Changes In Food Labelling...
I return to one of my favourite topics...food.
How much food is un-necessarily thrown away. I have mentioned this before.
Its been reported in the news today that in future to avoid this happening or to try and change our attitude to food manufacturers and retailers will/should use the terms best before and use by and sell by is dropped.
Use by for items that if eaten after the date would as likely as not cause health problems and best before which is unlikely too and probably you can eat quite some time afterwards.
Makes a lot of sense to me and I have been known to eat food after the dates shown on the product. Not weeks or months after but a few days after. I don’t imagine a scene that as soon as a date is reached, it suddenly becomes toxic. A date will be chosen that will err on the side of caution.
The term best before is still a little iffy for me, I’m looking a big bag of Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate buttons and wondering…can eat them? Best before end of March 2011 but its now the middle of September 2011...is that too long? Should I even be considering such a thing?
Having said that I have been eating some packets of crisps dated Best before June and July 2011 recently and I couldn't’t taste any difference to how they probably would’ve been when purchased months ago.
I ate custard and raspberry fresh cream donut yesterday that was a day over its use by date and I’m still here.
But we can all remember the stories of how tinned stuff from years ago have been opened and its still been safe to eat.
My friend Span has mentioned before on an earlier post how he has eaten stuff “well past” the dates and he’s still here…
In general its commonsense, hopefully looking, feeling and smelling will decide if many items are safe and in the case of loose or fresh foods that is all that you can depend on. In my own case that is a little difficult as I do not have a strong sense of smell.
From a later feature on radio on this topic it seems it is a proposed piece of legislation that will be or is expected to be introduced as law but hasn’t been yet.
Its something that could be done I am sure without it having to be enforced. And later I heard that it is mainly voluntary so all the food manufacturer's have to do is drop the "Sell By" term. How hard is that?
Scrap food sell-by dates, government urges manufacturers
The Official Document
How much food is un-necessarily thrown away. I have mentioned this before.
Its been reported in the news today that in future to avoid this happening or to try and change our attitude to food manufacturers and retailers will/should use the terms best before and use by and sell by is dropped.
Use by for items that if eaten after the date would as likely as not cause health problems and best before which is unlikely too and probably you can eat quite some time afterwards.
Makes a lot of sense to me and I have been known to eat food after the dates shown on the product. Not weeks or months after but a few days after. I don’t imagine a scene that as soon as a date is reached, it suddenly becomes toxic. A date will be chosen that will err on the side of caution.
The term best before is still a little iffy for me, I’m looking a big bag of Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate buttons and wondering…can eat them? Best before end of March 2011 but its now the middle of September 2011...is that too long? Should I even be considering such a thing?
Having said that I have been eating some packets of crisps dated Best before June and July 2011 recently and I couldn't’t taste any difference to how they probably would’ve been when purchased months ago.
I ate custard and raspberry fresh cream donut yesterday that was a day over its use by date and I’m still here.
But we can all remember the stories of how tinned stuff from years ago have been opened and its still been safe to eat.
My friend Span has mentioned before on an earlier post how he has eaten stuff “well past” the dates and he’s still here…
In general its commonsense, hopefully looking, feeling and smelling will decide if many items are safe and in the case of loose or fresh foods that is all that you can depend on. In my own case that is a little difficult as I do not have a strong sense of smell.
From a later feature on radio on this topic it seems it is a proposed piece of legislation that will be or is expected to be introduced as law but hasn’t been yet.
Its something that could be done I am sure without it having to be enforced. And later I heard that it is mainly voluntary so all the food manufacturer's have to do is drop the "Sell By" term. How hard is that?
Scrap food sell-by dates, government urges manufacturers
The Official Document
posted by The Great Gildersleeve | 11:36 am
2 Comments:
Yes I heard about this too. The differences between the 'best by' and 'use by' date etc. As you say, common sense plus our other senses are usually enough and then our body has a few other mechanisms to reject stuff that it detects that will do us damage.
Re the chocolate buttons just try one, if it looks, smells and tastes OK and is smooth (not dry and bitty) you know it's OK!
Yes, I'll give that a try :-)
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