Best-before labels and food waste
Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2022 7:32 am
My food for thought this week is generated by reports that Waitrose is planning to scrap best-before dates from nearly 500 fresh food products in an effort to reduce food waste, and would thereby join other supermarkets that have started such initiatives. A glance at the online comments generated by such articles indicates that they find favour with a large part of the population. This generally isn't because people think that they themselves waste lots of food, but because they imagine other people do. The articles seem to appeal to a desire, which I think we all have, to imagine ourselves as ladies and gentlemen of robust common sense, and to contrast ourselves with other people who lack the same.
The snag with all this is that there is no real evidence that removing best-before dates will reduce food waste, and there are perfectly sensible reasons for thinking that it might increase it. The available research attempts to determine how much food is discarded as a result of date labels, and how much might thereby be wasted, but makes no attempt to discover how much food is consumed as a result of people planning their meals so as to ensure that they use up food before its best-before date, thereby avoiding such waste.
Most of this research seems to involve organisation called WRAP which engages in both research and activism. The documents they produce follow a pattern that is not uncommon with such organisations that combine those activities. They produce fairly sober and scientific research reports. From these reports slightly misleading press releases are generated, and those press releases then generate significantly more misleading press articles.
WRAP estimate that 2 million tonnes of food is thrown away each year because it is not ‘used in time’. However in the majority of cases (around two thirds) the decision to throw away the food seems to have nothing to do with date labels of any kind. Instead food ends up in the bin simply because it is mouldy, or stale, or otherwise manky. In the remaining one third of cases a date label is "mentioned as the trigger for disposal". Some of that might be perfectly edible food discarded because it has exceeded its best-before date, but not all of it will be. In some cases the date label will be a use-by date (and WRAP doesn't suggest removing or ignoring those). And the fact that a date label acted as a "trigger for disposal" doesn't necessarily mean that it was edible. It could be that the date label suggested that it might be inedible, and closer inspection would have revealed that it was, indeed, inedible (particularly if the food was well past its best-before or use-by date).
So, expressing those figures in a more meaningful way, the average UK citizen discards around 80g of food each day because it wasn't used in time, which clearly isn't good. However it is unlikely that any more than 20g of this is edible food that has passed a best-before date (and the figure might well be considerably less than 20g). By contrast over 50g of that discarded food has actually gone off. It is a reasonable bet that none of that 50g would have been discarded if the consumer had been careful to eat it before a date label expired. People sometimes comment, disparagingly, on the fact that date labels tend to be conservative and that food is often fine after the date label expires. It is less common to see any recognition of the corrollary - that food is almost certain to be fine before the date label, so if you eat it by then you won't waste it.
So it is likely that a significant amount of food gets wasted because consumers don't or can't make use of date labels when planning their meals, which brings us to the elephant-burger in the room. No one has a clue how much extra food would be wasted if less food had date labels that we could use in that way.
If you dig far enough into WRAP's research, it becomes clear that they know this. They are aware that date labels are used to avoid waste as well as being a potential cause of waste. They are also aware that neither they, or anyone else, has any idea how much wastage is avoided as a result of date labels (for example see pages 5 and 6 of this report). But none of those considerations end up in the media articles that are generated by the research. These always tacitly assume that date labels are used to decide when to bin food, rather than to decide when to eat it. It is odd that this passes without comment because many readers will be using date labels in the latter manner. I can't be the only one who, on finding two cucumbers in their fridge, looks at the labels on them and eats the one that is closer to its best-before date (and the oft-repeated advice to sniff or poke the produce to test its freshness isn't much use in such cases, because both cucumbers would smell and taste fine - it's just that one is closer to the point at which it won't smell and taste fine, and if I use them in the wrong order I probably won't get round to the older cucumber in time to avoid that).
