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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] These rotten food labels are well past their sell-by date
  • Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:40:14 -0600


These rotten food labels are well past their sell-by date
By Clarissa Dickson-wright
Last updated at 9:42 AM on 11th June 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1192223/CLARISSA-DICKSON-WRIGHT-Th
ese-rotten-food-labels-past-sell-date.html

Here's a little game to liven up a dinner party.

Wait until all three courses have been devoured appreciatively by your
guests. And then tell them that the food you served up is past its
supermarket 'use-by' date.

Look at the horrified faces around the table. Savour their silence.

At best, you have identified yourself as a slovenly wretch; at worse, a
potential poisoner.

This is absolute rubbish, of course. We're all led to believe that adhering
to use-by dates mean we are safe, healthy, responsible and hygienic - but
it's just not true.

Use-by dates and their absurd companions, 'sell-by' and 'best before', are
not there to save us from food poisoning.

They are just a marketing scam, intended to persuade us to throw away
perfectly good food so we have to buy more.

Which is why I welcome the news that sell-by and best-before dates on
almost all fresh produce and thousands of other food items are to be
scrapped.

These labels are responsible for tons of meat, cheese, fruit and vegetables
being dumped in landfill sites when we could be happily eating it.

In these cash-strapped days, more than ever, we should trust our instincts,
avoid the rubbish bin and enjoy the food on which we have spent our
hard-earned cash.

Indeed, I would encourage shoppers to hang around towards the end of the
day in the supermarket waiting for an assistant with a sticker gun to mark
down prices on items about to pass their sell-by date.

This food will almost always be safe for a few more days - and it's
probably at least half-price.

The sensible cook will save a fortune by understanding what can be eaten
after its use-by date and what can't.

There's no great science to this. We all have in-built sensors to help us -
our noses.

The smell of meat when it is off is unmistakable: instinct alone would tell
you to avoid it.

Fresh fish has a light, sweet smell - while a heavy, repellent odour
indicates that it isn't suitable even for the cat.

Equally, a sense of smell is all you need to know whether milk and eggs are
fresh.
sell by date

All you need to check whether food is safe to eat is your sense of smell

It is, of course, daft to suggest that a use-by date can be calculated
accurately or that a single date would cover all situations.

There are too many variables.

It depends on how you store food - a couple of pork chops left in the back
of a hot car for a few days will smell very differently to the same chops
kept in an efficient fridge or well-ventilated cold larder.

Moreover, how food is eventually cooked affects how long it can be kept
safely.

Dishes using raw ingredients such as properly made mayonnaise or sorbets
must have fresh straight from-the-chicken eggs.

An older egg, on the other hand, will carry little salmonella risk if it is
brutally hard boiled.

Fermentation, rotting and bacteria have always been part of food and
cooking.

Sauces made from fermented anchovies or soy are better if they are left a
while after opening.

Cheeses mature wonderfully - blue varieties are streaked with the very
stuff nannying food safety officers are trying to save us from: mould.

Imagine the idiocy of putting a use-by date on a newly bottled Bordeaux:
the point is that it gets better with age.

If use-by is irrelevant, then best before is plain silly. Best before dates
are commonly used on dry goods - pasta, cereals and biscuits.

Here, the biscuit manufacturers aren't even suggesting there is a risk in
keeping the package for longer: merely that in their opinion it would taste
better if eaten sooner.

Well they would say that, wouldn't they? Any baked product will have a long
life only if it is stored properly in a tin.

Don't think, incidentally, that retailers print use-by dates on food out of
the kindness of their hearts.

Besides encouraging us to throw out perfectly good food, it provides them
with legal protection.

If we are sick after eating food that has passed its so-called use-by date,
we can't sue them.
sell by dates

Tonnes of food is thrown out and goes into landfill because it is past its
sell-by date

We have been warned, so it's not their fault - in the same way that health
warnings on cigarettes give tobacco companies a defence against legal
action from cancer victims.

So how can we avoid the tyranny of the use-by date? Well, I <cite>never buy
meat from supermarkets.

Their meat is tasteless and tough, plumped up by fluid and coloured by dyes
to look fresh.

Instead of this pre-packaged pallid fare, I go to my local traditional
butcher, who will have hung his meat for between four and six weeks.

Hanging breaks down the meat slowly, making it richer and more tender.
There is no risk as long as you keep the flies away.

I know and trust my butcher, but he never provides use-by dates. If he
failed to keep up his high standards of hygiene, his customers would soon
know about it and he would find himself out of business.

Vegetables should not need use-by dates: it is obvious when a vegetable if
'off'.

They should be grown locally and go straight to the cook after harvesting,
rather than being freighted, chilled and packaged.

English asparagus, for instance, tastes completely different to the
supermarket offering if it is freshly picked.

Of course, the season is short - from late April to mid June. Before
airfreight, we could enjoy this wonderful vegetable for only a short season
- and it tasted so much better for it.

This relationship between a local farmer or shop is far stronger than the
anonymous transactions between the modern consumer and supermarket.

Perhaps this alienation from our food is why the British are especially
picky about food safety.

TODAY'S POLL

Should we pay attention to food label use-by dates?
Yes
No
VOTE
woman in supermarket
POLL RESULTS

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All polls Click to view yesterday's poll results

Our food was industrialised long before other nations and we were the first
Europeans to take to big supermarkets with enthusiasm. Food sell-by dates
first appeared in the Seventies, introduced by Marks & Spencer.

I'm sure they would say otherwise, but the move turned out to be a smart
sales gimmick: a demonstration that certain supermarkets cared and were
different from more callous rivals.

Others were obliged to follow and dating is now part of EU legislation.

Use-by dates assume food is kept in a fridge. While I would never argue
that the fridge has not been a brilliant invention, it is certainly not the
be-all and end-all of food safety.

It encourages cross-contamination between cooked and uncooked meat by
placing them close to one another, and can leave food over-cold in its
centre and resistant to cooking.

Equally, it provides a false sense of security. If it's been in the fridge,
it must be OK.

Not necessarily. There are equally good traditional ways to store food.

I use a well-ventilated cold larder, which keeps food at three or four
degrees centigrade - the ideal temperature.

Potting - where meat or seafood is covered by a layer of fat in a glass or
ceramic vessel - will preserve food for months, with only a cloth to keep
the flies off.

Equally, storage in wine and oil, drying, pickling and salting will keep
food just as well as a fridge.

Man has survived and prospered for more than 150,000 years on this planet
without the help of use-by dates.

As hunter-gatherers, we passed knowledge of what could be eaten safely down
to our children and grandchildren.

Where there was once instinct and skill, there are now meaningless numbers
printed on plastic.

Use-by dates are not a mark of technical and scientific superiority, but
merely a sign that we have lost touch with the sources of our food.

We do not trust our supermarkets - nor, sadly, do we trust ourselves.




  • [Livingontheland] These rotten food labels are well past their sell-by date, Tradingpost, 06/11/2009

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