I can’t see any value any more of going for a “big” food shop, as doing smaller shops* at least ensures in-date food.

This week, I had to eat 1kg of strawberries because they were going mushy *one day* after I bought them. My beef mince has expired two days after I bought it. Is it just me?

33 comments

  1. I just buy food with later expiry dates. You’re allowed to check them before you buy you know.

  2. It depends where you shop I think. Fruit and veg from Aldi/Lidl doesn’t last very long regardless of the dates.

  3. Yes, this is a problem for me too! The lactofree milk I buy used to be ‘once open use within 7 days’ and over the last 2 years or so it’s down to ‘once open, use within 2 days but it might be good for longer’. I notice it here and there but this is the most inconvenient

  4. I guess that’s what happens when there either isn’t enough people to pick the food, or it takes longer to import stuff due to reasons.

    Apparently it’s progress though….

  5. Go to the back of the shelve that’s what I do, stock rotation, bought mince from Tesco Friday front mince had 3 days back mince 6 days

  6. I think a lot of food used to be transported in hypoxic environments to slow decay. With the rise in the cost of CO2, is this impacting storage and travel degradation?

  8. If you shop online, they grab the first thing (and maybe trained to pick the oldest date). In person you can pick the longest date

  9. I’ve noticed this with fruit and salad lately! I know everyone says it’s the same quality wherever but I notice if I buy fresh from Aldi/Lidl often it starts going off within 1-2 days compared to if I buy from Waitrose it lasts longer.

    I realised I kept throwing a lot of fresh stuff away when I bought it cheaply and was waiting money. Now I often do two weekly shops one in Aldi/Lidl where I get stuff like pasta, rice, sauces etc. And one in Waitrose where I get fresh stuff as I find it lasts longer.

  10. No it’s not just you. I think people have cut back leaving manufacturers with a glut of food. e.g.s. I’ve picked up loads of cheese recently that’s close to expiry and frozen it – win win. Tomato pasatta got totally overpriced and not it available for 25% of original price as it is now going out of date. There’s been a few other things too. Some dry packed food with normally year long expiries have been on their limit – not ditching them though. Nuts seem to have shorter and shorter expiries all the time too.

    Pretty certain most of these short dates are just as the prices are too high so people stopped buying stuff.

    Soft fruits I’ve all but given up on since they’ve stopped putting dates on unless I’m using it that day or next.

  11. All fruit and vegetables have incredibly short expiry dates these days. In some instances, they are on the change, whilst still in the supermarket.

    Why do you think there is this push by supermarkets, to remove best before/use by dates dates?

  12. Not just you

    Luckily food has got so expensive we do 2 weekly food deliveries now (Previously we couldnt get up to £40 twice a week – it’s v easy now).

  13. Not only that but the quality of produce is significantly down. It’s been getting worse for about 2 years now. Sometimes, I’ll get raspberries that look perfectly fine in the shop, only to be mouldy a few hours later despite being in the fridge.

    Unfortunately, green grocers in my small town closed a while ago and the amount of locally produced fresh produce is limited but I try to get that as much as possible. It tastes better and it actually stays fresh much longer.

  14. I bought some meat to BBQ on friday. Didn’t get a chance yesterday because of rain and just seen the expiry date on all of it is *today*. It wasn’t even on offer or anything, just straight off the shelves. I swear you used to get the better part of a week?

  16. I bought tomstoes from Lidl yesterday. Got some out today for lunch. They’re mouldy.

  17. I’ve a smallish asda near me who manage to put out loads of food with 2 days left.

    I’m told it’s when a bigger store is replenished they make sure it’s good dates and send the shit to outlying stores.

  18. Meat from Tesco’s seems to go off before expiry – especially chicken thighs.

  19. Not sure if related but we like unsmoked streaky bacon and we’ve noticed that it looks off now on the shelf from Asda and Aldi. As in the colour looked brownish instead of pink.

