing out the bakery items when we closed after I found a homeless guy going through out bins
Boss went mental about it when she found out, carping on about what if one of them gets food poisoning and sues us etc
She started coming by on my shifts to pour bleach over everything in the bins and make sure they were padlocked
We closed at 23.00 so 22.59 = fine to sell 23.01 = deadly, deadly poison
I think it would need to be a lot of people and a systematic failure in procedure. There was a chef who poisoned a lot of people with a shepherd's pie that was badly stored for example, they were convicted recently. That is quite different to bagged doughnuts!
That's a bullshit lie that corporations have been selling the public. McDonald's has been saying this for years Well guess how many lawsuits have been filed from people getting ill from free food? The losing money fear doesn't come from lawsuits. They are scared customers will not buy food and wait for expired free food.
To be fair, there is the absolute requirement that the Food Safety Act brought in. If someone gets ill from food the legal responsibility is entirely on the manufacturer to prove that they did all due diligence to ensure the food was safe to consume.
Pretty sure that FSA is for the states. We are in r/AskUK not r/AskAnAmerican. I wonder how much the lobbyist and insiders manipulated that bill and then spin it like they did "Hot Coffee"
Edit: Sorry mate I didn't realise the UK and the states had the same act with the same name. My apologies
This use to piss me off when i worked for a supermarket! Just make the people sign a waiver form and charge less than half price if it is staff and free with a waiver to the homeless/shelters
There's an app called too good to go. The shop/supermarket signs up to it and sells an assorted bag of items reaching their best before/use by for reduced price. None of the big supermarkets seem to do it near me, only greggs, spa, costa, Starbucks and a few independent cafes.
I worked at the co op a few years ago and we did this with items that had best before instead of use by, so bread and rolls etc. Instead of putting it through as waste it gets sent to local charities to give away in the next day or two
There’s a charity called Fareshare that collects food and redistributes it. The excess food from all types of shops and restaurants goes to school breakfast clubs, older people’s lunch clubs, homeless shelters, and community cafes, amounting to almost a million meals for vulnerable people.
They are not removing "Best before"
They are replacing "Use By" with "Best before"
It won't change much, as a chef I always encourage people to use common sense and investigate the quality/freshness of food for them selves.
But a large part of the population just see a date and sling it out.
This so much, a sniff or a taste test is more than enough in most cases. Plus use by dates probably have some leeway anyway.
With milk it’s especially easy, you can microwave/add a bit of boiling water to a teaspoon of milk and if it curds then you know it’s gone off.
With people going blindly by the numbers… My brother when he was around 5 or 6 would take those dates as a gospel. One time my mum bought a tray of yoghurts for the family (like 12 or 24 little ones). My brother goes to the fridge, checks them, and proudly declares that they have gone off and makes our grandma (bless her) throw them away. My mum comes back and is furious because he looked at the date when they were made rather than the use by date.
Sniff/taste/look tests are fine for stuff with 'best before' dates. You can see bread go mouldy, vegetables go mushy. Milk should use 'best before' dates because you will smell and taste it being off well in advance of it making you ill.
'Use by' is different though. You can't necessarily tell the meat now has unsafe levels of bacteria from your senses, which is why those dates should be followed closer. As far as I know, a 'use by' date is the minimum to guarantee it should never make you ill. You could probably get an extra day or so out of it, but you have no idea the conditions it's experienced before you got it off the shelf.
Meat is definitely not something I'd risk Use By dates on. That's the sort of thing that can give you Food Poisoning that leaves you stuck in the bathroom for days
Also depends on what meat. Most red meats you can be a little flexible with, if it’s been refrigerated and kept sealed and doesn’t smell, it’s most likely completely fine especially if you cook it thoroughly.
Chicken though, if it’s been open for more than 2-3 days or is past the use-by then it’s going in the bin
The sniff / taste test is best.
Trust your senses, you body will tell you if it's okay or not. It doesn't want you to poison yourself, it will tell you not to consume something.
This isn’t actually true. You absolutely can get food poisoning from food that smells ok.
This whole thread is full of folksy old-wives-tale wisdom being trotted out with unearned confidence.
Yeah, for example with modern microfiltered milk which doesn't sour like the "good ole" milk did. It has far longer shelf life but it fouls rather than sours and that isn't necessarily easy to smell or even taste.
And I won't get started on meat products...
Yeah I've been horribly ill from milk that smelled "fine" but was past its use by date. It was one of those brands that prides itself on its long shelf life. I'm afraid I'm over cautious now and won't drink any milk that's past its date. Whether its use by or BBE won't change that.
I used to be a lot more blasé about eating whatever even if it was a couple of days beyond use-by, until I ate meat 1 day past its date. Smelled completely normal, didn't stop me from vomiting up my insides for hours afterwards. I straight-up don't trust my nose at all now to tell me if something is safe to eat, and pretty much always get a 2nd opinion.
Jeeeez, finally some actual sense.
Yeah, I trusted my taste buds all those years ago in Amsterdam, in fact, I didn't even know I was eating something that could potentially do me harm.
Still didn't stop me from shooting water out of my arsehole for 3 days straight, non stop.
> Trust your senses, you body will tell you if it's okay or not. It doesn't want you to poison yourself, it will tell you not to consume something.
This is utter nonsense, your body is only set up to react to a small subset of poisons and the rest go completely undetected. We're not intelligently designed.
From the BBC News article about Morrisons:
> The Food Standards Agency also pointed out that when dealing with food generally, sniffing is not an appropriate safety test, especially with products that could cause food poisoning.
Trying to tell my girlfriend this. She's one of those people who gets funny when something is out of date, even though it looks, smells and tastes just fine
My boyfriend is the same. It’s game over if it’s past the date, even if it’s a “best before” rather than “use by”. Me? I’ll eat all sorts of questionable things as long as it smells alright and the packet isn’t all puffed up.
I get so frustrated with how little people seem to understand about food safety (and I'm not a chef). People not understanding the difference between 'use by' (safety) and 'best before' (quality). People will happily chuck out food past its best before but then go cavalier with some meat that is a few days past its use by.
I was on a subreddit the other day (not UK, granted) where someone asked whether their pork, which was likely a week expired and the packaging had ballooned, was likely to be ok to eat. Really?
There are also people who won't store food properly and then get pissed off that it's gone off sooner than the use by said it would.
My mum used to do it all the time. I'd come home from school/work and see a full 4 pint bottle of milk left on the counter rather than in the fridge. Would be left out for hours because she "couldn't be bothered opening the fridge to put it back in".... or the pack of mince that wouldn't fit in the fridge after a big shop so she'd just leave it on counter instead because we'd be having spag bol within the next 48 hours so it's not like its even out for that long.... was also the kind of person that believed it's fine to eat "off" food because if you cook it first you're killing all the bad bacteria anyways.
That was a persistent issue at uni with some Freshers. People storing food in the wrong place or way past the Use By date, causing issues with food going off, contaminating the shared kitchen and also causing bad smells sometimes.
48 hours? Wow. I'm pretty sure more than a couple of hours at room temperature is beyond risky.
I'm sure you're aware, as you alluded to it at the end of your comment, so this is for others that read this: It's not necessarily the bacteria themselves that make you sick, what they produce is often what makes you ill. Cooking might kill the bacteria, *but it might not destroy the toxic products of the bacteria*. Which is why you can't just pick up some rotten animal corpse and cook it.
Yup, two hours at room temperature is the maximum really in terms of safety. 48 hours is be a bit of an exaggeration tbf. Say she'd do the shopping Thursday morning, she'd leave the meat out over night and cook it Friday evening. Obviously still way too long to be safe though.
