Bring back the use by dates

Yes I predicted this would happen last year!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4618351-best-before-dates-removal-cynical-ploy

The codes tell you the dates.
I bought some veg labelled H4

The letter is the month of they year - so H is the 8th letter and equals August
Then the number is the date.

I do however agree that quality has gone vastly downhill.

Why is everyone so surprised by the quality or lack of with 'fresh'??

I bought a bag of potatoes on sat, opened them Monday and two had to go in the bin as they rotting and mushy. Carrots go floppy within a couple of days.

Have you not got a local market you can buy fruit and veg from OP?

Lidl stuff has always been crap here.
Someone picked me up some cauliflowers from Lidl, took a chance on them, the little bit of white that was showing looked fine but under the leaves they were manky, going black underneath the white bits, kind of rotting, and covered in some kind of weird black bugs. I have seen an entire shelf of blueberries with white mould in there. Stuff that looks good only lasts a day or so once home.

I seem to be claiming a refund far too often from Ocado for squashy, over-ripe, watery or just old, past using veg items. I resisted having deliveries until a few months ago because I prefer to see what I am getting, or not getting as the case often is when I have a choice. I have eliminated a lot of items from my weekly order now, and buy the veg elsewhere. The expensive stuff is usually best avoided, I tried it thinking it might not be rotting on arrival but it was very poor quality.

I'm in Canada and removing "best before" and "use by" dates is being contemplated here. It's a disservice to consumers and only benefits the seller, imho.

I've noticed this too. I shop online so can't select based on the appearance and smell of freshness. I ordered shallots for a recipe the other day and half of them were mouldy. I got a refund but it meant I didn't have enough shallots for the recipe. I never paid much attention to best before dates anyway so I would use things unless they were mouldy. I also sometimes have two of the same thing in the fridge and now can't see which is the older one.

I don't buy anything that doesn't have a date on it so i would love to see them back.

I need sell by dates, some advice is to smell the food to see if it ‘off’. Not much good if you’ve lost your sense of smell.

Sainsbury's has become shocking . The quality of fresh fruit and veg has gone downhill . I did however go to one of the Tesco stores in town and they seemed much better quality .

What is wrong with buying frozen instead? It is prepared and frozen so retains it's nutrients. So called 'fresh' will have been harvested and store in temperature controlled units. It's then transported to distribution centres then onto the shops where it is stored. Then moved onto the shop floor under shop lights and handled by randoms to be purchased then stored at home. To me fresh it is something that has been harvested within a day or two at the latest. The so called fresh could be several weeks old.

Compare your m&s veg with asda prices. There were quite some surprises when I did that end of last year.

Yep I’m finding the exact same thing OP. Beautiful organic tomatoes, bought for the baby, rotten the very next day

Fruit and veg shelf life has got shit since the Brexit borders were implemented. Everything takes longer to get to the shops, so it doesn't last as long when you get it home. We buy what we need every couple of days now - I used to be able to do a weekly shop and everything would keep, but not any more.

I still finding M&S and Waitrose fruit and veg lasts a week or more in the fridge. Though I know I’m paying a premium!

I agree. It doesn’t matter how you store them either, they still start sprouting within a few days.

A lot of it has also travelled huge distances in slow cargo ships, so together with cold storage once in the UK, things could be several weeks old (or longer) before it even gets to the supermarket.

Another poster upthread mentioned potatoes lasting for months, which is fine, but they're not dug up the day before they are put on supermarket shelves, are they? They could have been in transit/storage for months, so once out of the cold store, may be at the end of their storage lives by the time they get on the shelf.

Most of the fruit and veg has been kept in cold storage. It deteriorates rapidly on the supermarket shelves.
The worst thing you can do to a tomato is to put it in a fridge.

yes I find this too. no idea why or what has changed with fruit , veg &salad but a few years ago things would keep fresh much much longer. things like cucumbers now always seem to be soft and appear old and lacking that freshness when bought on the day they are put on the supermarket shelf at both asda & aldi. carrots used to last a few weeks now rotting after 3 days. any kind of citrus fruit is dry and just inedible. I throw more way that what we eat. why is this? are they storing things for weeks on end before putting them on the shelves??

Fresh fruit, veg & salad never had ‘use by’ dates. They had ‘best before’ dates, which were a guideline not a deadline.

The problem was that too many people didn’t understand the difference between the two and, instead of using their eyes, nose & common sense, threw away perfectly good produce because it was ‘out of date’.

I agree that fruit & veg at Aldi & Lidl sometimes doesn’t last as long as produce from other supermarkets but, as with anything else in life, you get what you pay for. If you want the best produce, buy it from a decent greengrocer or from M&S.

Wait, they've been removed?
On just fresh stuff?

Have they taken them off packaged stuff? That could be fun.

I used my eyes, nose and common sense when we had best before dates.

Since they have been removed, I am wasting far more fruit and veg which is now inedible within a day or two of purchase - Sainsburys I'm looking at you.

I remember watching my friend’s husband fill a bin bag with perfectly good fresh produce because it was at its use by.
I was visibly perplexed and horrified.
I think instead of scrapping use by dates, we put a big ad campaign out there to say ‘hey, you know if things seem okay you can still use them even if they’re past the use by?’
You certainly don’t need it on fresh produce but you need it on anything processed.

Maybe a date of packing would be more useful. But I agree with getting rid of the dates because too many people relied on the date rather than their nose/eyes