A new study by Dalhousie University in Halifax finds that the average Canadian household throws away $761 worth of food every year based on best-before and expiration dates, but that almost a third of that is owing to confusion over what those dates actually mean.
The research, conduced in partnership with
, a Copenhagen-based company dedicated to reducing food waste, found that many Canadians are unaware of the meaning of food labels.
Expiration or expiry dates refer to food that is likely no longer safe to consume. Three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey knew that, but 14 per cent thought it referred to the food having passed its best quality, and another eight per cent thought it was merely to recommend that stores no longer sell it.
“Best before,” on the other hand, indicates when food has likely passed its best quality, but only 70 per cent of respondents knew that. Another 20 per cent thought it meant the food was no longer safe to consume.
“If 30 per cent of people don’t know what best before means, and one in five think that best before is an expiration date, there is so much opportunity to simply improve people’s understanding,” Chris MacAulay, vice-president of North America operations for Too Good To Go, told National Post.
And Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, who worked on the study, said there’s an easier way to know when food goes off.
“Look, smell, taste,” he told National Post. “Taste goes last. That’s basically it.”
That’s also the message behind the look-smell-taste campaign launched last year by Too Good To Go, and embossed in alternative “don’t waste” labels that already appear on some Canadian products, including
and
.
Our senses evolved in part to warn us about what’s not safe to eat, so we should trust them by examining packaging for signs of damage, and food for any discolouration, as well as smelling and tasting our food to make sure it doesn’t have a bad odour or an “off” taste.
“Animal proteins are more risk,” Charlebois cautioned. “You want to be extremely careful with meat and dairy. And soon as the container is open, as soon as the product is exposed to air, all bets are off. That’s basically how it goes.”
On the other hand, raw meat and cooked meat are different animals (so to speak). “If it’s thoroughly cooked you can actually keep it for a long time,” he said. “You’ve just extended the conservation cycle for that product if you actually thoroughly cooked it.”
Charlebois said he’s watched best-before dates appear on more and more food products over the years, including items like sugar and honey that have practically unlimited shelf lives.
“Forcing people to throw away perfectly good food so they need to buy more,” he said, “is the food version of planned obsolescence. I once saw a best-before date on salt. I mean, come on!”
But he has also done research into whether Canadians would be in favour of throwing away best-before dates. He found most people still want them.
“They buy food but they also buy time,” he said. “They reach out for products where the best-before date is as late as possible, so they can have inventory at home.”
Inventory management is also why food sellers are behind the practice. “Grocers love these dates because it’s easier to rotate inventory,” said Charlebois. “There’s little or no appetite — no pun — to remove these dates.”
Similarly, MacAulay is more interested in updating labels and increasing education than doing away with the system.
“They do contribute to consumer confusion,” he said of best-before labels and expiry dates, “and that confusion then leads to not just food waste but also real economic loss. We are working to simplify the approach for consumers.”
He added: “If there are folks that remain wary of using their senses, that’s OK — we can still make a massive impact on the amount of food waste that exists, as well as an impact on people’s wallets.”
The survey was conducted online and involved 1,084 participants over the age of 18 from across Canada.
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