The demise of best-before dates

[JohnB]

M&S are scrapping best before dates on their fruit and veg, with only a secret code available to staff. Now while I'm all in favour of reducing food waste, and using look and feel to judge things, I certainly do want to know how fresh is the produce I'm buying, choosing the longest lead times on produce so I can use it a few days after the 'best before'. I certainly don't want to be presented with trays of produce that might vary by 3-4 days in freshness, so that one packet might last 5 days, another only 2. I try to shop every 10-14 days, but such behaviour will force me to shop more frequently, and give a commercial advantage to the likes of Sainsbury's which still give helpful advice.

[Lanark]

If it takes days to get through the new customs at Dover they don't have a lot of options.

Another "Brexit bonus"

[Maroochydore]

Another "Brexit bonus"

Let it go!

[Watis]

My preferred supermarket replaced 'best before' dates with a code comprising a letter and a number. It didn't take long to work out that the letter signifies a month and the number the day of the month.

Watis

[Stompa]

I imagine details of how the new code works will quickly emerge. Aldi used to use a code system before they switched to dates, and that was pretty easy to decode.

[Alaric]

M&S are scrapping best before dates on their fruit and veg, with only a secret code available to staff.

That has to be regarded as a move hostile to consumers. Why should you be expected to pay the same price for something that needs to be consumed immediately as opposed to something with a shelf life of a week? Ironically it was M&S who introduced "best before" in the first place, when they initially moved into groceries.

[richlist]

M&S are scrapping best before dates on their fruit and veg, with only a secret code available to staff.

That has to be regarded as a move hostile to consumers. Why should you be expected to pay the same price for something that needs to be consumed immediately as opposed to something with a shelf life of a week? Ironically it was M&S who introduced "best before" in the first place, when they initially moved into groceries.

I agree. If I buy something and it goes bad in a couple of days before I use it .....it will be going back for a refund. We have already done this with other supermarkets.

[Bminusrob]

The problem with "best before" dates is that it extends "nanny statism", encourages lack of thinking, and causes a lot of unnecessary food waste.

Perhaps a better solution would be to have a "first displayed" date instead.

[richlist]

The supermarkets must be very very happy with the situation. They already received a massive bonus when deliveries & click/collect became popular. That has been a big opportunity for them to dispose of dented tins and short use by dates for items which personal shoppers wouldn't put in their trolleys. Now they have another opportunity to increase profits at the consumers expense.

[Dod101]

I fancy that other supermarkets will probably follow suit, assuming that M & S do not lose a lot of customers. The alleged idea is to avoid food waste as some foods (most?) are perfectly good after their 'best before' date. I thought that they intended to keep a 'Use By' date. A lot of the M & S stuff like salad leaves and raspberries and strawberries are almost going off even at the 'best before' date so I will probably give them a miss in future. Returning stuff is OK but I live 17 miles from my nearest M & S and so it is simply not practical to do that, nor to shop twice a week for freshness, so I would think that this move may well backfire on them.

Dod

[Alaric]

Perhaps a better solution would be to have a "first displayed" date instead.

Or "packed on". I think some frozen food displays this, although like tins, "best before" dates aren't that critical when time spans are measured in years.

[XFool]

Another "Brexit bonus"

Let it go!

Why?

Surely Brexit fans want us all to know the many advantages from Brexit? Or, possibly they don't...

[XFool]

My preferred supermarket replaced 'best before' dates with a code comprising a letter and a number. It didn't take long to work out that the letter signifies a month and the number the day of the month.

Sounds rather like that scheme on the old paper driving licences: 'Tear off here if you want to remove your date of birth'

"So what's this other number here? Oh!"

[UncleEbenezer]

The problem with "best before" dates is that it extends "nanny statism", encourages lack of thinking, and causes a lot of unnecessary food waste.

Perhaps a better solution would be to have a "first displayed" date instead.

Thus penalising the retailer with a highly efficient supply chain and the freshest products against the one whose products are less fresh when they first reach the shelves?

The principle might be better executed with a date like "picked" or "harvested", though of course that too is fraught with issues and perverse incentives - like all the stuff that gets picked when underripe for a longer shelf life but leads to horrible products.

