How many times have you opened the fridge to find your milk has passed the use-by date but is perfectly fine to drink?
Giving it a good sniff normally tells you if it has turned sour, but more than 80 million pints are unnecessarily tipped down the sink each year because of overly cautious dates.
Research by the University of Chester also found milk from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, kept unopened in a fridge set at 4C, remained safe to drink days after its use-by date.
Now, in a victory for the environment and common sense, Morrisons says use-by dates on its milk cartons are to become a thing of the past.
At the end of the month, the supermarket will instead be printing best-before dates on dairy products and encouraging people to do a “sniff test”.
It comes as figures revealed that milk is the third most wasted food and drink item in the UK, with more than half a million tons of dairy chucked every year, most of that in the home.
Nearly 20% of us are still confused by best-before and use-by dates. As supermarket foods carry wildly different information on how long they will last – some by as much as five months for the same items – it is not difficult to see why.
Take a look through your kitchen cupboards and you will find “once-opened” instructions on similar items that are inconsistent and unclear as to whether they are recommendations on food safety or quality.
The use-by date is about safety and the most important thing to remember. Foods can be eaten (and most can be frozen) up until the use-by date but not after.
Best before refers to the quality and taste. The food is most likely safe to eat after this date but may not be at its best in terms of flavour and texture.
You can’t beat looking, smelling and tasting for a reliable indicator of how fresh the food is.
But it would be even better for supermarkets and manufacturers to come up with a standard labelling system that was clear, consistent and easy to understand – to stop any more perfectly edible food ending up in the bin.
