Shoppers have been confused by a series of secret letters and numbers printed on food packaging and have been asking what the hidden meaning is. One shopper, Naomi Willis, posted in the Facebook group Reduce Your Supermarket Spend to ask what the codes could mean.
Naomi runs the group with her husband Ricky - better known as Skintdad.
She wrote: "For anyone who works in Tesco, is there a specific name for these codes (A21, F22, D4 etc)? My understanding is that they represent a month and day of the week to help with product freshness."
One Tesco employee has revealed how to work out when the produce was put out, to ensure you bag the freshest foods each and every time. The Express says that Finance Girl Bargains on TikTok shared a video, with the caption reading: “Tesco staff training taught me the higher the number the fresher the product.”
The content creator demonstrated on packs of mangetout; the bag on the left had the code A3 versus the bag on the right displaying the code A6. The letter correlates to the month of the year, and the number is the day.
So A equates to January and three is the 3rd day of the month, or six is the sixth day of the month. One reiterated in the comments section: "A - January B - February C - March D - April and so on and so on and then the numbers is the day of the month.”
Another added: “Coming from someone that works with produce in Tesco head office, it’s a date code so yes technically correct.”
A third wrote: “Working in food manufacturing this is a date code so the letter is the month and the number is the day.” Another comment read: “I had no idea!! thank you for sharing.”
The official term for the coding system is Julian Date codes, and it only applies to pre-packed items. Someone said: “If you bought fresh loose fruit and veg there is no date or code but it will last longer anyway cos not washed and packed!”
Not all supermarkets follow the same coding system though, someone explained it was different for Morrisons. Niamh wrote: “In Morrisons, it’s the letter is the month J- Jan F- Feb etc. Obviously, June and July are JN and JY.”
The codes are useful for supermarket staff as many products no longer had display until, use by or best before dates. Actual dates have been removed to cut food waste as people tend to discard food after the dates even if it is perfectly useable.