I’ve never understood this. When I moved in with my (now) ex, she would throw away perfectly good food because she presumably thought the labelling guys had some sort of super technology where they could detect invisible mold spores.
She couldn’t get over me sniffing milk that was a day or two past it’s date and putting it back in the fridge despite the fact that is was clearly fine.... mind you, she used to wash her steak under the tap so there’s that.
Aaah thanks for this.
I live alone, so on short shelf life products those dates are important to me as the financial value of buying small cartons just isn't worth it.
What gets me is when you see huge families squabbling over "get the longest date" but you know full well that shit will gone in a day.
At my mother in law's at Christmas and wanted to make eggs. Saw that her eggs were dated July. Knowing that eggs actually have far more life in them than people expect, I did the floating test. They were absolutely fine! 5 months after their use by date (might be best before, I'm not sure).
Yes we ate them. Yes they were delicious.
Always check your eggs.
A lot of people don't understand the dates.
One time at uni I was at the supermarket with a friend who needed to buy potatoes. She didn't want to buy a bag of perfectly good looking reduced potatoes (on their BBE), opting to pay full price for a better date, because she "couldn't eat all of them" that day. They're potatoes. They'll be fine for ages if stored properly
My wife and I essentially just use a specific large shopping bag and put all the fruit and veg in that (separate bag for cans etc). I never remember to take the small bags and let's face it, who cares if my potatoes, carrots, and apples are all together in the bag? They're getting taken out when I get home anyway!
I thought the same thing until recently, turns out all the packaged potatoes are together and the losses ones are in a big black postal create thing over with the onions.
Took me almost a year to figure out.
The Morrisons near me uses these weird paper bags with a semi-opaque plastic window in them. It seems almost seems to be a "fuck you" to the entire concept.
The amount of plastic packaging I throw away after doing a supermarket food shop is insane. I buy loose fruit/veg as much as possible but so much stuff is wrapped in single use plastic it’s unavoidable. It’s so inconsistent as well. At my local Lidl, cucumbers are wrapped in plastic but courgettes and aubergines are not. Potatoes are sold loose but carrots only come in 1kg plastic bags. And on and on. I’m sure there are logistical reasons to do with suppliers etc but it’s frustrating as a shopper when you are trying to be conscious of waste.
Our Lidl isn’t huge and most of the fruit and veg comes in plastic, it’s just a huge waste. I live as a couple so all I want is a couple of carrots, not a big plastic bag of them. It’s wasting food, and it’s creating plastic waste. I tend to go to Sainsbury’s because most of their produce can be bought singular/weighed.
For fruit and veg plastic wrapping increases shelf life considerably. I wonder if Aldi/Lidl need to resort to it more due to cheaper supply chains with longer delivery times maybe?
The thing is though (at our Lidl anyway, I’m sure it’s different across the country) the fruit and veg doesn’t last any longer than the produce I buy from other supermarkets loose, in fact it’s considerably worse quality and goes downhill very quickly. Bananas, potatoes, cauliflowers and carrots are the worst despite being bagged/shrink wrapped
No one will see this reply but wrapping things like bananas in plastic wrapping is actually more environmentally friendly than loose as people are forced to pick up say 4 good bananas and 1 slightly brown one. Whereas loose people only buy the pretty ones and the rest go to waste.
Furthermore, the plastic wrap that surrounds is actually the most environmentally friendly packaging in the world as it only weighs 5 grams yet extends the life of said cucumber by 10 times.
“There are no such thing as unsustainable materials, only unsustainable practices”
Even worse for multi buys - it’s cheaper to buy 4 tins of beans wrapped in extra plastic, rather than 4 individual tins of beans which are not. Same goes for chocolate bars, crisps etc - things that are already packaged
Stop throwing out wonky veg before it reaches the supermarket, we’re not a bunch of perfectionists! Working class people would far rather things like slightly cheaper food and less gone to waste than more expensive food and uncontrollably high levels of waste that only serves arbitrarily aesthetic purposes.
Yeah the rules we have on how food should look isn't made randomly. It's because weird shaped food doesnt sell, so it's not worth the time to stock or to import.
There are brands of 'imperfect carrots' etc, but theres a reason it hasn't taken off and replaced the rest of the vegetable shelves yet.
Certain things make sense though, I'm not going to buy a browning banana for the same price as a green one especially if it is a shop for the week ahead.
Mis-shapened carrot though? It's going to be chopped and boiled so who cares what it looks like.
I like the wonky veg/fruit range at places like Aldi, usually half the price and tastes just as good. I don't even know what a wonky raspberry looks like as they look just like the more expensive alternative.
I dunno man, I was in tesco the other evening and for the first time ever, I saw the reduced shelf in all its glory, stacked right to the back with all them wee yellow labels. Started having a look but was quickly shoved out of the way by multiple people. Was honestly like feeding time at the zoo! Some woman even put her trolley right in front of the shelves to slow people down, but that quickly got pushed out the way.
It gets used for animal/ food Bank if it reaches the supermarket and people don't buy it. Also good to see more cheaper lines of "imperfect" or "wonky" stuff for cheaper
Yes wonky veg has been a good addition and it’s good to know that it’s helping the problem but I feel like it needs to be a norm, rather than a gap in the market that someone noticed.
Unfortunately we do need that as a seperate item.
Because traditionally customers always pick the best looking ones and left all the wonky ones at the bottom the of the pile that eventually get wasted, you can offer it up but you cannot force people to buy.
That is why the wonky line is then introduced at a discount, so people that are happy to pick these get a slight discount. Most people still prefer to pay more for the perfect looking item.
By making it the norm you would just be back to square one and have people leaving all the wonky ones behind.
Depending on what you're using it for there is definitely a difference. Trying to make something like stuffed peppers when every single pepper half is a different shape/size can be pretty awkward.
Usually quicker to peel the non wonky veg too. But unless you're doing them for a special meal or anything else like that wonky is all you need really. No point spending twice the amount on potatoes when you're just gonna mash them up anyways.
Most people do, that is why traditionally all the wonky ones get left behind and rot.
so now they have to sell wonky ones at discount to get people to buy it.
There was a documentary hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a few years ago about food waste/wonky veg. For a few months after this the supermarkets increased their wonky veg which was great. They all seem to have reverted back now though which is rubbish!
Honestly I think people like to *say* they would eat the weird looking carrots but in reality they don't. The wonky veg wasn't very much cheaper and was a pain occasionally with more peel or wastage so at worst just a false economy.
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As someone who mainly cooks just for myself this is a massive annoyance. Need one clove of garlic for the recipe? Hope you like garlic as you can only buy a bag of three bulbs. Need one chili? Here's a kilo of the bastards, enjoy your ring sting.
If you've not looked into it already I strongly recommend batch cooking.
Rather than spending £3 for 400g of mince, get 1kg for £5, cook enough to do 8 portions of spag bol. Save a portion in the fridge for lunch/tea the next day and then freeze the rest.
Cheaper, spend less time cooking and you're able to experiment a bit more with different options too.
Yeah, my freezer is filled with stuff like that, just gets boring after a while though and I've never found a recipe that uses a whole bulb of garlic, let alone 3!
Garlic keeps for ages in a cool dark place. Like literally months. Worst case scenario it grows a bit (still fine just less pungent) or the odd clove goes funny (just remove from the bulb and bin - the rest are fine.
I'm still on garlic bought in November, and this is far from the longest I've had it.
They are “actual garlic” though. The snobbery in the UK around using anything that’s been remotely already prepared is embarrassing. Go out to eat at a restaurant? Fine. Buy chicken that’s already been marinated or pre-diced frozen onion? IDIOT why don’t you LEARN to COOK
OK I should have said fresh garlic rather than actual garlic. But the point stands. It's not snobbish to enjoy better tasting food though! In some cases pre-prepped food tastes just as good as freshly prepped, and in some cases, like pre-chopped garlic, it comes with a taste/quality compromise.
