Best B4: BOGOF

Launched in 2007 by WRAP, the 'Love Food, Hate... — Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know about you but I get sick and tired of stuff supposedly going off in the fridge, or apparently having to throw it out before its been used, simply because of date labeling…

Like many others, it appears to me that the labelling and ‘best-before’ dates on food packaging, along with today’s actual food production processes, have a great deal more to do with marketing and company sales figures than they do actual food safety? It appears the government are finally starting to think along similar lines…

BBC News Magazine: “Best-before” dates on food could be reformed, the UK government has indicated. But what purpose do they actually serve? (Read more)

One of the major factors in food wastage is purported to be the BOGOF deals operated by all the major food retailers and supermarket chains…

New research the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed that some £13.7bn worth of food was binned in England last year – equal to each household wasting an average of £520 on uneaten food and drink… (Read more)

So, as recently questioned in The Guardian, has the best-before labelling system actually passed it’s sell-by date? As they point out, and I tend to agree, best-before is not so much about consumer guidance but more simply about retailer self-preservation…

Law professors tell their students that the principle of lawyer-client privilege exists to protect not clients but lawyers; we should all recognise the same principle in both “best before” (BB) and “use by” (UB) labelling on foodstuffs. They don’t serve to protect consumers from harm. They protect manufacturers and retailers from lawsuits… (Read more)

Do artisan food producers of tasty organic products like a side of cured meat or a block of maturing cheese, which has been sat in the cool cellar for weeks on end, concern themselves about silly labels? No, and in general the product is likely to have far more going for it than some mass-produced ‘plastic’ tasting supermarket rubbish.

One of the biggest problems we face in today’s market driven society, especially when the consumer actually has very little knowledge about the product is; they tend to blindly accept what they are told by the retailer. More reasons why as consumers we should try to gain greater understanding about how food is actually sourced, produced and prepared…

I love food but I hate waste!