Would you eat that?

Compost food waste to stop it going to landfill

Yesterdays Countryfile's Sunday show on BBC1 bought to our screens the disgusting truths about food waste in the UK. John Craven explained the shocking figures relating to the mountains of good, often unopened food that we toss nonchalantly into our general household rubbish on a daily basis. One of the main problems it seemed was that people these days don't seem to be able to tell whether the food in their fridges and cupboards is still safe to eat. This is made even more complicated with the myriad of date labels put on by the food producers and retailers. The recommended dates are often overly cautious and should be used with a persons good judgment about the state of the food. While analysing the 'to be chucked' pile of food from one mothers food store, Emma Marsh, from Love Food Hate Waste explained what the food date labels really mean. Display until is used by the retailer to know how long to leave the product on the shop shelf for and can generally be ignored by the consumer. Best before is simply the date after which the food will not be at its best, but is still perfectly safe to eat. Use by is the date you should take notice of especially if the packaging of the food has been opened. However, in my opinion, depending on the food, there are plenty of occasions when it is ok to eat food that has passed its Use by date, even more so if it hasn't been opened. This is where personal consumer judgment needs to be more effective. It's not rocket science, if a food looks alright (no signs of mould or weird colouring), smells ok (not putrid and festering) and tastes ok (not fizzy or too offensive) then it is probably ok to eat. I'm not encouraging people to take risks, just to be a little bit more independent when deciding what is still edible.