Money Moral Dilemma: Is it OK to fill my freezer with 'yellow sticker' bargains?

od244051

Most of my meat in the freezer has a reduction sticker on it. A good way of saving money and having something different. One of my friends works for one of the big four and sometimes, gets deliveries of fresh items with the use by date missing on them, its on the outer case. Unable to sell by law. Also sometimes, gets a communication from head office to pull off things with a certain date as the barcode sticker on it is for a different size or product. As she and many of her colleagues are vegetarian, most of these products in above are meat based. So for a small charitable donation, she gives me a pack of affected stock once in a while. It's about 10 items a year, but it helps.

MrsStepford

Wouldn't touch it. ASDA has an annoying habit of leaving reduced price food on the edge of chillers not in them, for example, which is a recipe for food poisoning.  Other supermarkets jumble it all in a chiller, meat next to yogurts, so that you have to hope that none of the meat juices/blood and bacteria have managed to escape. 

Bacman

It is no different to what you see in the display counter and the reality in the back room.

I remember about 20 years ago going into a bakers shop for business, went into the back room where they were making the bread and pastries. Had to wait for a while as the boss wasn't in. When he arrived, scruffy guy and didn't look clean; he went to the pastries as he put the jam on top of the sweet pastries and so the staff presented him the pastries for him to do that. Without washing his hands or even using tools like spoons, he put his hand into their large jam jar and spread the jam over the pastries using his unwashed dirty fingers, using the grooves between his fingers to make a pattern with the jam. The pastries then went to the front counter for customers; behind their perspex counter, staff in hats and coats using tongs.

Point is you don't know what is the reality in the back room of any food preparation area. Look at take-aways and restaurants with appauling hygiene ratings sometimes.

So when buying reduced price labelled food look at the quality of the items; if the meat looks ok and no green or slime on it, it's probably ok. I noted on many occasions when I went into a large Asda near us, most of the time the reduced to clear veg and fruit was in bad condition, meat usually perfectly fine. I've not been into Asda though since middle of March though.

Back on topic though, this "dilemma" topic is daft as there is no dilemma - if you know you will eat the food and you want value and don't mind storing it in your freezer, buy what you need or can get. Supermarkets are pleased to sell the goods and also they bring out the bargains at different times of the day so there are always ones available for people to get, no need to "ration" your buys. 

The only "dilemma" is why supermarkets don't give away ALL the food that is past date to charities rather than only some, the rest going to landfill?

Pollycat

Bacman said:

It is no different to what you see in the display counter and the reality in the back room.

I remember about 20 years ago going into a bakers shop for business, went into the back room where they were making the bread and pastries. Had to wait for a while as the boss wasn't in. When he arrived, scruffy guy and didn't look clean; he went to the pastries as he put the jam on top of the sweet pastries and so the staff presented him the pastries for him to do that. Without washing his hands or even using tools like spoons, he put his hand into their large jam jar and spread the jam over the pastries using his unwashed dirty fingers, using the grooves between his fingers to make a pattern with the jam. The pastries then went to the front counter for customers; behind their perspex counter, staff in hats and coats using tongs.

Point is you don't know what is the reality in the back room of any food preparation area. Look at take-aways and restaurants with appauling hygiene ratings sometimes.

So when buying reduced price labelled food look at the quality of the items; if the meat looks ok and no green or slime on it, it's probably ok. I noted on many occasions when I went into a large Asda near us, most of the time the reduced to clear veg and fruit was in bad condition, meat usually perfectly fine. I've not been into Asda though since middle of March though.

Back on topic though, this "dilemma" topic is daft as there is no dilemma - if you know you will eat the food and you want value and don't mind storing it in your freezer, buy what you need or can get. Supermarkets are pleased to sell the goods and also they bring out the bargains at different times of the day so there are always ones available for people to get, no need to "ration" your buys. 

The only "dilemma" is why supermarkets don't give away ALL the food that is past date to charities rather than only some, the rest going to landfill?

I think the dilemma is probably about being too 'greedy' and taking all 5 uncooked chickens at 95p, leaving none for anyone else.

_Maggie

I don’t judge people, everybody’s situation is different.
I wouldn’t take all of the reduced stock as I have a small family and most of it would just go to waste (even if frozen).
But if you can use all of it and not waste I don’t see why not. 

Guthers

Putting aside all the irrelevant comments about how safe or otherwise the practice is... 90% of my fridge freezer space is occupied by such stuff.
In this kind of situation if there's nobody else there I'll take whatever's going that I can cope with to either freeze or use in the next few days. Cooking and freezing is often more efficient as you get rid of the over-bulky packaging. There are few things as satisfying as dividing two huge pots of chilli into portions and filling up your freezer.
If there are other shoppers at the clearance bin, I'll take my share and be happy for others to do the same.
A couple of years ago Tesco in Catford for some reason sold off a load of bottles of gin, own brand and Greenalls, and Dom Perignon champagne at ¼ price, and instead of the unholy scrum you might imagine, everybody was incredibly civilised.

elsien

The woman yesterday who got her partner to stand and block anyone getting anywhere near, then as the shop assistant put the reduced meat on the shelf grabbed the lot and put it in her trolley without even looking to see what it was. That is just selfish and greedy. As I pointed out in passing.
Just got a blank look as if I was talking gibberish. 

203846930

Dad bought a spare freezer using the money saved from ys shopping and it never stops, he has not paid full price for a cut of meat for about 10 years except when shopping for someone else during that mad period at the start of the Covid crisis.
With him it is not a case of standing on toes to get the stuff, if it there, he takes what he wants.

MrsStepford

If you order veg from Waitrose online and they can only fulfil the order by sending a YS product, you get it free. I am not now trundling to Sussex by train then trundling around supermarkets there with my mother, because of the pandemic so I don't see YS stuff at all unless it comes from Waitrose. It was always quite rare to see YS on organic food, anyway. Waitrose keeps reduced price stuff in the original aisle, so you don't get the rugby scrums like Tesco.