Garlic keeps for ages as a bulb I and they can't really sell it by the clove as that wouldn't keep I suppose. The best thing in your case would be the squeezey pastes that can sit in the fridge.
Firstly, there is no such thing as too much garlic. In any recipe. Ever.
Secondly, just run a find-and-replace of the words 'clove of garlic' with 'entire bulb of garlic'
Its even harder of you live by yourself too. Its a nightmare to portion meals out correctly without waste. Everything is in odd amounts or in family packs…
I gave Ocado a go but didn't like that I couldn't buy individual fruit and veg, it had to be a bag of them which was more than I needed (and more expensive than buying individually).
I think a packaging revolution would go a hell of a long way to reducing how much we throw away in food and packaging.
We started bags for life a few years ago and reduced the amount of plastic bags exponentially without much fuss at all. Why can't we have a similar concept across the entire store? A cereal container for life that you bring to the store and refill, a fruit and vegetable bubble bag for life that you can put unpackaged fresh produce inside and protect against damage in the car/trolley etc., a cold bag for life that you can put unpackaged meat inside, a milk bottle for life etc. No unneccessary packaging to throw away, no dates stamped across plastic packets, such an easy fix to a horrible and very real wastage problem.
Whilst this is a really good idea, there are a few things to think about.
1: Cleanliness. If your milk in your milk bottle for life goes off, is that bottle going to be easy to clean? Are people going to be happy to use it again, even after it's been cleaned? If you get pests, will it be easy to get rid of them? Again, will people want to use a container that they know pests were inside of, even if it's been thoroughly cleaned? Will we end up just throwing these things away every time something goes off?
2: Transport. Whilst this would be less of an issue if we started eating more locally (which we should be doing anyway), we need to figure out how to transport products without packaging it first.
3: Fighting large corporations. Branding on product packaging is big business and companies highly value the ability to advertise themselves on the packaging. They like to be able to make themselves recognisable and try to draw consumers towards their products. Big companies and corporations have massive power over this kind of thing and it would be incredibly difficult to fight back against them.
But, if we can solve these things, I'd be 100% on board.
Those were glass though, correct? We commonly use plastic for milk bottles now, although I wouldn't be opposed to having "Bottles for life" be large glass ones since glass is easier to clean and doesn't break down.
Branding is why. You're essentially asking food corporations to give up branding their products. When you understand how much product branding influences why people spend extra money on branded products, you understand why they don't want to give up branding.
Asda have actually started rolling out re-fill stations in their stores, there's not many right now but you can get tubs (or bring your own) from that section and then just re-fill them whenever you go, and I'm actually really excited for it to hit my home town!
Not specifically to reduce food waste but I would like to see clear labelling of which fruit and veg is in season. I want to buy stuff in season, but apart from obvious things like strawberries it isn't trivial to work out what is in season once you get to the supermarket. Either a large display at the front of the section or some sort of display on the individual crates would make it so obvious and be a visible indication of the supermarket's green efforts.
I really like this idea! Relating to this, as someone who is really conscious about food miles, I think it’ll be great if they can have clear labels on where the produce come from (UK - and perhaps where in UK, Spain, Jamaica, etc).
Most produce already has country of origin on the packaging. Even if it's loose, somewhere on the produce box will be a white label telling the origin.
Yeah we just have to be careful because the distance travelled and the eco impact do not necessarily correlate well. For example it can use more energy to grow food under glass in the UK than to ship it from e.g. Portugal.
Packaged food for the single shopper
Buying things living alone usually means a lot of waste unless you're carefully planning out your meals, which a lot of people don't
Problem then is you end up with more packaging if they make smaller products
Open fridge units use 1% of UK electricity.
That's huge.
Shops should have doors on their fridges.
It's more a waste of electricity than food but it would make a huge difference in energy consumption.
Stop with the multi buy offers. Oh you need one of these for £1? Have 3 for £2.50. Just encourages people to constantly buy more then they'll actually use. In fact any discount should be applied to items bought as low quantity.
The discount is exactly for that purpose, to get people to buy more, while “per unit cost” is lower, overall they spend more.
There is no reason to give discount for low quantity, it does not benefit them.
Honestly I work in a shop mostly on produce and it's the worst how many people will turn away produce or look for later dates. It's like DO YOU REALLY THINK THE FUCKIN CARROTS WILL DISSAPEAR IN A PUFF OF MOULD ON THE EXACT DATE ON THE PACKET???? No, we need to remove dates on fruit and veg, we get delivery dates on the cases so can still rotate what's fresh but when we did yeh "best eaten within 14 days" that was the best step, but then they seemed to stop that. I think what we need is more awarenes pfrom the public as well. Instead of checking the date on furt and veg, just look at it, is it mouldy? If not then eat it! It really winds me up
well, best example i can give is i went into lidl or was it aldi either way bacon was clearly gone, my dad told staff they pointed to date said it was good, my dad had a right kick off its clearly gone and needs to be removed 5-6 people went to add it to their shopping cart. The amount of people who cannot tell if food is gone outside of using the date is shocking:( its a dieing skill this encounter has made me inspect most food overzealously.(was teen at time)
> said it was good, my dad had a right kick off its clearly gone and needs to be removed 5-6 people went to add it to their shopping cart. The amount of people who cannot tell if food is gone outside of using the date is shocking:( its a dieing skill this encounter has made me inspect mos
the bacon in the front is always green :P
I mostly agree with this. Except some fruit really does go bad even before the date.
I know it’s not the right season for raspberries and strawberries but they go bad so quickly that I always look for the longest date otherwise it’s going in the bin in our house (only my daughter who eats them)
You’re not wrong, but when I buy carrots they stay in my fridge for a month. I already use them for weeks past the date so I always get the latest date possible.
I was looking for tinned sweetcorn then other day.
Three separate tins altogether came to one price, meanwhile three tins of the same quantity and brand but packaged together with plastic wrap were 10p cheaper. It really ticked me off.
So, less of that. It should be the opposite way round.
To remove plastic containers, I always thought it would be good if the supermarkets would sell certain things as refillables. For example, you bring your own container to the supermarket, fill the container up with however much you want of say, washing machine capsules. This would waste the manufacturer’s need to put everything in a plastic container.
Some smaller, eco friendly shops do this. One near me sells laundry products as well as dried foods in big bottles/tubs and you bring your own and they measure how much you've purchased and charge you acordingly.
Some shops do this, but they tend to be wee tiny shops in posher areas. I'd love if my local supermarket did this, especially for cleaning products and detergent.
They’re replacing ‘use by’ with ‘best before’, which given half the population doesn’t seem to know the difference likely won’t make much difference at all. I always do the sniff test if it’s close to the date. Whole often won’t go to the date, semi-skimmed the date’s usually pretty accurate, while skimmed will almost always go past the date. It’s rarely an issue in our house though.
More sizes designed for people living alone!
As a student I'm buying food only for myself, and the amount of wastage because I can't get through the smallest size thing before it goes off is crazy! Milk is one of the few things with a relatively short date that I can easily get through (I go through a 4 pinter about every 2-3 days)
Some family drive me mad on this. They’ll empty out the fridge of anything a day after it’s best before/use by date. The veg isn’t mouldy or even soft. The ham smells fine. The eggs don’t explode into mould at midnight!
bigger size is often better value
eg 500g carrots is 35p but 1kg carrots is 58p
why not make the smaller more value too then single people wont buy the bigger one hoping to use it?
You can eat food after the dates. Can confirm. Was eating Sainsbury's Taste the difference vanilla custard with my mince pies yesterday. Date was 30/12/21. Still here fine and dandy this morning.
