Why do
supermarkets feel the need to confuse customers by including about a million
different dates on food? It’s so confusing! First there is the ‘Best Before’
date, then the ‘Display Until’ date, then the ‘Sell By’ date, then the ‘Use By’
date! Now as any “un-paranoid” person should know, the only date worth taking
any notice of if the ‘Use By’ date. Unfortunately the inclusion of the other
three dates confuses the originally “un-paranoid” person into believing that
all the dates are the same as the ‘Use By’ date. People are becoming paranoid
that because the shop wasn’t willing
to sell something after the ‘Sell By’ date, that they shouldn’t be willing to eat it after the ‘Sell By’ date. Now
don’t get me wrong, if the food is growing new life, then quite rightly throw
it away. But on a planet becoming more and more affected by global warming
everyday and more and more landfill sites taking over any available space
everyday, supermarkets are hardly doing much to save the world, by making
people throw things away when they don’t need to.
I was
recently watching a television programme about a man who took eating ‘Out Of
Date’ food to an extreme. His wife was disgusted by the idea of even eating
food after the ‘Best Before’ date. He didn’t just cook and eat food after the ‘Best Before’ date; he cooked and ate
mouldy bread, meat that smelt funny and brown bananas. One example is that he
toasted the bread, the heat from the toaster killed all the germs on the bread
and he was absolutely fine. He also teamed up with a ‘scavenger’ who went
through supermarket bins to get food. I was shocked when he found loads of
perfectly edible food that has just been thrown away because of the date on it
or if the packaging had been slightly damaged. Later, I was reading a review of
the show and I came across people complaining that it was giving people the
wrong idea, people praising it for opening people’s minds and people asking
questions on which dates to take notice of. Of course I am not suggesting you
rifle around in supermarket bins or eat mouldy bread, I am just saying that
people shouldn’t get so paranoid about ‘Display Until’ or ‘Sell By’ dates! They
are for wasteful supermarkets only.
Of course,
we all know the real menace here is the ‘Best Before’ dates. People say “Oh no,
we can’t eat that! It might poison us!”. Either, these people are very snobbish
and won’t eat anything after it is at its ‘best’, but just won’t admit it, or
people don’t realise that ‘Best Before’ means food is at a its best before a certain date! It is not
the same thing as ‘Use By’ dates! ‘Best Before’ means food is fine to eat but
just won’t taste as good as it did when you first bought it. Now we all know
that a homemade cake will go a bit dry after the first couple of days, but you
don’t throw it away, because that would be wasteful. You still eat it because
it doesn’t have a random date stamped onto it by some guy in a factory in
Coventry who thought the 15th October would be a good date to for
the food to not be at its ‘best’ anymore!
When it
comes to food, ignore dates that mean nothing. Trust your instinct. It won't kill you!
