The Folly Of Food Labels

I TAKE no notice of best-before, sell-by or use-by dates, I’m more of a sniff-by kind of a girl. If it doesn’t smell whiffy, it’s edible as far as I’m concerned. Now I’m pleased to hear — and a little surprised — that the Government agrees with me.


Environment secretary Hilary Benn has pointed out the sheer folly of slinging out perfectly good food just because it’s past its best-before date. Note, he's not suggesting that anyone ignores the use-by date, probably not wanting to get sued for an outbreak of botulism. Personally, I trust my own judgement.


My friends and I have different attitudes to that “best before” date-stamp on food. Some religiously throw out anything that has passed its shelf life while others use the date as a guide.


I, however, look on those dates as a challenge. A packet of custard powder that orders me to use it by October 7, 2009? Pah! I’ll make that raspberry trifle when I want to and I may not want to until January 7, 2020.


To me it’s always seemed madness (and somehow immoral) to throw away what is obviously perfectly good food. In fact, as a nation we throw away ONE-THIRD of all the food that we buy. I’ve written about this before here.

Not only is this an incredible waste of money but is environmentally disastrous. I refuse to believe that a tin of beans that is perfectly safe to eat at 11.59pm, suddenly becomes poisonous a minute later. If it were true, Dr Crippen wouldn’t have bothered with the hyoscine hydrobromide to poison his wife, he would have opened a dodgy packet of prawns and made her a sandwich instead. (In the interests of historical accuracy, Crippen TRIED to poison his wife but gave her too much hyoscine hydrobromide — she went screamingly mad and he shot her. Oh well... can’t win ’em all.)

Mr Benn said: “In the past, long before such labels existed, people would look at food in the fridge or larder and decide whether it was OK. Throwing food away costs us money. And if it goes to landfill it produces methane and that adds to the problem of climate change."

Mr Benn also said Britain must produce more food to avert world hunger.

If you look in the back of my cupboards you’ll probably find tins of Carnation milk that my grandmother squirrelled away in the war — the First World War. If bottles of wine from the Napoleonic era can make hundreds of thousands of pounds, my tins of Carnation must be worth a few quid, surely?

I haven’t poisoned anybody yet. At least, I don’t think I have. Which reminds me, I wonder what happened to my old schoolfriend who popped round for a sandwich in 2003? She hasn’t been back since.