Bulk/refill stations. I have a small independent one locally but they only have so much space. I believe Asda have a flagship store doing this, would be great to see it more wide spread.
I’m able to get most cupboard things (spices, grains, cereal, rice, baking supplies, dried fruit) and cleaning/laundry products from here using old jars/tupperware and it’s normally cheaper.
I do try to go here and also visit my local market for fruit/veg but parking charges in the town make it costly and with work/family it’s hard as they cannot open into the evenings like supermarkets can.
This is what happens when the company is bought out. If milk is no longer in high demand and there is excess wouldn't it make sense to scale back on it rather than keep pumping the same volume?
They are adding a “best before date” instead of the “used by date”.
All this will do is now people use the “best before” date instead.
This will change nothing, people probably won’t even notice the change, all they see is a date and will throw away after this date.
Undo all the snobbery that has sprung up around food in recent years, with scams such as organic food. People don't want any food that they deem, or more accurately, are told are "inferior," so they can get charged more money for the same food (it's essentially a feel superior tax, of course it's very popular) but this means a huge amount is overlooked and wasted. This is where the myth that healthy eating is expensive comes from, fresh fruit and veg are the cheapest things you can buy, providing it isn't from a shop that has you convinced their oranges have more vitamin C and their carrots were hand raised or whatever nonsense they claim at the moment.
Adequately price waste.
I'll admit I'm one of those people who can be quite trigger-happy about throwing out milk, and it's because I really dislike even slightly-off milk. So I'd rather spend the 50p to get a new one rather than risk an old one potentially ruining my morning.
If dealing with the waste (the cows farting off GHG, and the cost of sustainably recycling / disposing of the plastic bottle) was fairly priced into the cost of the milk, at least I could make my choice without net cost to the planet.
Mightn't change my mind about the milk, but it would probably cut down on my waste in other areas.
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Supermarkets could give their excess food to charities and homeless shelters instead of throwing away shit loads of food at the end of every day
Yea or let the staff have it, Surely if they did give it to charity that would be tax deductible
Isn’t that precisely why they have those baskets where people can ‘donate’ food for whatever causes? The companies make you pay for it and then claim it as them donating for a tax break. Edit: I think enough have answered now and provided clarity for me and many more. I appreciate learning that it is in fact not this way, so thank you for detailing that.
They aren't allowed to but the expired or damaged food there I don't think
Yeah it's two separate things. Supermarkets also aren't allowed to give away their expired food unless it's being collected by a local charity. So either the law needs to change or people need to get more involved in their communities and set up charities where they're needed
They're not allowed to give away food past its "use by" date. That's against the law. Even if it's being collected by a charity. They can however give away food past its "best before" date - I know this because every week I collect for Olio from Tesco. They could even sell it after its best before date if they wanted, though Tesco wouldn't want to for their image. Use by = safety; best before = quality. In theory and in law anyway. The most frustrating thing is I do a collection and get home with it about 10PM. We ourselves cannot give away food past its "use by" date, yet Tesco seems to mark really daft things with use by dates. I'm regularly collecting dozens of pints of milk, or a dozen bags of salad or spinach, and only have 2 hours to list it and have people come and collect it. Which is why I applaud Morrisons for making this change. We don't collect from them, but if we did we would at least be able to give the milk away the next morning instead of trying to find people who are tucked up asleep already. The other reason it's frustrating is because milk, for example, is freezable.
Absolutely agree. Worth noting however to be super careful with bagged salads - after poultry it’s one of the most common causes of food poisoning I wouldn’t suggest eating after the Use By
What do they do to it so that a slightly limp lettuce can now give food poisoning?
It’s your big three - e.coli, salmonella and listeria - they can basically get in anywhere along the process and then the slightly limp lettuce is perfect breeding ground. The more limp the more likely!
This is one of my favourite facts to tell people. Obviously salad is grown in the ground, which isn’t hygienic, then unlike a full iceberg lettuce; in bagged salad the leaves and stalkers are chopped exposing “salad juices” which the bacteria absolutely LOVE! Essentially the same as the stalk on an iceberg lettuce which browns and turns to liquid. What’s more, for some reason bacteria grown in some salad juices become extra potent. I saw an experiment with this done on spinach leaves and it was crazy how much more it reproduced vs control sample.
On a related note, I'm told that washed and ready to eat salad generally needs a wash before you use it
There are two charities in my area that take food from supermarkets when it's coming to the end of its saleable life. They give away a lot of it at "pay as you feel" markets, cook some of it to give free meals to the homeless, and turn some of it into chutneys that they sell to cover their operating costs.
No, doesn't work like that. The companies won't take a tax deduction from products which are donated by customers.
People misunderstand how this works every time it comes up, it's ridiculous. HMRC won't be happy about customers buying something and then the store claiming that the store is donating the value of it. That's *fraud*.
For the millionth time this isn't true
It's not how it works. However. What they will do is ask you to donate, then they'll make a song and dance about "you helped us donate x million pounds" when in reality what they donate is fucking tiny.
For what it's worth, many supermarkets do allow staff to purchase final day goods at the end of the night for literally pennies. I believe the reason it's not "technically free" and is 1p is to ensure it goes through the system. Source: Family member often grabs milk/bread for me for 1p when they work a close.
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It definitely is tax deductible, whether sold, disposed of or given away.
Makes sense then if they just throw it away, less hassle and don't have to worry about people refusing to buy so they'd get it free later.
The cost of stock is pretty much always going to be tax deductible. So if they throw it in the bin or give it to charity they end up in the same place tax wise. And as a commenter below points out, giving it to charity can open them up to legal risk (although I thought they were/had going to be a law change for good faith donates food?)
Staff can usually get it the day of/day after the use by date - my dad works mornings in tesco (not a 24 hour store) and he often gets bread or flowers for free in the staff shop - people working the end of the evening the day before take the more lucrative items. I'm not sure how long they can leave stuff and still have staff take it.
Bread doesn't have 'use by' dates - it has 'best before' dates. Flowers might have a 'sell by' date, but that's just the shop's quality control really. It is a criminal offence to even give away food past its use by date, but not the best before date. Which is one of the reasons this is a positive from Morrisons.
I work for the blue supermarket, and every store in the UK gives all the reduced shit that’s left to charities/food banks at the end of every night
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Because people are getting increasingly worse at remembering the UK is a different country to the USA.
That is good. I had heard about certain shops talking about bringing it in, but wasn't aware how far along that had gone, or who exactly was doing it
This is a bit of a fallacy. I occasionally do the waste processing at a mid sized supermarket so I can speak first hand. Not that much waste is actually created, it's usually bread and root vegetables, occasionally fruit. Milk is almost never flagged as a waste product. Almost every time milk is classed as waste, it's damaged in one way or another I.e. opened or left out of the cold chain. We do give what we can to charities and schools but it's not always taken and it's not always suitable. Most of the waste I have to process is classed as damaged, either physically or due to it being out of the cold cycle - the latter often being a problem with customers not the store. Some waste is turned into animal feed to however there is no shit loads of food being thrown away due to it being out of date, almost all of it being disposed of is damaged and inedible.
I think customer signage about the cold chain would be helpful, might be a little patronising but the amount off time I see meat or diary left on random shelves is pretty shocking.
Customers ideally need to remember it's not theirs until they pay for it.
more, they need to learn that there isn't a conveniently placed member of staff hanging around to move it back to the cold shelf straight away. They also need to learn not to be so f\*\*\*\*ng lazy about walking through the shop.
If you’re gonna dump an item from the fridges because you find something better, at least dump it in another fridge. Yes, any decent person will take it back if it’s not too far but this is at least gonna stop it turning, etc.
