Aldi has become the latest supermarket to scrap best before dates across its fruit and vegetable offering.
The retailer will remove the dates from around 60 of its own-brand products by the end of the year, with citrus fruits, apples, pears, carrots, potatoes and onions all impacted. The move is part of Aldi's ongoing commitment to cut its food waste in half by 2030.
Sainsbury’s also announced that it was making the same major change to more product lines earlier this week, ditching date labels on 276 of its own-brand fresh products from the end of August with a further 130 products to follow. The supermarket said that the changes could save up to 17 million food products going to waste each year, The Mirror reports.
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While ‘use by’ dates refer to whether a product is safe to eat, ‘best before’ dates are only about the quality of the food. Use by dates are included on the likes of fresh meat, fish and dairy products which are likely to cause sickness if eaten when spoiled, so products with a use by date on them should not be eaten after this date has expired.
However, a best before date is used to indicate to customers when a food may decline in quality - but these products are generally safe to eat after this date has passed, and can even be repurposed in cooking or baking if they look a little worse for wear. Shoppers are encouraged to judge these product by their appearance and smell, rather than relying on dates.
Several of the major supermarkets have set out to tackle food waste by removing the dates in recent months, including Asda just last week . Waitrose scrapped best before labels on almost 500 products at the start of August, while Marks & Spencer announced plans to axe them from more than 300 fruit and veg products in July.
As part of the change Sainsbury’s will also switch use by dates on 46 of its own-brand yoghurt products to best before dates, following research from WRAP which revealed 54,000 tonnes of yoghurt is wasted every year. The supermarket has already removed dates from over 1,500 lines of food including pineapples, pumpkins, apples and indoor plants.
Over at Aldi, scrapping best before dates isn’t the only new step that the supermarket is taking to combat food waste. The retailer announced last month that it has teamed up with the Too Good To Go app, offering customers ‘Magic Bags’ containing at least £10 worth of products that would otherwise have been thrown away for just £3.30.
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