A content creator who helps Britons shop sustainably claims there's a way of working out which produce on supermarket shelves is the most fresh. Grace Forell, a UK based TikToker who posts on the platform as The Sustainable Spender, explains you may see ambiguous codes on the packaging instead of best-before dates.
Food in the UK is often sold with both a use-by date, which relates to food safety, and a best before date, relating to food quality. While selling food past is use-by date is illegal and can be dangerous to consumers, shops can sell products past the best before date listed on a product.
This is because while food past its best-before or best before end (BBE) date may not be at its best, but will generally be safe to eat, as per the UK food standards agency.
In recent years, some supermarkets have decided to stop using best-before labels on certain kinds of items to tackle waste, as often the products remained safe to eat but were thrown out unneccessarily, MailOnline reports.
But in a video, Grace claims there's a code you can look out for to work out how fresh one item is compared to others even if there isn't a BBE date.
The shopping guru says that while "supermarkets have gotten rid of many best before dates from their fruit & vegetables," they come with internal codes that you can work out, though they vary between chains.
The post shows as an example a cucumber from Tesco which has the code "H09" on its packaging.
Grace says the H stands for the month of August, as each month is given a letter of the alphabet, with A for January, B for February, and so on.
The nine is day of the month, she says, meaning in this case the code means the 9th of August, she claims.
Grace said the later the "freshness date", the fresher the produce will be.
The TikToker says Asda uses the same dating system. In a caption accompanying the video, Grace says at Sainsbury's "all the codes are book ended with J and S, so ignore the these letters and look at the numbers in-between. This is the freshness date as DDMM.
"At Morrisons, the letter is the real first letter of the month, followed by the dat as a number. So 'A' is for August, 'O' for October, and so on," Grace added.
She suggests using the information as a guide and urges her followers "DON'T be put off by food sitting in your fridge or cupboard that has gone beyond the data on this code. This is not a use by date, it's simply a freshness guide.
However, in an appearance on ITV's This Morning she stressed, "to be clear, these aren't the same as best before dates".
"They're more of an internal code used by the supermarkets to demonstrate the kind of the freshness rotation."
You can find official guidance on food safety at home from the Food Standards Agency here.
Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, and Morrisons have been approached for comment.
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