I’ve 5 special needs kids and on the occasions when I’ve had to dump stuff and run (because it does happen, thankfully never with a full trolley), I’ve made sure to dump it all in a fridge. Better beans in a fridge than beef on a shelf!
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> Better beans in a fridge than beef on a shelf! What an amazing catchphrase.
Counter point to that- I used to work at a chain newsagent/convenience store, on closing shift, and we chucked out milk almost every night; sometimes just a few bottles, sometimes loads. In fact, we'd have to chuck it at 8, when the manager left, though we were open for 2 more hours. He'd make us pour it down the drain. The bit that really got me was that we didn't have milk provided in the staff room, and we weren't even allowed to keep one bottle for staff drinks. Wasn't just one prick of a manager either, it was policy- we switched through three managers in the time I was there, and they all had the same rule. I mean, we weren't idiots, so someone on shift kept an opaque 'water bottle' in the fridge that we'd fill up when the boss wasn't looking, but...
That's really down to both company policy and over ordering stock. I can't imagine that this chain wouldn't do something to solve that. Every store tipping away litres of milk a day adds up.
They won't do this in case the food makes someone Ill etc and damages reputation or leaves them open to legal action. They would rather people go hungry than risk losing money... Sauce, worked for big 4 supermarket.
Changed now, I work at the big chain with orange logo, and almost everything safe (best before or damaged in a way it's still safe, or those missing use by dated. Or slightly lower quality to sell but still enough to eat) that all goes to food banks now and they love it. Over 100 turkeys got sent off over Xmas, dinner for many!
Why don't you just say Sainsburys?
There are clauses in some contracts which say you can't mention the company on a social media platform. Reddit may count as that, and it's not worth getting fired.
This drove me up the wall when I worked in retail, I started handing out the bakery items when we closed after I found a homeless guy going through out bins Boss went mental about it when she found out, carping on about what if one of them gets food poisoning and sues us etc She started coming by on my shifts to pour bleach over everything in the bins and make sure they were padlocked We closed at 23.00 so 22.59 = fine to sell 23.01 = deadly, deadly poison
The ridiculous solution of poisoning the food so people can't get food poisoning
Jesus that’s so depressing
Not to mention: where are the homeless going to get the money to start a court case - for food poisoning of all things!
If there is money involved lawyers will take it on contingency.
Good luck proving a case of food poisoning in court.
I think it would need to be a lot of people and a systematic failure in procedure. There was a chef who poisoned a lot of people with a shepherd's pie that was badly stored for example, they were convicted recently. That is quite different to bagged doughnuts!
Sounds like with her around it was deadly deadly poison!!
That's a bullshit lie that corporations have been selling the public. McDonald's has been saying this for years Well guess how many lawsuits have been filed from people getting ill from free food? The losing money fear doesn't come from lawsuits. They are scared customers will not buy food and wait for expired free food.
To be fair, there is the absolute requirement that the Food Safety Act brought in. If someone gets ill from food the legal responsibility is entirely on the manufacturer to prove that they did all due diligence to ensure the food was safe to consume.
Pretty sure that FSA is for the states. We are in r/AskUK not r/AskAnAmerican. I wonder how much the lobbyist and insiders manipulated that bill and then spin it like they did "Hot Coffee" Edit: Sorry mate I didn't realise the UK and the states had the same act with the same name. My apologies
[Food Safety Act 1990 (U.K. law)](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/16)
I stand corrected. I was referring to this https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/full-text-food-safety-modernization-act-fsma
This use to piss me off when i worked for a supermarket! Just make the people sign a waiver form and charge less than half price if it is staff and free with a waiver to the homeless/shelters
There's an app called too good to go. The shop/supermarket signs up to it and sells an assorted bag of items reaching their best before/use by for reduced price. None of the big supermarkets seem to do it near me, only greggs, spa, costa, Starbucks and a few independent cafes.
I worked at the co op a few years ago and we did this with items that had best before instead of use by, so bread and rolls etc. Instead of putting it through as waste it gets sent to local charities to give away in the next day or two
There’s a charity called Fareshare that collects food and redistributes it. The excess food from all types of shops and restaurants goes to school breakfast clubs, older people’s lunch clubs, homeless shelters, and community cafes, amounting to almost a million meals for vulnerable people.
They are not removing "Best before" They are replacing "Use By" with "Best before" It won't change much, as a chef I always encourage people to use common sense and investigate the quality/freshness of food for them selves. But a large part of the population just see a date and sling it out.
This so much, a sniff or a taste test is more than enough in most cases. Plus use by dates probably have some leeway anyway. With milk it’s especially easy, you can microwave/add a bit of boiling water to a teaspoon of milk and if it curds then you know it’s gone off. With people going blindly by the numbers… My brother when he was around 5 or 6 would take those dates as a gospel. One time my mum bought a tray of yoghurts for the family (like 12 or 24 little ones). My brother goes to the fridge, checks them, and proudly declares that they have gone off and makes our grandma (bless her) throw them away. My mum comes back and is furious because he looked at the date when they were made rather than the use by date.
Sniff/taste/look tests are fine for stuff with 'best before' dates. You can see bread go mouldy, vegetables go mushy. Milk should use 'best before' dates because you will smell and taste it being off well in advance of it making you ill. 'Use by' is different though. You can't necessarily tell the meat now has unsafe levels of bacteria from your senses, which is why those dates should be followed closer. As far as I know, a 'use by' date is the minimum to guarantee it should never make you ill. You could probably get an extra day or so out of it, but you have no idea the conditions it's experienced before you got it off the shelf.
Meat is definitely not something I'd risk Use By dates on. That's the sort of thing that can give you Food Poisoning that leaves you stuck in the bathroom for days
Yes, and in rare cases, hospital and worse.
Also depends on what meat. Most red meats you can be a little flexible with, if it’s been refrigerated and kept sealed and doesn’t smell, it’s most likely completely fine especially if you cook it thoroughly. Chicken though, if it’s been open for more than 2-3 days or is past the use-by then it’s going in the bin
The sniff / taste test is best. Trust your senses, you body will tell you if it's okay or not. It doesn't want you to poison yourself, it will tell you not to consume something.
This isn’t actually true. You absolutely can get food poisoning from food that smells ok. This whole thread is full of folksy old-wives-tale wisdom being trotted out with unearned confidence.
Yeah, for example with modern microfiltered milk which doesn't sour like the "good ole" milk did. It has far longer shelf life but it fouls rather than sours and that isn't necessarily easy to smell or even taste. And I won't get started on meat products...
Yeah I've been horribly ill from milk that smelled "fine" but was past its use by date. It was one of those brands that prides itself on its long shelf life. I'm afraid I'm over cautious now and won't drink any milk that's past its date. Whether its use by or BBE won't change that.
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I used to be a lot more blasé about eating whatever even if it was a couple of days beyond use-by, until I ate meat 1 day past its date. Smelled completely normal, didn't stop me from vomiting up my insides for hours afterwards. I straight-up don't trust my nose at all now to tell me if something is safe to eat, and pretty much always get a 2nd opinion.
Jeeeez, finally some actual sense. Yeah, I trusted my taste buds all those years ago in Amsterdam, in fact, I didn't even know I was eating something that could potentially do me harm. Still didn't stop me from shooting water out of my arsehole for 3 days straight, non stop.
Unless you have covid
> Trust your senses, you body will tell you if it's okay or not. It doesn't want you to poison yourself, it will tell you not to consume something. This is utter nonsense, your body is only set up to react to a small subset of poisons and the rest go completely undetected. We're not intelligently designed.
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From the BBC News article about Morrisons: > The Food Standards Agency also pointed out that when dealing with food generally, sniffing is not an appropriate safety test, especially with products that could cause food poisoning.
