Is the 'date' to eat by, use by etc. more confusing than helpful?

YorksLass

GreyQueen wrote: »

So, with Christmas falling on a Monday, don't beat yourselves up shopping for your veggies on the Saturday so they'll be fresher than if bought mid-week prior. If you've got room to keep them in the fridge or a cold area, save some aggro and shop earlier.

Yup, that's what I'll be doing. No way am I battling the crowds on the Saturday. And I won't be over-buying either!

peachyprice

GreyQueen wrote: »

customers say things to each other like We won't buy the veg until Saturday so it'll be fresh.

Yup, folks are imagining that their carrots, spuds, parnips etc are being spirited from the fields and delivered to the shops on a daily basis instead of being harvested weeks (if not months) before and sitting in cold storage until needed. So, with Christmas falling on a Monday, don't beat yourselves up shopping for your veggies on the Saturday so they'll be fresher than if bought mid-week prior.

If you've got room to keep them in the fridge or a cold area, save some aggro and shop earlier.

It makes me laugh. What do those people do the other 51 weeks of the year, eat mouldy veg because they bought it a week before? :rotfl:

Linda32

I once worked with a lady who had two aged Aunts who would have been old enough to have remembered food rationing.

They would go to M&S everyday to get a fresh tin of soup because they "liked it fresh"

As for "fresh veg" from the supermarket. Err yes, I often pass the fields at the back of Sainsburys car park! Doesn't everyone???? :rotfl:

Katieowl

Answer this: how many times a year do trees grow apples and pears? Yeah quite. So your 'out of date' apples, are likely to be several months old, and have just been carefully stored. Peoples is idiots.

And stuff like cheese....which I bought a quantity of today reduced saying "use by today" will go in the fridge and be munched through. If any bits DO go mouldy I will cut them off and keep eating the rest, because the whole POINT of CHEESE was was to make milk KEEP! LOL

AndyCF

I guess the time to really worry about 'out of date fruit and veg' is when I dig it up / pick it off the bush/tree and nature has thoughtfully stamped an 'eat by' date onto it :T

skogar

I remember saying to someone at work we had a breadmaker and them saying to me "But it won't have any best before dates, how do you know it's safe to eat?" :rotfl:I'm not sure I convinced them. :eek: I think that there are a lot of people now who are not used to buying things not in a packet with a date on it and therefore don't have a concept of how long something is likely to keep or how to tell when it has gone off. I seriously spoke to a girl at work who wouldn't buy things that were yellow stickered as she thought that they weren't safe to eat. Mind you this was also the one that didn't know you could freeze meat. :eek:

Itisme_2

I know a lot of the time they are a guide, but I think something like 'use by' is more important than 'best before'. For the most part I try to adhere to the dates, but if something seems fine and has gone a bit past, then it probably is fine.

Spendless

I had a workmate who offerred me a plum one day from a punnet, I accepted. Later she asked if I'd like more, when I said No, she asked if anyone else wanted any because otherwise she was going to have to throw them because they were on their last date for eating. She was imediately asked if she thought the date appeared by magic when the fruit was picked off the tree?

Fruit and veg doesn't need a date on it. You can tell by appearance if it's still ok to eat. Bread is the same. If stale (hard) you can still eat it, but it's not as enjoyable. You could instead use it for toast or croutons. If it's mouldy then bin.

Cheese rarely lasts long enough in this house to go mouldy, but I am aware you can cut it off and eat the rest.

Milk can be told whether it's gone off by smell and appearance. I buy filtered milk because when I didn't I used to throw milk away too often.

Meat and fish is where I'm far more careful. I don't have an especially strong sense of smell. I will look at dates and also keep an eye on when a packet was opened. I will use within a day of it's date or lob fresh stuff in the freezer.

My kids really think that everything goes off at midnight. Strangely enough though I once found some obviously Easter themed chocolate in the cupboard many months later, produced it and not once did they ask about how long chocolate lasts for before going 'out of date' :rotfl:

GreyQueen

It's wonderful how well some consumers have been trained to be silly, isn't it? The first time I saw spuds in a placcy bag with a BB on I thought I was hallucinating. And don't even get me started on those pesky plastic stickers on individual pieces of fruit.

Bought loose oranges the other day and was peeling off stickers which said Orange. I guess they thought that the cashiers might ring them up as lemons or grapefruit without a prompt.:rotfl:

As a teenage shop girl in the late 1950s, my mother worked in a small independant grocery shop. If business was slow, the properietor would set her to dust the tins.

Yup, tins sat around long enough to get dusty. And did not have dates on them. This had to be changed when the citizenry started to die in the tens of thoudands of tinned food poisoning.......... you will doubtless have learned about this in a social history module at skool.

Interesting convo with a council food & safety officer last week - it isn't an offence to sell OOD food. Even months OOD. It become an offence if the food is unfit; rotten, mouldy, slimy etc. It it's a bit sub-par but edible as in stale, dried out etc it's perfectly legal.

Most annoyingly, the reductions assistant at Tosspots (very helpful) couldn't sell me two pillow packs of sprouts the other week because they had expired the day before and he'd get in trouble if they were sold. Madness!

[Deleted User]

I've had that same thing GQ in the local Co Op where I've got the YS item to the till and it's still been fine (it was a sliced fruit loaf for He Who Knows) but had been left on the shelf 'erroneously' and it's use by date was the day before. The till lady was full of apology not for the fact that it was a day out of date but because the computerised till wouldn't allow her to sell it to me which is perhaps the root cause of many problems these days. I believe the till sales are linked to the re-ordering system for each shop and it's seen as a way of monitoring stock levels. I assume it was thrown away which was a complete waste as it was as good as those dated the day I was trying to buy it!