General Chat

Who is guided by or obcessed by dates on food and drink, I'm not because I think it encourges waste.

I think they are just that ZZzzz, a guide. I mean, if something is passed the date but looks and smells ok, then I would eat it. But if it was say milk and it def looked and smelt off, then out it goes.

Think a lot is common sense and also isn't it a legal requirement maybe?

In this day & age, we have to waste less as food costs so much!

Florence in the hebrides

My Mums "fridge" was a tin in a hole in the back garden but only in the summer though, the larder had 2 concrete shelves so it was sorted and nothing went off.

I am finding the new trend of "no date to save waste" to be counter-productive. We buy fresh veg for a few days, and used the date as a guide to whether they would last. Now we find for example that a 1 kg bag of carrots (dogs have 2 a night between them as a dental treat), which used to last for 4 or 5 days, now very often is soft and floppy after only a couple of days - meaning they have to go in the bin. The same applies with fresh veg that we eat, it feels fine on a Friday but by Sunday it is going off. I say "bring back the dates to save waste"

Funny you should mention the soft and floppy food, Duncan, because, although I am popping into grocery shops for specific items now and then, I am still having my groceries delivered and I find a big difference between potatoes I buy from our local Sainsburys and potatoes delivered.

Even though they are well within their use-buy dates, potatoes delivered from one of three other Sainsburys never last as long as those I buy from our nearby Sainsburys.

I have put it down to poor storage within the stores - because I buy the same, Vivaldi, potatoes which we both like.

It is probably the only niggle I have with grocery deliveries. I did ask why the deliveries came from a store other than our local one and was told our local Sainsburys was built on the understanding that it would not be used for deliveries. I don’t know how true this is because it was built many years before lockdown - but I guess Sainsburys probably delivered other non-perishable goods before grocery deliveries ‘took off’.

(I do not like grocery shopping, as you will probably guess.)