You might notice that many grocers and supermarkets are discounting close-dated food products lately. And you probably have unopened food products in your pantry that are past the "best before" dates.
The questions are: Should I buy close-dated food products at the discount? Should I throw out unopened past dated food products?
I've witnessed people tossing out anything past the "best before" date, and I think that's wasteful. It's estimated that 31.8% percent of the North American food budget is wasted by discarding groceries. “More than two-thirds of households in our study have food waste estimates of between 20% and 50%. However, even the least wasteful household wastes 8.7% of the food it acquires.” (– Prof. Edward Jaenicke of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey)
With the recent inflation in the price of groceries you probably don't want to be in that group that wastes 50% of their grocery budget. Don't expect to be in that 8.7% because not every bit of the head of cauliflower gets eaten, and fresh produce does spoil.
By law in Canada, a best-before date is only required on packaged food products that have a shelf-life of 90 days or less. Foods that will last longer than 90 days (such as canned food, rice, pasta, dried beans, nuts and frozen food) don’t need a best-before date, but many food companies choose to put one on anyway. So here are 3 pages about shelf life and "best before" dates that may help stretch your grocery budget:
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