Bring back the use by dates

[Nowfreefromangst]

Im all for reducing food waste, but...
This week I have had mouldy green beans and rotten potatoes from a well known discount supermarket.
I only bought both of these 3 days ago, surely they should last longer than that.
I wonder if supermarkets are now putting on the shelves, vegetables and fruits that are near the end of their shelf life to not only cut down food waste, but also increase profit and staff don't have to worry too much about stock rotation.
So the food waste of inedible vegetables is now from my pocket and not the retailers!
Should there be a display by date maybe for retailers rather than a use by or best before?
Yabu - retailers have a responsibility to reduce food waste
Yanbu - why should retailers be allowed to sell rotten fruit and veg

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??

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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 .

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Yes I predicted this would happen last year!

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

Make sure you remove all fruit and veg from any plastic wrap or packaging, if you are worried it might pick up odour from your fridge or larder / pantry/ cupboard store it in a glass container with breathable lid, or wrap in grease proof paper and foil, it reduces the sweating and helps keep it fresh for a bit longer. Potatoes, apple and tomatoes are better stored at room temperature. Potatoes and apples will keep best in a hessian sack (not together in the sack though).

Also agree with reduced quality

M&s's code is so obvious, it might as well be a display until date!

Asda is obvious (letter for month plus day) but tesco and sainsbury's are pretty inconsistent. Waitrose need google or more fingers than I have to decipher but I don't have a convenient store any more so rarely order more than a couple of day's worth of veg.

Because frozen veg often tastes watery and hs a weird texture. I'd rather have a tasty, sweet, crunchy carrot than a spongy one that needs salt to have any flavour at all.

I leave carrots out to dry off, they are usually moist, then wrap in foil and put them in the fridge. I buy from a shop because a lot of them are those colourless, yellow tinged, tasteless ones now.

I was brought up with home grown and find it very sad that it has come to this. But never mind, in about 50 years the UK will be self sufficient and it will all be grown here, some people will be pleased about that. Unless it is all GM by then of course, then it won't be worth eating.