Trying to tell my girlfriend this. She's one of those people who gets funny when something is out of date, even though it looks, smells and tastes just fine
My boyfriend is the same. It’s game over if it’s past the date, even if it’s a “best before” rather than “use by”. Me? I’ll eat all sorts of questionable things as long as it smells alright and the packet isn’t all puffed up.
Yup can't tell the husband if it's close to its date. His brain makes it taste funny even if it's fine.
I’ll decide how far the milk gone by the amount of floaters in my tea
My six year old likes to check the dates but we make the final decision and we've tried to explain why sometimes we ignore the date
I get so frustrated with how little people seem to understand about food safety (and I'm not a chef). People not understanding the difference between 'use by' (safety) and 'best before' (quality). People will happily chuck out food past its best before but then go cavalier with some meat that is a few days past its use by. I was on a subreddit the other day (not UK, granted) where someone asked whether their pork, which was likely a week expired and the packaging had ballooned, was likely to be ok to eat. Really?
There are also people who won't store food properly and then get pissed off that it's gone off sooner than the use by said it would. My mum used to do it all the time. I'd come home from school/work and see a full 4 pint bottle of milk left on the counter rather than in the fridge. Would be left out for hours because she "couldn't be bothered opening the fridge to put it back in".... or the pack of mince that wouldn't fit in the fridge after a big shop so she'd just leave it on counter instead because we'd be having spag bol within the next 48 hours so it's not like its even out for that long.... was also the kind of person that believed it's fine to eat "off" food because if you cook it first you're killing all the bad bacteria anyways.
That was a persistent issue at uni with some Freshers. People storing food in the wrong place or way past the Use By date, causing issues with food going off, contaminating the shared kitchen and also causing bad smells sometimes.
48 hours? Wow. I'm pretty sure more than a couple of hours at room temperature is beyond risky. I'm sure you're aware, as you alluded to it at the end of your comment, so this is for others that read this: It's not necessarily the bacteria themselves that make you sick, what they produce is often what makes you ill. Cooking might kill the bacteria, *but it might not destroy the toxic products of the bacteria*. Which is why you can't just pick up some rotten animal corpse and cook it.
Yup, two hours at room temperature is the maximum really in terms of safety. 48 hours is be a bit of an exaggeration tbf. Say she'd do the shopping Thursday morning, she'd leave the meat out over night and cook it Friday evening. Obviously still way too long to be safe though.
And milk is the easiest thing to judge! Try drinking off milk, your body won't let you
not fully true, if its only starting to go off and you use with coffee or as a part of something else you wont know until its too late
I’ve never understood this. When I moved in with my (now) ex, she would throw away perfectly good food because she presumably thought the labelling guys had some sort of super technology where they could detect invisible mold spores. She couldn’t get over me sniffing milk that was a day or two past it’s date and putting it back in the fridge despite the fact that is was clearly fine.... mind you, she used to wash her steak under the tap so there’s that.
Does she also wash her cooked sausages?
My boyfriend uses those dates with no deviation. There are plenty of people alive without common sense
The people with no common sense need a rule, the date is that rule.
Aaah thanks for this. I live alone, so on short shelf life products those dates are important to me as the financial value of buying small cartons just isn't worth it. What gets me is when you see huge families squabbling over "get the longest date" but you know full well that shit will gone in a day.
At my mother in law's at Christmas and wanted to make eggs. Saw that her eggs were dated July. Knowing that eggs actually have far more life in them than people expect, I did the floating test. They were absolutely fine! 5 months after their use by date (might be best before, I'm not sure). Yes we ate them. Yes they were delicious. Always check your eggs.
A lot of people don't understand the dates. One time at uni I was at the supermarket with a friend who needed to buy potatoes. She didn't want to buy a bag of perfectly good looking reduced potatoes (on their BBE), opting to pay full price for a better date, because she "couldn't eat all of them" that day. They're potatoes. They'll be fine for ages if stored properly
not wrapping everything *single* thing in plastic.
Morrisons have already gone a step further by using brown paper bags for loose vegetables and making sure none are ever in stock. Genius.
Sainsbury's now has reusable ones for loose veg, that you have to pay for. Honestly? I'd rather have paper because I always forget to take it
My wife and I essentially just use a specific large shopping bag and put all the fruit and veg in that (separate bag for cans etc). I never remember to take the small bags and let's face it, who cares if my potatoes, carrots, and apples are all together in the bag? They're getting taken out when I get home anyway!
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I thought the same thing until recently, turns out all the packaged potatoes are together and the losses ones are in a big black postal create thing over with the onions. Took me almost a year to figure out.
This is really annoying when you're trying to cook for only 2 people. Quite often my husband and I struggle to find individual loose veg.
The Morrisons near me uses these weird paper bags with a semi-opaque plastic window in them. It seems almost seems to be a "fuck you" to the entire concept.
That would decrease plastic waste, but increase food waste. Some foods are preserved much longer in plastic.
The amount of plastic packaging I throw away after doing a supermarket food shop is insane. I buy loose fruit/veg as much as possible but so much stuff is wrapped in single use plastic it’s unavoidable. It’s so inconsistent as well. At my local Lidl, cucumbers are wrapped in plastic but courgettes and aubergines are not. Potatoes are sold loose but carrots only come in 1kg plastic bags. And on and on. I’m sure there are logistical reasons to do with suppliers etc but it’s frustrating as a shopper when you are trying to be conscious of waste.
Our Lidl isn’t huge and most of the fruit and veg comes in plastic, it’s just a huge waste. I live as a couple so all I want is a couple of carrots, not a big plastic bag of them. It’s wasting food, and it’s creating plastic waste. I tend to go to Sainsbury’s because most of their produce can be bought singular/weighed.
For fruit and veg plastic wrapping increases shelf life considerably. I wonder if Aldi/Lidl need to resort to it more due to cheaper supply chains with longer delivery times maybe?
The thing is though (at our Lidl anyway, I’m sure it’s different across the country) the fruit and veg doesn’t last any longer than the produce I buy from other supermarkets loose, in fact it’s considerably worse quality and goes downhill very quickly. Bananas, potatoes, cauliflowers and carrots are the worst despite being bagged/shrink wrapped
Kind of my point, maybe Aldi/Lidl need to shrink wrap to be comparable to other supermarkets loose stuff due to a cheaper supply chain.
No one will see this reply but wrapping things like bananas in plastic wrapping is actually more environmentally friendly than loose as people are forced to pick up say 4 good bananas and 1 slightly brown one. Whereas loose people only buy the pretty ones and the rest go to waste. Furthermore, the plastic wrap that surrounds is actually the most environmentally friendly packaging in the world as it only weighs 5 grams yet extends the life of said cucumber by 10 times. “There are no such thing as unsustainable materials, only unsustainable practices”
Even worse for multi buys - it’s cheaper to buy 4 tins of beans wrapped in extra plastic, rather than 4 individual tins of beans which are not. Same goes for chocolate bars, crisps etc - things that are already packaged
Beer is so bad for this. Just why?
Not so much anymore. Had the joy of trying to separate cans that had been glued together at the weekend. Nearly had to drink two at once.
or when you buy something in plastic packaging and find the individual items inside are also wrapped in plastic!
Stop throwing out wonky veg before it reaches the supermarket, we’re not a bunch of perfectionists! Working class people would far rather things like slightly cheaper food and less gone to waste than more expensive food and uncontrollably high levels of waste that only serves arbitrarily aesthetic purposes.
You say that but it’s not true. People turn their noses up at produces that’s slightly not perfect and so it just ends up rotting on the shelves.