[UncleEbenezer]

The supermarkets must be very very happy with the situation. They already received a massive bonus when deliveries & click/collect became popular. That has been a big opportunity for them to dispose of dented tins and short use by dates for items which personal shoppers wouldn't put in their trolleys. Now they have another opportunity to increase profits at the consumers expense.

My (very limited) experience of online shopping is that they have NOT supplied me short-dated items.

Anyone had the reverse?

[Dod101]

The supermarkets must be very very happy with the situation. They already received a massive bonus when deliveries & click/collect became popular. That has been a big opportunity for them to dispose of dented tins and short use by dates for items which personal shoppers wouldn't put in their trolleys. Now they have another opportunity to increase profits at the consumers expense.

My (very limited) experience of online shopping is that they have NOT supplied me short-dated items.

Anyone had the reverse?

No and I doubt very much that they deliberately do so. You can see the pickers in say Tesco before around 9 am when there are more of them than customers. They seem just to pick the required item at random. It would be self defeating to try to send out dented tins because the customer can always refuse it anyway.

Dod

[Stompa]

The supermarkets must be very very happy with the situation. They already received a massive bonus when deliveries & click/collect became popular. That has been a big opportunity for them to dispose of dented tins and short use by dates for items which personal shoppers wouldn't put in their trolleys. Now they have another opportunity to increase profits at the consumers expense.

My (very limited) experience of online shopping is that they have NOT supplied me short-dated items.

Anyone had the reverse?

Yes, occasionally with Asda. But when it happens I just ask for a refund which has so far never been refused.

[JohnB]

'Best before' sets a quality standard on a particular date. Canny consumers know how each product declines in quality in their cupboard/fridge so can plan to use the items without waste. The problem is idiot consumers who view the date as "dangerous after" and chuck it. As with many things in the modern world, the former are penalised by the idiocy of the latter becoming enshrined in "best practice".

Other measures are flawed. "picked on/packed on" tells you nothing about the supply chain, and would surprise compared with the much shorter lifetimes of garden produce (which few grow anyway). "displayed on" is hardly practical if a packer has to predict when the shop puts it out. "use by" is too harsh a deadline for things that decline slowly. 8345-0908 might tell the shopworker and algorithmic shopper that its 9th of August, but would slow everyone perusing the shelves.

As an aficionado of the "its going off" shelves, I wish they'd stop fiddling.

[Loup321]

The supermarkets must be very very happy with the situation. They already received a massive bonus when deliveries & click/collect became popular. That has been a big opportunity for them to dispose of dented tins and short use by dates for items which personal shoppers wouldn't put in their trolleys. Now they have another opportunity to increase profits at the consumers expense.

My (very limited) experience of online shopping is that they have NOT supplied me short-dated items.

Anyone had the reverse?

I've had Sainsbury's deliver spreadable butter 3 days before the Best Before date. Knowing how readily this gets mouldy shortly after the date with only a few small crumbs in it, I took it back and asked for a refund. They refused! They said it would still have been available on the shelf at that time, and I said that I wouldn't have picked it up with so short a date, since it takes over a month to get through a tub. They still refused! I told them they could put it in their bin, since I wasn't carrying it all the way home to put in my bin.

My sister also had a Sainsbury's delivery, where she had ordered a few packets of some cake slices. The delivery came in just before 11.00 pm (10.00-11.00 slot), and all the cake slices had that date as the Best Before date. Since they were prepacked cake slices in copious amounts of plastic, she knew they would keep for a week or two and didn't force herself to scoff the lot in an hour (the kids were already asleep).

I agree that having production dates would be okay, but it would take some time for me to get used to the switch in thinking. From experience, I know that sealed packets of biscuits and sealed jars of pickles are definitely not useable a few years (about 3) after their dates. But if there was no date of any sort, how would I be able to judge? Soggy stale biscuits are not nice. Rancid biscuits are worse. And I don't have enough of the correct experience to judge without putting them in my mouth.

I think that Morrisons are going to remove the Use by dates from milk. That one is easier to do a "sniff test" and I'm confident enough in my abilities that I have thrown out milk that was well in date (one rogue bottle) and drunk milk 2-3 days past its date.

[didds]

Im intrigued what difference 2 or 5 days BBE may mean on an apple that has been in storage for months already ...