Posh supermarket Waitrose has finished bottom in an investigation into the freshness of online supermarket deliveries.
According to Which?, the upmarket store delivered food and drink going off around two and a half days earlier on average than top performer Tesco.
The research was carried out by the consumer watchdog, amid soaring numbers of online grocery shoppers.
The consumer champion looked at how the six major online supermarkets compared when it came to delivering fresh food and drink.
Which? used a team of 12 undercover shoppers to order more than 1,000 groceries.
Each researcher ordered the same 16 perishable grocery items from each of the online supermarkets.
They then totalled up the number of full hours remaining from the time of delivery to midnight on the use-by date for each item and calculated an average time per supermarket.
Tesco came top for freshness, with items lasting 11 days on average.
Asda was the second freshest supermarket, with an average of 10.5 days’ shelf life on all grocery items, although it did deliver one pack of bacon on its use-by date.
Online-only supermarket Ocado was a close third with an average of 10.4 days.
Sainsbury’s and Morrisons were next, with Waitrose finishing at the bottom of the table with items lasting an average of 8.6 days.
All of the supermarkets insist they train staff to pick food with the longest possible dates for online deliveries and click and collect.
But a number of supermarket workers told Which? that speed targets put them under pressure when trying to pick the freshest groceries.
Harry Rose, Which? magazine editor, said: “Shockingly, our mystery shoppers found some items that were already out of date when delivered, as well as groceries that appeared to have gone off before their use-by dates had even passed.
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“Use-by dates are about safety and shoppers should not risk eating out-of-date food.
“Anyone who is unhappy with the freshness of their online groceries should complain to their supermarket, or switch to a supermarket with better policies on food freshness if possible.”