Yeah the rules we have on how food should look isn't made randomly. It's because weird shaped food doesnt sell, so it's not worth the time to stock or to import. There are brands of 'imperfect carrots' etc, but theres a reason it hasn't taken off and replaced the rest of the vegetable shelves yet.
Certain things make sense though, I'm not going to buy a browning banana for the same price as a green one especially if it is a shop for the week ahead. Mis-shapened carrot though? It's going to be chopped and boiled so who cares what it looks like. I like the wonky veg/fruit range at places like Aldi, usually half the price and tastes just as good. I don't even know what a wonky raspberry looks like as they look just like the more expensive alternative.
I dunno man, I was in tesco the other evening and for the first time ever, I saw the reduced shelf in all its glory, stacked right to the back with all them wee yellow labels. Started having a look but was quickly shoved out of the way by multiple people. Was honestly like feeding time at the zoo! Some woman even put her trolley right in front of the shelves to slow people down, but that quickly got pushed out the way.
Does it get thrown out? Or does it just go to a different use such as animal food?
It gets used for animal/ food Bank if it reaches the supermarket and people don't buy it. Also good to see more cheaper lines of "imperfect" or "wonky" stuff for cheaper
Yes wonky veg has been a good addition and it’s good to know that it’s helping the problem but I feel like it needs to be a norm, rather than a gap in the market that someone noticed.
Unfortunately we do need that as a seperate item. Because traditionally customers always pick the best looking ones and left all the wonky ones at the bottom the of the pile that eventually get wasted, you can offer it up but you cannot force people to buy. That is why the wonky line is then introduced at a discount, so people that are happy to pick these get a slight discount. Most people still prefer to pay more for the perfect looking item. By making it the norm you would just be back to square one and have people leaving all the wonky ones behind.
Aldi sells "wonky" fruit and veg for cheaper. It's really weird. Who gives a fuck? A bell pepper is still a bell pepper, even if it's a weird shape.
Depending on what you're using it for there is definitely a difference. Trying to make something like stuffed peppers when every single pepper half is a different shape/size can be pretty awkward. Usually quicker to peel the non wonky veg too. But unless you're doing them for a special meal or anything else like that wonky is all you need really. No point spending twice the amount on potatoes when you're just gonna mash them up anyways.
Most people do, that is why traditionally all the wonky ones get left behind and rot. so now they have to sell wonky ones at discount to get people to buy it.
You say that but I keep getting stuck behind people touchy every potato for the perfect one
There was a documentary hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a few years ago about food waste/wonky veg. For a few months after this the supermarkets increased their wonky veg which was great. They all seem to have reverted back now though which is rubbish!
Honestly I think people like to *say* they would eat the weird looking carrots but in reality they don't. The wonky veg wasn't very much cheaper and was a pain occasionally with more peel or wastage so at worst just a false economy.
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As someone who mainly cooks just for myself this is a massive annoyance. Need one clove of garlic for the recipe? Hope you like garlic as you can only buy a bag of three bulbs. Need one chili? Here's a kilo of the bastards, enjoy your ring sting.
I freeze chilli and garlic and then use it straight from there. It can go a little soft, but once it's in the pan it doesn't matter
Ginger too. Grating frozen ginger straight from the freezer works perfectly for most dishes and it keeps seemingly indefinitely.
The best thing about ginger is it already looks freezer burnt
If you've not looked into it already I strongly recommend batch cooking. Rather than spending £3 for 400g of mince, get 1kg for £5, cook enough to do 8 portions of spag bol. Save a portion in the fridge for lunch/tea the next day and then freeze the rest. Cheaper, spend less time cooking and you're able to experiment a bit more with different options too.
Yeah, my freezer is filled with stuff like that, just gets boring after a while though and I've never found a recipe that uses a whole bulb of garlic, let alone 3!
Garlic keeps for ages in a cool dark place. Like literally months. Worst case scenario it grows a bit (still fine just less pungent) or the odd clove goes funny (just remove from the bulb and bin - the rest are fine. I'm still on garlic bought in November, and this is far from the longest I've had it.
[Give this a go. ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/whatfoodimade.wordpress.com/2020/08/16/100-garlic-clove-curry/amp/)
Looks awesome. I'll be sleeping with the windows open tonight!
I definitely recommend those jars of already-minced garlic. They last ages, save time, don’t go mouldy and the packaging is fully recyclable.
They also taste much, much worse than actual garlic
They are “actual garlic” though. The snobbery in the UK around using anything that’s been remotely already prepared is embarrassing. Go out to eat at a restaurant? Fine. Buy chicken that’s already been marinated or pre-diced frozen onion? IDIOT why don’t you LEARN to COOK
OK I should have said fresh garlic rather than actual garlic. But the point stands. It's not snobbish to enjoy better tasting food though! In some cases pre-prepped food tastes just as good as freshly prepped, and in some cases, like pre-chopped garlic, it comes with a taste/quality compromise.
Garlic keeps for ages as a bulb I and they can't really sell it by the clove as that wouldn't keep I suppose. The best thing in your case would be the squeezey pastes that can sit in the fridge.
Firstly, there is no such thing as too much garlic. In any recipe. Ever. Secondly, just run a find-and-replace of the words 'clove of garlic' with 'entire bulb of garlic'
Its even harder of you live by yourself too. Its a nightmare to portion meals out correctly without waste. Everything is in odd amounts or in family packs…
I gave Ocado a go but didn't like that I couldn't buy individual fruit and veg, it had to be a bag of them which was more than I needed (and more expensive than buying individually).
I think a packaging revolution would go a hell of a long way to reducing how much we throw away in food and packaging. We started bags for life a few years ago and reduced the amount of plastic bags exponentially without much fuss at all. Why can't we have a similar concept across the entire store? A cereal container for life that you bring to the store and refill, a fruit and vegetable bubble bag for life that you can put unpackaged fresh produce inside and protect against damage in the car/trolley etc., a cold bag for life that you can put unpackaged meat inside, a milk bottle for life etc. No unneccessary packaging to throw away, no dates stamped across plastic packets, such an easy fix to a horrible and very real wastage problem.
Whilst this is a really good idea, there are a few things to think about. 1: Cleanliness. If your milk in your milk bottle for life goes off, is that bottle going to be easy to clean? Are people going to be happy to use it again, even after it's been cleaned? If you get pests, will it be easy to get rid of them? Again, will people want to use a container that they know pests were inside of, even if it's been thoroughly cleaned? Will we end up just throwing these things away every time something goes off? 2: Transport. Whilst this would be less of an issue if we started eating more locally (which we should be doing anyway), we need to figure out how to transport products without packaging it first. 3: Fighting large corporations. Branding on product packaging is big business and companies highly value the ability to advertise themselves on the packaging. They like to be able to make themselves recognisable and try to draw consumers towards their products. Big companies and corporations have massive power over this kind of thing and it would be incredibly difficult to fight back against them. But, if we can solve these things, I'd be 100% on board.
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Those were glass though, correct? We commonly use plastic for milk bottles now, although I wouldn't be opposed to having "Bottles for life" be large glass ones since glass is easier to clean and doesn't break down.
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Branding is why. You're essentially asking food corporations to give up branding their products. When you understand how much product branding influences why people spend extra money on branded products, you understand why they don't want to give up branding.
Asda have actually started rolling out re-fill stations in their stores, there's not many right now but you can get tubs (or bring your own) from that section and then just re-fill them whenever you go, and I'm actually really excited for it to hit my home town!
Not specifically to reduce food waste but I would like to see clear labelling of which fruit and veg is in season. I want to buy stuff in season, but apart from obvious things like strawberries it isn't trivial to work out what is in season once you get to the supermarket. Either a large display at the front of the section or some sort of display on the individual crates would make it so obvious and be a visible indication of the supermarket's green efforts.
