Canada Considers Removing Best Before Dates To Reduce Food Waste

[Economy 52,844]

https://globalnews.ca/video/9808889/canada-considering-removing-best-before-dates-at-grocery-stores

 

Amid high food inflation and food shortages Canada is considering removing best before dates from food labels to reduce unnecessary food waste

 

Best before dates are often confused with expiry dates and often people think they should throw out the food even though most of the time it is still perfectly good to consume.

 

In addition best before dates tend to be conservative and you can generally tell when something is starting to go bad by the colour, smell etc

 

Still many are opposed to the idea because they simply find it easier to resort to the label to tell them when they can and can't eat the food

[Economy 52,844]

On topic I've often forgotten eggs in my fridge and I eat them like 14 days after best before date. I also often let yogurt pass several days... And I neve got sick

 

The only time I got bad food poisoning was at Wendy's... Twice... And it was the same location 

 

Normally with more dangerous stuff like dairy or meat I inspect it well after it passes best before date to decide whether it's still good to eat or not

 

It's a little harder to do that with eggs than it is with meat, milk and yogurt I admit... So I kinda took a bit of a chance going 2 while weeks past it

[IWantYourLove 1,457]

I don’t know what Canadian food info layouts look like, but in the UK the best before and use by dates are in the same place and usually smacked on the front in a bold-ish font. If it’s similar, I think moving the best before date to a more hidden place, like below the ingredients or near the barcode would be better than removing it, just in case people forget about it and it’s been like 6 months over the ideal ‘best before’ date. If that makes sense lol

[dit 46,738]

I feel like I always eat things past the best before date tbh. Bread and yogurts especially dont go bad around the suggested time. You can totally push at least a good 5 days or more after the "best before". Ppl think best before is like a rule when its more so just a "suggested date". I think the wording should be changed and just be called "suggested date" or something like that 

[IWantYourLove 1,457]

12 minutes ago, Economy said:

I also often let yogurt pass several days... And I neve got sick 

I’m so scared of yoghurt and hummus because two of my friends got violently ill the same week, a day apart, one from out of date yoghurt, the other from out of date hummus 

[RAMROD 117,023]

Best before dates are just marketing trick wbk

Put the expiry dates better! 

[LaLa 19,898]

I’m totally fine with this, a best before date is a vague suggestion to me 

More than once I’ve made a cake mix thats been expired for literal years lmao and it’s fine… I just ate an egg for lunch yesterday that had a date of June 3rd 

I will say though that I find the dates on milk to be pretty spot on usually, so we can keep that, but I’ll just get my husband to sniff it if I must 

 

[Obobo 3,984]

This most likely benefits corporations and grocery stores to not restock on products and sell us old crap.

[Rat Boy 43,832]

As @artdoll knows, I completely ignore best before and expiry dates - they are FAKE NEWS!! 

[Economy 52,844]

14 minutes ago, Obobo said:

This most likely benefits corporations and grocery stores to not restock on products and sell us old crap.

I think it's the exact opposite actually...

 

If the best before dates encourage ppl to unnecessarily throw out food they didn't get a chance to finish, it means ppl have to buy more food they didn't necessarily have to

 

I think it's the exact opposite of what ur saying. Reducing food waste predominantly helps ppl not Corporations

 

As for food people didn't buy that the stores themselves throw out, you do pay for those costs already anyway in case you didn't realize

[PunkTheFunk 125,703]

They should invent some sort of indicator tag or sticker that turns a different color when the food goes bad.

[Economy 52,844]

41 minutes ago, IWantYourLove said:

I’m so scared of yoghurt and hummus because two of my friends got violently ill the same week, a day apart, one from out of date yoghurt, the other from out of date hummus 

Yeah u can never be certain.

 

But tbh I think food handling is a bigger factor than the conservative best before date anyway.

 

Theres a store that often sells milk that's already spoiled BEFORE the best before date and I have to dump it out its so irritating. I think the issue there is more likely that the employees are not putting shipments in the fridge fast enough and leaving it out in the open too long

 

Also my worst food poisoning (twice) was at Wendy's. Willing to bet mishandling by teen employees that weren't trained well enough had more to do with it than expired burgers

[Economy 52,844]

1 minute ago, PunkTheFunk said:

They should invent some sort of indicator tag or sticker that turns a different color when the food goes bad.

This may be more difficult than it sounds but if they found a way that would be remarkably helpful!

[StarstruckIllusion 53,564]

I came in to this thread alarmed by the title… but yeah… if best before dates aren’t expiry dates then what is the point? I support this actually 

[Oriane 22,749]

6 hours ago, Economy said:

It's a little harder to do that with eggs

Put the eggs in a glass of water. If they float, they're bad, if they sink, they're good to eat.