h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, weirdy weird

I think there's a difference between 3 days and 3 months past sell by dates!

I know that, but tell it to my taste buds

Fords, I'm with you, trust me, I wouldn't eat it past it's sell-by. But would I throw someone else's yoghurt out? That's where the debate starts.

If it was stinking the fridge out, yes

. What did I say about sell by dates? You mean, I presume you wouldn't eat past it's 'use by' date if it has one. As I'm sure you well educated people know, 'sell by' dates have no bearing on food quality, safety, or taste. It's just a 'reorder' flag for the retailers

Thinking about it literally and logically, if food became spoiled after its 'sell by' date, then 24-hour shops that sell, quite legally, food at 5 minutes before midnight on the sell-by date, would be expecting you to eat the food within that 5 minutes (assuming you teleported home).

I can see you've spent hours thinking about this

The sooner this happens http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/15/food-waste-sellby-dates?CMP=twt_gu to stop pointless waste, the better. There should only ever be one, 'use by' date on perishable foods which can cause you harm, such as chicken, eggy stuff, etc. It's a total nonsense having any sort of 'throw-away' dates on tinned, powdered and dried food, for example. Most of that stuff will outlive the roaches after the nuclear holocaust.

Agreed! Let's all go back to using our senses to decide if the foodstuff is still edible

Indeed I do fords. There are very few more important things to think about in a sealed world of finite (increasingly expensive) resources I sometimes wish that food was 10 or 20 times as expensive as it is. Then we'd see the fussy, spoiled people think twice about binning stuff, which *might* not taste quite as first class as it did the day it was killed/cooked. We do have a very effective stomach full of strong acid for a reason

Sorry It's just that few things press my big red flashing anger button faster than, folk chucking out edible food. It just highlights everything that's wrong with our species and society, in one, easy action.

OK we're back to the yoghurts I binned.

This was on 30 December. Their sell bys were September and July. Regardless of whether or not these 3+ month old desserts were edible, the owners had obviously long forgotten about them, therefore they were NEVER going to be eaten.

I hate food waste. I abhor food waste. I even wrote a guide entry about it. The problem isn't sell by dates. The problem is people buying in advance of need.

People are too bloody wasteful, I agree. I always feel guilty for chucking out even the tiniest bit of mouldy, squishy pepper that's been up the back of the fridge for three months

Oooakay, steering this back on topic; petty hate; supermarket '2 for1 and 'buy one, get 3 to bin' offers. Survey after survey states that consumers would just prefer the one item they buy to be cheaper. But then the supermarkets would not be able to screw their suppliers quite as effectively, so that wouldn't work would it.

I absolutely agree with you, Bea. The problem is us buying too much food in the first place.

You're trying to steer an h2g2 thread back to the original topic? Good luck with that

I'll take advantage of those offers if I can freeze the extras; the upside is I can fill my freezer pretty cheaply

But on the subject of supermarkets, I bloody hate the idiots who leave their trolley in the middle of the aisle and then wander off, giving you funny looks as you push their trolley out of the way with a few choice words.

I'm the exact opposite; I'm always really possessive of my trolley for some reason, even through my rational mind tells me that as the contents are all still unpaid for, nobody is going to nick anything from it. I really need to learn to let go.... and leave my trolley in the middle of the isle, whilst i shop in the next one

and really weirdly for this place, this thread never strays far from the topic for very long. There's a kind of unspoken law, combined with peer pressure and threats of violence, that keeps the petty hates thread sacred and relatively un-tainted by thread-drift.


So anyway... petty hate; ....

It just goes to show we're all a bunch of grumpy gits