How comfortable are you with sniffing dairy products? Bringing the milky substance right up to your face and giving a long, exploratory nasal inhalation. I’m asking because that’s what M&S now want you to do. They’ve decided to get rid of use-by dates on milk, replacing them with the comparatively toothless best-before dates so “customers can use their judgment”. And by judgment, they mean smell. You can’t rely on your other senses. It’s far too late if you can actually see the milk’s gone off and, if you can hear there’s something wrong with it, you should think about leaving the building.
So give it a sniff before you chuck it out. We can save the planet one snort at a time. It’s a good idea, though personally I feel undermined. I’ve always been a prudent use-by date observer, while everyone around me has relentlessly proclaimed how fine everything remains for months after the printed deadline. “They just put that on to cover themselves in case you store your food in the airing cupboard,” seems to be the argument. Only in the realm of milk do I have the confidence to sniff and live dangerously – it’s the closest I get to the glamour of a cocaine habit – and now that’s been taken away.
