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Comment by LeFantome | Hacker News Reader

This all makes massive sense to me. The people in my life treat any date on food as an expiry date and throw out massive amounts of perfectly edible food. Also, people do not seem to have any concept about the rate at which different food products spoil. Some things can be used way past the dates I see. Others really are going off by then.

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Meanwhile we have gotten rid of expiry dates here in the UK. And I have bought fruits and vegetables that all look fine on the outside but inside are rotten.

Not only frustrating this then wastes my time and my money. Items do need expiry dates, sugar does not, fresh produce and vegetables do.

However, educating that your food isn't instantly bad when it's gone pass would encourage people to waste less food.

> Meanwhile we have gotten rid of expiry dates here in the UK. And I have bought fruits and vegetables that all look fine on the outside but inside are rotten.

It's great! Now the supermarkets can blame us for waste.

Fortunately, every supermarket does still have labels that show a coded date - so that their staff can remove products that are too old.

If you search for the particular store online, you should be able to find their system.

I shop in Sainsbury's usually. Their system is pretty simple. A letter shows the month (A = January, B = February etc.) and two digits show the day of the month.

Thanks for this. In general I'm in favour of products removing the dates so that people don't chuck out perfectly good food based on superstition/misguided obedience, but an annoying side-effect is that if we have two unopened packs of the same product it's hard to know which is older. By sheer bad luck, an old pack could hang around indefinitely and go off.

I was thinking a possible solution would be a simple numerical counter (e.g. days since 1 Jan 2000), which can't be easily decoded by eye, but allowed you to rank items easily by age.

I'm glad someone else has noticed this. The quality and availability of fruit and veg at mainstream supermarkets has fallen off a cliff since COVID. It all feels far "older" and less fresh than it did, even when it's new out on the shelf. Traditional greengrocers are still fine, but tend to stock more local produce, so I'm wondering if it's Brexit or shipping causing the issue rather than expiry dates.

It feels like the solution to this is some sort of in app mechanism to be able to submit evidence back to the grocer that the produce or other perishable was not in condition to be sold, and for them to credit your account accordingly. This saves you a trip back to the store. If they’re selling perishables that have already gone bad, certainly, that sounds like a supply chain failure if they’re offering that for sale which should be going right into the compost waste stream.

> to submit evidence back to the grocer that the produce or other perishable was not in condition to be sold

this reminded me of the Seinfeld episode in which Kramer tries to return fruit: https://youtu.be/IgZkMRfnomI

As Jerry says, with fruit the consumer takes the risk.

I say, if you are buying bad fruit it is time to move on to a new grocer (and not a supermarket).

Save's a trip sure, but I'm out of a meal for the day.

I make dinner on a day by day basis. What I mean is that I stop at the supermarket on the way home, buy what I need and then make dinner rather than stocking the ingredients. I find this method for me a good way to get out of the work mantra.

Knowing I can make dinner and then drink to it with a glass of wine. So to get home, find out that X vegetable has expired now means I have to find time to take it to the store or throw it out and waste my money nor have the ability to make what I planned.

If you order online, you can request a refund without much hassle but I don't do that.

Hard problem to solve for sure :(

Put samples out

It's not a failure. They use treatments to make the fruit look fresh and shiny even when it is near gone.

Supermarkets also use ethylene to ripen many fruits (such as bananas) just before they put it out. It is so they can be picked green (unripe) to ship.

With bananas this is fine, they can ripen at home. It's the limes, pineapples, and other fruit which don't ripen after picking which are the problem.

I think a packaging or production date would help this without causing people to throw out unspoiled food. (once they realize it's not an expiry date)

I am not sure I buy it for fruit/vegetables though, since those are often sold unpackaged and unlabelled already.

tbf I've never seen expiration dates on fresh produce in the US. Maybe some packaged salads and things (and it's never accurate, of course), but nothing fresh.

>However, educating that your food isn't instantly bad when it's gone pass would encourage people to waste less food.

If there's a date then frankly I don't want to waste brain cycles thinking if something in the fridge or freezer has gone bad, unless it's so obvious I don't have to think much about it. If it's past, out it goes. I have enough crap to worry about already.

If it means I waste money, that means I'm buying too much and that can be easily resolved.

My understanding from the article is that expiry ("use by") dates will still be needed, and sell-by dates are being removed because mean something different from expiry, but consumers (myself included until now) generally misunderstand this.

"Use by" is not an expiration date, either.

> and sell-by dates are being removed

Not removed. Reworded.

No, removed. "Sell by" is not the same as the now mandated "Best if used by"

Yes, you can safely eat food after “Best of used by” date but one has to keep in mind that there are chemical processes in place; one such example is rate of oxidation of food oils…one is literally eating highly oxidative food like chips but more so if it’s been sitting for a while. Though not obvious, but the damage it’s doing to your bodies cells can be pretty bad.

And varies by brand. For example stuff from Aldi (their house brands) don’t really last past the best but dates. Often will be spoiling before the date.

Just avoid those types of foods altogether.

While it's good to have an understanding of which things the date does and does not matter for, when it comes to judging these things, I prefer to lean towards caution. It isn't worth getting sick over a little food.

I will throw out old dried herbs in particular and store replacement stock in the freezer. Also will replace spices when they get old and you can’t smell them any longer. Most shelf stable food is still good for a decent time past its use by date. Though not forever.

But, yes, I have relatives who will consider use by a hard deadline.

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