Monday 21 September 2009

Gone past 'Use By' date and I'm still alive

I'm sure that I've mentioned this before: I have a real thing about wasted food. It's not just the economic cost (to me) of uneaten food chucked out it's the fact that so many people in the world are starving so that I shouldn't be wasting my share. Then there is the extra going into the back of the refuse lorry, and ultimately landfill and that is costing us all money. In fairness it has to be noted that as I am a one person household it is perhaps easier for me to ensure that food waste is virtually non-existent.

Usually I'm pretty canny with my shopping and so seldom find myself with part used grocery items when the 'best before' or 'use by' date arrives. However there have been a couple of times just recently when that sort of skill has been wanting. In the first instance I had a pot of coleslaw (yum yum) that took me a few days beyond that date to eat with my salads. Fortunately I have a very useful bit of kit to detect whether it was still OK to eat, the good old hooter otherwise known as one's nose! Each time it came out of the fridge I had a look and gave it a sniff - no problem so I continued to use it. I also this morning finished a bottle of 'cranberry and raspberry drink' and that was a couple of days over the 'use by' date. Now by some miracle I'm still alive, I didn't get any sort of food poisoning either! I'm not saying every product is so lenient regarding these dates but what I am getting round to is the enormous waste created by perfectly palatable food finding its way into the dustbin when there would have been no problem consuming it.

Here endeth the lesson ...

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