Should 'best before' labels be binned?

[Northerner]

EU officials are proposing to scrap "best before" labels on food, to help reduce the amount wasted every year. Currently, 100m tonnes of food is wasted in Europe annually, while Britons alone throw away 7.2m tonnes of food and drink every year, most of which would have been fine to ingest. Officials argue that most people can easily tell whether food is safe to eat or not. So far, Britain hasn't backed the new proposal, but has urged the EU to look closely at any safety implications the move could have. Should we scrap best before dates?


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/poll/2014/may/20/best-before-labels-should-eu-scrap

 

[trophywench]

Yes - scrap the labels and eat the food I say !

 

[trophywench]

Found (well I say found, I knew they were there, just couldn't be bothered) some packets at the back of the cupboard only last week. Latest one was best before some date in 2011.

I did bin them though ......

 

[Northerner]

My cupboards host goods going back to 2002 😱

 

[Vicsetter]

You would have thought that 'experts' would know that 'Best Before' has nothing to do with food safety!

 

[Sally71]

They should at least standardise the dates, as it can be very confusing with all the different ones.

Best Before = tastes best before this date but is still safe to eat afterwards
Use By = might not be safe to eat afterwards (although I don't think foods suddenly go off at the stroke of midnight on this date!)
Display Until = this is a really useless piece of information and says nothing about when you can eat it!

At least the food industry could pick just one of these to display on everything, then at least us mere mortals might have a chance of comparing different things properly!

And if they think too much food is wasted well add a week or two onto the date then

 

[AlisonM]

I agree, the Display Until date is worthless, at least the other two give you some idea of when the food is at it's best. I'd keep the Use By date and scrap the rest.

 

[Vicsetter]

Interestingly Aldi seem to avoid putting any expiry information on their fruit/veg, probably because it seems to go off very quickly.

 

[Copepod]

The only reason for Best Before dates is to permit stock rotation ie eating contents of oldest tins first Although checking for rust, dents etc is also important. Personally, I eat contents of tins well beyond Best Before dates. But when volunteering in store room of a food bank, we put tins nearest to their Best Before dates at front of shelves so they're given out soonest. Any tins beyond Best Before dates aren't given to clients, but volunteers are allowed to take away for "recycling". Same applies to packets of biscuits, sugar, UHT milk etc.