Cheap Food?
I recently read with interest an article about a company specialising in out-of-date food. The company, “Approved Food”, started out as a market trader selling close-to-date packaged foods. I know the sort of thing – there’s a stall on a couple of my local markets that does the same sort of thing. Chocolate bars, biscuits, tinned goods and packets of crisps are the usual sort of thing that they sell, and sell very cheaply. I can often be soft-soaped by the children into buying them a packet of sweets from these kinds of stall. Who cares if it only has a week of date left on the packet when you know perfectly well that the kids will wolf the sweets in a nanosecond?
However, the realisation that one of these small-fry market traders had gone national and were now offering to ship out-of-date foodstuffs around the country was interesting.
On one hand, I am very glad to see that more people are realising that food-packaging dates and rules are nowhere near as accurate as a bit of common-sense. I vividly remember buying some fresh honeycomb from my local farmshop. “Best before 12.08.07″ it said. Hrrmmmm. I wonder if the chap who invented the rules for dating food realised that honeycomb lasts indefinitely? That there was honey found in Tutankhamun’s tomb that was still perfectly edible? Obviously not. I’m a great believer that if a tomato looks OK and smells OK, then the chances are good that it’s good to eat. I try to grow a certain percentage of my own food – time allowing – and nature has yet to stamp a vegetable with a best before date. I haven’t given my family food poisoning yet because commonsense tells me when something is just a bit nasty. If I don’t fancy eating something that’s gone a bit soft or squishy or hard and lumpy, then into the compost bin it goes.
Don’t get me started on the meat labelling rules, either. Most people in this country don’t realise that beef needs to be hung for several days to make it tender and tasty. This takes time and space, both of which cost the supermarkets money, so the odds are good that your supermarket beef will have been packaged straight from slaughter – I know this because I have bought meat straight from the abbatoir before – they recommend storing it for SIX WEEKS before eating. Still worried about eating the steak 2 days after the best-before date? I’m not. If it smells a bit funky, then it’s almost certainly because it’s been packaged in an air-excluding pack and pumped with CO2 to make it look redder. Yuck! Take it out of the plastic, stick it in a bit of tupperware and it will last for lots longer.
However, I am more than a little cautious with chicken and fish in this regard. I’ve never had real food poisoning, but my dear Pa-in-Law has, and he lost 2 stone in a week. He’s a very active builder, and not at all overweight, either. I’m in no hurry to experience the same sort of illness, so I treat chicken and fish with respect. The freezer is my friend in this respect – I freeze all my fresh chicken or fish that won’t be eaten within 24 hours and just defrost it as I need.
However, Approved Food isn’t selling this kind of food – it’s selling tins and jars and packets of stuff that really isn’t much affected by dates. A week here or there doesn’t make much difference to a teabag, really.
On the other hand (I bet you’d forgotten about those hands, hadn’t you?) I’m a little concerned that this company is building up expectations of cheap food which may lead customers to ignore a couple of issues – (a) you still have to pay £5.75 for shipping 28Kg of shopping and (b) the odds are really good that a market near you will have a stall doing the same sort of thing, but without the excess shipping costs and carbon footprints.
By all means, investigate short-dated food, but give your local market a try first. Many of them are open on Saturdays (if you work, this makes the difference between getting to a market and being reduced to shopping in T*sco) and have a huge range of other interesting stuff, too. The vegetables are cheaper, the meat is fresher and the Mars Bars might just be 25p! Give it a try!
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Comment by Jane
I love my market stall for just this sort of thing. Short dates, cans and packets where the labels are in Polish, or Italian, or something – but do I really need to read the instructions that say “heat up until it looks safe to eat”? The local Polish grocery does the same sort of thing, too: they took over the Indian-run shop that stayed open all hours and all days, and are providing the same level of customer service.
Comment by Willibald
A series of tests done a couple of years ago proved that, correctly stored, most fresh food is still good to eat a week after its use by date. (Sorry I can’t remember which paper this was reported in, nor any details of the tests). Retail stores over compensate on sell by/use by dates for fear of prosecution. I could cry sometimes to see the perfectly good food we have to throw away because it is past midnight (although I have a feeling that the individual who sells out of date food can be prosecuted as well as the store). On the whole if it looks and smells good and isn’t growing blue fur it probably is good. That said I’ve had some very interesting blue veined chedder from storing it with the stilton.
Comment by Chris C
I’ve found that all sorts of things keep perfectly well in the fridge — or even out of it. I don’t use much milk, a pint (in one of those litle plastic things the supermarkets use instead of bottles these days) is still perfectly good after over a week (and that’s a week opened every day). A packet of “English muffins” lasts for over a week in the fridge. And I have a packet of grated cheese from a week before Christmas which still has no sign or smell of being even slightly ‘off’, even though that’s been opened (and resealed) and not even in the fridge! On the other things some things do go off faster, but usually nowhere near as fast as the markings would indicate.
One easy way to save money is the end-of-week / end-of-day sales at the supermarkets. Especially on Saturday, because they will be closed overnight and a lot of Sunday, they price things way down, often well under half price. They still keep for several days (or longer in a freezer).
At least the government and media do seem to be waking up somewhat to the problem, there was a report recently about so much of the food being thrown out and a lot of the blame was laid to the sell-by/best-by dates and people throwing stuff out on those dates. Hopefully some sort of education will be forthcoming.
Comment by Pomona
On the one hand it is good that places like this avoid waste. On the other we’re talking about mostly branded and packaged food and to save money buying large quantaties of it you’d have to be getting through a lot of it – which is neither frugal or healthy in the first place.
I think the reason people are so (selectively) squeamish about food is that they rely too much on things in packages and have a very vague relationship with fresh food.
Comment by Talis
There’s a lot of general ignorance around about food and everything to do with it. A whole generation and a half have really missed out on learning what to do with food – a minority have picked it up within the family or elsewhere but so many folk really just don’t cook.
Dairy stuff wants being a bit sensible with, but it does tend to tell you when it’s turned. And understanding the processes between milk and cream and butter and cheese helps – sometimes it’s just turning into the next thing and needs using differently.
I trust my eyes and brain and nose over sell-by dates every time.