Opinion: it’s time all shops scrapped 'best before' dates

Other retailers should follow Tesco’s lead and ditch these meaningless dates, argues John Fitzsimons.

Do you always check the best buy dates on your fruit and veg? If you shop at Tesco, then you may notice a difference in the packaging in future.

The supermarket giant this week revealed it is ditching best before dates from more than 116 fruit and veg products. This follows the move earlier this year to dump them from another 70 fruit and veg lines.

According to Tesco, this is all to help shoppers to reduce the amount of food that they end up throwing away.

Mark Little, head of food waste reduction at Tesco, said that removing these best before dates would help shoppers cut the amount of good food that ends up in the bin, and also help them save a few quid in the process.

He added: “It’s simply not right that food goes to waste and we’re going to do everything we can to help.”

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Best before vs use by dates

It’s important to note the distinction between best before dates and use by dates on our food packaging.

As the Food Standards Agency explains it, use by dates are about safety. If you eat food after its use by date, then you’re putting yourself at risk of food poisoning, even if you’ve stored it properly and it looks and smells fine.

In contrast, a best before date is simply about the quality of the food – it means that if you eat it before the date on the packaging it will be at its best, but after that date it may start to lose some of the flavour or texture.

Food waste in the UK

The amount of perfectly good food that gets wasted in the UK every year is astonishing.

A report by the parliamentary environment, food and rural affairs select committee last year found that in total we end up chucking away around £10 billion of food each year, the equivalent of around £200 per person.

That’s disgusting from a moral perspective when there are so many people in the UK who are sufficiently hard up that they need to turn to food banks in order to feed themselves.

But it’s also appalling from a purely monetary perspective.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have £200 a year to just chuck in the bin. And yet that’s what we are doing.

Read: how a lifetime of food waste adds up

Shopper support for scrapping best before dates

Tesco’s own research suggests that as many as 69% of us reckon that dumping best before dates is a good idea, with more than half of respondents saying that the absence of a best before date means they end up holding onto perfectly edible food for longer than they otherwise would.

I know I do it all the time –  if I see the best before date on some salad is a bit close, or may have even passed, then I’ll get a bit iffy about eating it.

I know deep down that it’s fine really – I mean honestly, lettuce always tastes the same, doesn’t it? – but I’ll still get sufficiently wary about it that it will end up in the bin.

That same report from the environment, food and rural affairs select committee suggested that the Government should look at whether there is really any need for a best before date at all, with the Industry Council for Research on Packaging and the Environment dismissing them as “meaningless” and warning that they simply serve to confuse people.

Research from YouGov suggests that this could actually help the way that we approach our shopping.

Around four in 10 people the firm surveyed said that without a best before date, they would be more likely to buy smaller quantities to ensure fresh produce was used before it went off.

So let’s take decisive action and dump them. They aren’t helping us make better decisions, they are simply causing everyday shoppers to waste money and throw away good food.

Tesco deserves credit for ditching them from a swathe of its fruit and veg but unless its approach is adopted by other supermarkets, ultimately it will make precious little difference.

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Do these labels encourage food waste, or do you find best before dates helpful? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.