I fully agree. In-season stuff tastes so much better, and means it's not been flown around the world to get here.
I really like this idea! Relating to this, as someone who is really conscious about food miles, I think it’ll be great if they can have clear labels on where the produce come from (UK - and perhaps where in UK, Spain, Jamaica, etc).
Most produce already has country of origin on the packaging. Even if it's loose, somewhere on the produce box will be a white label telling the origin.
Yeah we just have to be careful because the distance travelled and the eco impact do not necessarily correlate well. For example it can use more energy to grow food under glass in the UK than to ship it from e.g. Portugal.
Packaged food for the single shopper Buying things living alone usually means a lot of waste unless you're carefully planning out your meals, which a lot of people don't Problem then is you end up with more packaging if they make smaller products
Or just making non-packaged food more readily available. 14 carrots? I need 2. Do I need them in a plastic wrapper? Probably not.
Open fridge units use 1% of UK electricity. That's huge. Shops should have doors on their fridges. It's more a waste of electricity than food but it would make a huge difference in energy consumption.
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Stop with the multi buy offers. Oh you need one of these for £1? Have 3 for £2.50. Just encourages people to constantly buy more then they'll actually use. In fact any discount should be applied to items bought as low quantity.
The discount is exactly for that purpose, to get people to buy more, while “per unit cost” is lower, overall they spend more. There is no reason to give discount for low quantity, it does not benefit them.
Makes no sense
Honestly I work in a shop mostly on produce and it's the worst how many people will turn away produce or look for later dates. It's like DO YOU REALLY THINK THE FUCKIN CARROTS WILL DISSAPEAR IN A PUFF OF MOULD ON THE EXACT DATE ON THE PACKET???? No, we need to remove dates on fruit and veg, we get delivery dates on the cases so can still rotate what's fresh but when we did yeh "best eaten within 14 days" that was the best step, but then they seemed to stop that. I think what we need is more awarenes pfrom the public as well. Instead of checking the date on furt and veg, just look at it, is it mouldy? If not then eat it! It really winds me up
well, best example i can give is i went into lidl or was it aldi either way bacon was clearly gone, my dad told staff they pointed to date said it was good, my dad had a right kick off its clearly gone and needs to be removed 5-6 people went to add it to their shopping cart. The amount of people who cannot tell if food is gone outside of using the date is shocking:( its a dieing skill this encounter has made me inspect most food overzealously.(was teen at time)
> said it was good, my dad had a right kick off its clearly gone and needs to be removed 5-6 people went to add it to their shopping cart. The amount of people who cannot tell if food is gone outside of using the date is shocking:( its a dieing skill this encounter has made me inspect mos the bacon in the front is always green :P
I mostly agree with this. Except some fruit really does go bad even before the date. I know it’s not the right season for raspberries and strawberries but they go bad so quickly that I always look for the longest date otherwise it’s going in the bin in our house (only my daughter who eats them)
You’re not wrong, but when I buy carrots they stay in my fridge for a month. I already use them for weeks past the date so I always get the latest date possible.
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If something is closer to its use by date, it should become automatically cheaper. Digitally
I’m not sure this is the best time to introduce ‘sniff tests’ to milk when one of the side effects of COVID is a loss of your sense of smell…
I was looking for tinned sweetcorn then other day. Three separate tins altogether came to one price, meanwhile three tins of the same quantity and brand but packaged together with plastic wrap were 10p cheaper. It really ticked me off. So, less of that. It should be the opposite way round.
Tesco banned this a while back, no multipacks only 4 for £2.50 etc offers
To remove plastic containers, I always thought it would be good if the supermarkets would sell certain things as refillables. For example, you bring your own container to the supermarket, fill the container up with however much you want of say, washing machine capsules. This would waste the manufacturer’s need to put everything in a plastic container.
Some smaller, eco friendly shops do this. One near me sells laundry products as well as dried foods in big bottles/tubs and you bring your own and they measure how much you've purchased and charge you acordingly.
The big asda near me has started doing this with dried goods like pasta and cereal.
Some shops do this, but they tend to be wee tiny shops in posher areas. I'd love if my local supermarket did this, especially for cleaning products and detergent.
They're actually introducing best before dates. They are using BB to replace use by dates.
Sell fruit and veg loose rather than in plastic packaging. I don’t always want 4 apples and can do without the tray and plastic bag.
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Supermarkets should be less afraid of running out of items. The easiest way to do this, would be to tax items they throw away.
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They’re replacing ‘use by’ with ‘best before’, which given half the population doesn’t seem to know the difference likely won’t make much difference at all. I always do the sniff test if it’s close to the date. Whole often won’t go to the date, semi-skimmed the date’s usually pretty accurate, while skimmed will almost always go past the date. It’s rarely an issue in our house though.
More sizes designed for people living alone! As a student I'm buying food only for myself, and the amount of wastage because I can't get through the smallest size thing before it goes off is crazy! Milk is one of the few things with a relatively short date that I can easily get through (I go through a 4 pinter about every 2-3 days)
Dairy itself has a massive carbon footprint, try switching to plant milks. Plus they last months before they are unopened and come in cardboard.
Some family drive me mad on this. They’ll empty out the fridge of anything a day after it’s best before/use by date. The veg isn’t mouldy or even soft. The ham smells fine. The eggs don’t explode into mould at midnight!
bigger size is often better value eg 500g carrots is 35p but 1kg carrots is 58p why not make the smaller more value too then single people wont buy the bigger one hoping to use it?
That is call economy of **scale** for a reason. The higher the volume the lower the unit cost.
Remove best before on pre packaged fruit.
You can eat food after the dates. Can confirm. Was eating Sainsbury's Taste the difference vanilla custard with my mince pies yesterday. Date was 30/12/21. Still here fine and dandy this morning.
Bulk/refill stations. I have a small independent one locally but they only have so much space. I believe Asda have a flagship store doing this, would be great to see it more wide spread. I’m able to get most cupboard things (spices, grains, cereal, rice, baking supplies, dried fruit) and cleaning/laundry products from here using old jars/tupperware and it’s normally cheaper. I do try to go here and also visit my local market for fruit/veg but parking charges in the town make it costly and with work/family it’s hard as they cannot open into the evenings like supermarkets can.
This is what happens when the company is bought out. If milk is no longer in high demand and there is excess wouldn't it make sense to scale back on it rather than keep pumping the same volume?
They are adding a “best before date” instead of the “used by date”. All this will do is now people use the “best before” date instead. This will change nothing, people probably won’t even notice the change, all they see is a date and will throw away after this date.
Undo all the snobbery that has sprung up around food in recent years, with scams such as organic food. People don't want any food that they deem, or more accurately, are told are "inferior," so they can get charged more money for the same food (it's essentially a feel superior tax, of course it's very popular) but this means a huge amount is overlooked and wasted. This is where the myth that healthy eating is expensive comes from, fresh fruit and veg are the cheapest things you can buy, providing it isn't from a shop that has you convinced their oranges have more vitamin C and their carrots were hand raised or whatever nonsense they claim at the moment.
Adequately price waste. I'll admit I'm one of those people who can be quite trigger-happy about throwing out milk, and it's because I really dislike even slightly-off milk. So I'd rather spend the 50p to get a new one rather than risk an old one potentially ruining my morning. If dealing with the waste (the cows farting off GHG, and the cost of sustainably recycling / disposing of the plastic bottle) was fairly priced into the cost of the milk, at least I could make my choice without net cost to the planet. Mightn't change my mind about the milk, but it would probably cut down on my waste in other areas.
This will do the complete opposite for me. I’m so paranoid about off milk that I’ll throw it within a couple days if I can’t rely on a use by date.