If we genuinely wanted to avoid food wastage, the sensible attitude to take to best-before labels would be to pay attention to them, to understand how they differ fron use-by labels, and to try to plan our meals so as to avoid exceeding them (while recognising that if that plan doesn't quite work out and we end up with food in the fridge that is past its best-before date, it might still be edible). Unfortunately that would be an appeal to a slightly anal-retentive attention to detail. That isn't likely to be the basis of an emotionally compelling newspaper article, whereas something that flatters us into thinking that others lack our robust common sense probably will.
The snag with all this is that there is no real evidence that removing best-before dates will reduce food waste, and there are perfectly sensible reasons for thinking that it might increase it. The available research attempts to determine how much food is discarded as a result of date labels, and how much might thereby be wasted, but makes no attempt to discover how much food is consumed as a result of people planning their meals so as to ensure that they use up food before its best-before date, thereby avoiding such waste.
Most of this research seems to involve organisation called WRAP which engages in both research and activism. The documents they produce follow a pattern that is not uncommon with such organisations that combine those activities. They produce fairly sober and scientific research reports. From these reports slightly misleading press releases are generated, and those press releases then generate significantly more misleading press articles.
WRAP estimate that 2 million tonnes of food is thrown away each year because it is not ‘used in time’. However in the majority of cases (around two thirds) the decision to throw away the food seems to have nothing to do with date labels of any kind. Instead food ends up in the bin simply because it is mouldy, or stale, or otherwise manky. In the remaining one third of cases a date label is "mentioned as the trigger for disposal". Some of that might be perfectly edible food discarded because it has exceeded its best-before date, but not all of it will be. In some cases the date label will be a use-by date (and WRAP doesn't suggest removing or ignoring those). And the fact that a date label acted as a "trigger for disposal" doesn't necessarily mean that it was edible. It could be that the date label suggested that it might be inedible, and closer inspection would have revealed that it was, indeed, inedible (particularly if the food was well past its best-before or use-by date).
So, expressing those figures in a more meaningful way, the average UK citizen discards around 80g of food each day because it wasn't used in time, which clearly isn't good. However it is unlikely that any more than 20g of this is edible food that has passed a best-before date (and the figure might well be considerably less than 20g). By contrast over 50g of that discarded food has actually gone off. It is a reasonable bet that none of that 50g would have been discarded if the consumer had been careful to eat it before a date label expired. People sometimes comment, disparagingly, on the fact that date labels tend to be conservative and that food is often fine after the date label expires. It is less common to see any recognition of the corrollary - that food is almost certain to be fine before the date label, so if you eat it by then you won't waste it.
So it is likely that a significant amount of food gets wasted because consumers don't or can't make use of date labels when planning their meals, which brings us to the elephant-burger in the room. No one has a clue how much extra food would be wasted if less food had date labels that we could use in that way.
If you dig far enough into WRAP's research, it becomes clear that they know this. They are aware that date labels are used to avoid waste as well as being a potential cause of waste. They are also aware that neither they, or anyone else, has any idea how much wastage is avoided as a result of date labels (for example see pages 5 and 6 of this report). But none of those considerations end up in the media articles that are generated by the research. These always tacitly assume that date labels are used to decide when to bin food, rather than to decide when to eat it. It is odd that this passes without comment because many readers will be using date labels in the latter manner. I can't be the only one who, on finding two cucumbers in their fridge, looks at the labels on them and eats the one that is closer to its best-before date (and the oft-repeated advice to sniff or poke the produce to test its freshness isn't much use in such cases, because both cucumbers would smell and taste fine - it's just that one is closer to the point at which it won't smell and taste fine, and if I use them in the wrong order I probably won't get round to the older cucumber in time to avoid that).
If we genuinely wanted to avoid food wastage, the sensible attitude to take to best-before labels would be to pay attention to them, to understand how they differ fron use-by labels, and to try to plan our meals so as to avoid exceeding them (while recognising that if that plan doesn't quite work out and we end up with food in the fridge that is past its best-before date, it might still be edible). Unfortunately that would be an appeal to a slightly anal-retentive attention to detail. That isn't likely to be the basis of an emotionally compelling newspaper article, whereas something that flatters us into thinking that others lack our robust common sense probably will.