Sell by dates are to be scrapped

Ben84

I think explaining what the dates mean is the important point. Removing sell by dates as sometimes people don't understand their meaning is an odd move really. Well be interesting to see what happens with food waste though - but I fear the reduction may be less impressive than expected. Having had the chance to live with many different people over the years, I never saw anyone wasting food by throwing it out early because of the sell by date. Largely food was was wasted due to being busy, distracted and over-buying due to poor planning. Largely it was rediscovered and thrown away when it was extremely old. I don't see this move tackling this type of waste, which I suspect is the most common.

nobodyspecial

There really is no pleasing some folk
I think this is an excellent way forward, and yes there will be fewer whoopsies, but so what? If it means less food is thrown away, by consumers and supermarkets, so much the better. After all that is what is continually attacked, the utter waste of still edible food. It does require more education on what the terms actually mean, so that people understand the difference between use by and best before.

spike7451

nobodyspecial wrote: »

There really is no pleasing some folk
I think this is an excellent way forward, and yes there will be fewer whoopsies, but so what? If it means less food is thrown away, by consumers and supermarkets, so much the better. After all that is what is continually attacked, the utter waste of still edible food. It does require more education on what the terms actually mean, so that people understand the difference between use by and best before.

I ate a yoghurt yesterday,use by day was 15 August & I'd forgotten it was in the fridge.Tasted ok,smelt ok & I'm still here with no ill effects...

Butterfly_Brain

Yoghurt is usually ok up to a week after the sell by date spike

There were no use by/best before dates until 1972, shops just rotated stock properly and people survived and if you think about it a lot of tinned stuff was saved during the war for special occassions and was still edible after four or five years, people would never have thrown food away because of a best before date.

Whoopsies will still be available so I don't see what the problem is

MaggieBaking

nobodyspecial wrote: »

There really is no pleasing some folk
I think this is an excellent way forward, and yes there will be fewer whoopsies, but so what? If it means less food is thrown away, by consumers and supermarkets, so much the better. After all that is what is continually attacked, the utter waste of still edible food. It does require more education on what the terms actually mean, so that people understand the difference between use by and best before.

The same amount of food is still going to be thrown out by supermarkets.

As someone has already mentioned it just means that supermarkets will keep it on the shelves for a few extra days, and then reduce it on evening of the "use by" date. Meaning that it possibly will not be edible the next day.

Of course a lot of people here rely on "whoopsies" and go home and put stuff straight in the freezer anyway. But for others, there was a couple of days of life left in the reduced food - and what really will annoy me, it could lead to buying food at full price when it's only fit to last a couple more days rather than the few days it was "guaranteed" to last between the sell by and use by.

I really can't see how this is going to help food wastage but perhaps I'm misunderstanding it. I'm not inclined to try and help those who throw food out after the "sell by" and I can't imagine there are that many who do to cause a big problem.

All it is is an initiative the supermarkets will be thrilled about, and lets the government claim they're doing something to help food wastage.

Unless I'm really missing something?

Farway

"Sell-by dates should be removed from food packaging to help cut waste and save shoppers money, ministers say."

"New government advice says firms should include only use-by or best-before dates and remove sell-by and display-until labels relating to stock control"

It will never happen, just a PR blurb. Note the terms [my bold] of "should" instead of "must or shall", "advice" instead of "regulation / law"

spike7451

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

Yoghurt is usually ok up to a week after the sell by date spike

There were no use by/best before dates until 1972, shops just rotated stock properly and people survived and if you think about it a lot of tinned stuff was saved during the war for special occassions and was still edible after four or five years, people would never have thrown food away because of a best before date.

Whoopsies will still be available so I don't see what the problem is

When I was a young SAC in the Bomb Dump at RAF Kinloss in 1985,we found a tin of hard tack emergency ration biscuits in the back of one of the storage buildings.
Being curious,we opened it & they were perfectly edible,quite tasty in fact,despite the maker date on them being something like 1954!:eek:

Greenqueen_2

But how will it affect places like Approved Foods?

Kilty_2

Surely this won't really make any difference? Once the item gets close to it's date and other items are there with longer dates people will buy the longer dated items leaving the short ones to go to the reduced section / bin as they do now?

daphne_descends

I have really mixed feelings on this. I don't give too much attention to use-by/sell-by dates but if I were shopping on, say, Monday and buying something I would cook on Friday, I would look for longer dates on those items because they're going to be in my fridge for longer. And while I agree absolutely that the date stamped on a product can be meaningless, it's not always the case and at least tells you how long something has been sat in the supermarket. So who is going to 'win'? Not us!