Decoding the (Food) Dating World

How to get the most out of your food (and help the planet at the same time!)

We simply love food, and Many things in our lives have expiration dates: friendships, relationships, and hair-ties. Although these don’t usually come with a visible warning date so we can prepare ourselves for the inevitable end (sigh)… we still under-value an important expiry date that we are told about, and that’s the one on our foods. Similar to the 21st-century attitude towards dating, we are seemingly inclined to carelessly throw food away once it’s passed its sell-by-date without a spared thought of the long-term consequences. According to reports released by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, 7.3m tonnes of food was wasted in UK households in 2015. Committee chairman Neil Parish stated that “one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, and in the UK, over £10bn worth of food is thrown away by households every year.”

Those are staggering figures, especially when balanced with the fact that 795 million people in the world do not have enough food every day. So, it’s definitely time to start paying attention to the small print. As with many of the world’s more upsetting stories, it is easy to feel that you can’t have an impact, but with food waste, you most definitely can – and the first step is understanding the confusing guidelines on food expiration dates.

Use by v best before?

They sound similar, don’t they, but have different meanings – luckily, the Food Standards Agency has a great guide which keeps it simple;

Use By

• It is all about safety.
• Foods can be eaten, and most are frozen up until that date but not after.
• For use-by to be a valid guide, you have to follow the storage instructions.

Best before

• Quality-based, not safety.
• Safe to eat after best before date but may not be at its best.
• Again, it is only accurate if you have followed the storage instructions.

It is an offence to sell food after the use-by date; however, retailers can sell food after the best-before date – with the exception of eggs.

Here’s a scary top five of food we throw away the most of in the UK;

1. Over 240 Million slices of bread are thrown away each year.
2. Around 5.9 million glasses of milk go down the drain.
3. 5.8 million potatoes never make it into chips.
4. Cheese that lurks in the back of the fridge makes the fourth slot.
5. 1.3 million apples never get to the lunchbox or into a pie!

So, to love food,  let’s get smart and look at our food differently, starting with being more instinctive regarding how long after buying it we need to eat it.

What to ignore and what to follow?

Make sure you store your food as outlined, read the label and don’t assume what needs to be in the fridge and what doesn’t.

Use common sense, touch and smell the food, look at the colour and trust your senses. If the milk officially expired a week ago but smells fine, drink it – but maybe throw the yoghurt that sat in your car too long one afternoon that’s growing new lifeforms.

Buy what you need when you need it.

One reason we throw away food is buying too much, as we saw from our top 5, unconsciously adding that three for two to the basket, getting drawn into a bulk buy, and then having a mouldy loaf of bread hiding in the cupboard.

A great way to buy more consciously is to go out and buy your food physically –  online shopping is great for bulk items like toilet rolls, but it completely detaches you from the experience of purchasing your meals.

Local markets are likely to stock fresher, locally sourced food to allow you to eat seasonally and are often a lot cheaper than you would expect as you’re not paying for the air miles and shop facilities. And a little of something good beats a pile of junk – that lovely artisan bread with three or four ingredients is a lot less scary than a processed supermarket option with a chemical experiment on the label!

Be more creative with leftovers.

However strict you are with grocery shopping, there are bound to be leftovers, and many dishes taste better the next day – or can come together to create something amazing, so learn to love food and your leftovers.

Make it a challenge to make a chicken last a few days – roast, soup, salad, broth, you get the idea! Bread becomes pudding, potatoes become garlic, frozen mash for another day and scrape the mould off your cheese to add to your pasta.

Online platforms like Love Food, Hate Waste and Eating Well are a great source of inspiration if you are feeling daunted, or just in need of new ideas.

You can also head over to our recipes section, where we’ve designed some delicious and nutritious meals for you to enjoy. Experiment, enjoy, and proactively reduce your waste while improving the taste.