    I bought some from Tesco yesterday and it looked fresh so not sure if this was just our nearby shops

  20. What bugs me more is how shit the reduced stuff is. Like they only reduce it on the actual day it’s going out of date and usually only towards the end of the day. Plus, they only reduce it by the tiniest amount. E.g. a £4.20 cheesecake reduced by 20p… I’d rather spend the extra 20p and not have only one night to eat it. Like, what’s the point? It’s just going to get binned if it doesn’t sell, and they just lose money. At least reduce it to half the price and get some money back and not let it go to waste… I rarely even look at reduced sections now because it tends to be a waste of time.

  21. Well that’s for a multitude of reasons, but the big 2 are;

    1 – a lot of weather issues have wrecked supply chains, that’s had a knock on effect of supermarkets having to import more produce from further afield

    2 – we’re importing more from further afield. For example, we import a lot of tomatoes from Morocco. If they’re picked on Monday, by the time they hit the supermarket shelf it is, if you’re very lucky, Friday. Those tomatoes are already 5 days old before you buy them. Same applies for most produce. You really should be looking at where they’re coming from, then apply logic.

    British tomatoes are going to be fresher than Moroccan tomatoes. May not be your preferred type of tomato, but they’ll be fresher.

    My advice? Go to your local market stalls if you’re lucky enough to have one, as most of their stock has come from a farm within 24-48hrs, or, go to your local farm shop. I know it’s not available for everyone, particularly if you live in a city or don’t drive, but it’s honestly so much better. And generally cheaper too, depending on what you’re buying. Lettuce in a supermarket is about 60p now, my local farm shop is selling lettuce thats double the size for 35p.

  22. Spinach Is the worst, the expiry date is always a day or two after you buy it. I’ve started buying the unwashed spinach which lasts so much longer!

  23. Food quality has definitely plummeted – I notice especially with milk and fresh vegetables/ fruit. Nothing seems to be lasting as long and the quality is noticeably worst across all supermarkets too. I shop mainly in Lidl for big shops and smaller bits from sainsburys and Waitrose nearer work. All bad.

  24. I have.

    I get most of my groceries delivered, and in the past ~2-3 months the best by dates have started dropping a LOT.

    For example, I buy 2l of milk that usually lasts me for a week. Well I can’t do that anymore because I get milk that expires in two days, and even properly refrigerated, by the third day it smells. So now I need to buy one litre every 2-3 days instead, which is more expensive, generates more trash, and makes me spend more (since I have to fill out an £15 basket for the delivery…). And in the past two weeks, I’ve been even getting milk that expires THE SAME FREAKING DAY. It’s just overall wasteful.

  26. Don’t worry, it’ll all get worse in November when proper phytosanitary checks start on EU imports and the stuff has to spend a couple of days longer in a truck. Blue passports, though, eh?

  27. I’ve had to stop ordering most fruit and veg on my weekly Tesco delivery because of short expiry dates and poor quality. Mind you, the store itself is no better for fresh produce, it does feel like Tesco don’t care. For fruit and veg I get it from my local Co-op when I need it

  28. I live on my own and have to go twice a week due to the dates being shit on most stuff, especially if it’s fresh. I cook every day so it’s not like I’m leaving it in the fridge for days on end, it simply isn’t viable to go once a week as I’d be throwing money away.

  30. I’ve seen a couple boxes of fruit two days in date with mould on them at TESCO recently, and it doesn’t help that they’ve started getting rid of best befores.

    It used to be bit of a joke a few years ago when my mum got Sainsbury’s delivery how close the crumpets were to their best before, the majority of the time it was either that day or the next

  32. There’s now a campaign to remove expiry dates from as many products as possible. This is being done under the guise of “It will stop people throwing away food before it goes bad, it’s good for the environment.”. Rather stores are failing to get produce in good time so they want to sell you stale/sweated goods that will expire the next day or two at their usual premium.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like