You open your fridge, grab a container of yogurt, and then notice the expiration date – it expired two days ago. What do you do? If you’re like most people, you probably decide that eating it isn’t worth the risk (however small) of contracting a weird stomach bug and throw it out. Food waste is a massive issue – not only in the US, but all over the world, and it’s a topic that we’ll be discussing in-depth in the coming weeks. But before we do that, we want to focus on another topic: nearly expired food at supermarkets.
Many people don’t stop to think about the food waste that occurs at grocery stores, but it does happens and it happens on a massive scale. Because every bit of food that grocers carry doesn’t always sell, there’s always a hefty bit of nearly expired and expired food that gets tossed on a regular basis. This is an issue for two reasons: First, it contributes heavily to food waste, which is estimated to be at around 30% worldwide. Second, a lot of the food that gets thrown away due to an expiration date is actually still edible. Consider that 795 MILLION people in the world don’t get enough food each day to live a healthy life.
Is Expired Food Really Unsafe?
According to a study from Harvard Law’s Food Law and Policy Clinic says that a big part of the reason why so much expired food (or perceived to be expired) is a misunderstanding. Confusion over the labeling of food is a big part of food thrown out before it’s expiration. Two types of labels exist for foods in the US – expiration date and sell by date. The expiration date for foods lets consumers know when a food expires, but often there are “best buy” dates or “sell by”dates. These dates actually have nothing to do with whether or not a food is still ok to eat, but many people use them as defacto dates for expired food and will throw things out anyway – including supermarkets.
A Store for Expired Food
One man is doing something interesting to change that. Doug Rauch is the former President of Trader Joes, and is the founder of a new type of supermarket that’s in its test phase in Boston, The Daily Table. The Daily Table is set up as a not-for-profit organization and takes nearly expired food and surplus from grocers and sells it at a steep discount in order to minimize food waste and to offer higher-quality foods at affordable price points, giving more people access to better, healthier foods.
The store in Boston is a pilot program, acting as a test to see how well it fares in the neighborhood. If the concept works, Rauch wants to expand nationally. The benefits for a store that finds ways to affordably distribute food overflow are obvious, and could potentially be a game changer in the grocery industry. It could also provide enormous health benefits to people who live in lower-income areas where there aren’t a lot of options for healthy food at their local grocery or corner store, effectively providing them with healthy and often gourmet food items for a fraction of the price. In Rauch’s Boston store, canned vegetables were selling for $.50, a dozen eggs for $1, and bananas for $.29 a pound. At those prices, a family of four could have healthy and filling meals for around $30-$40 a week.
The biggest obstacle that will have to be overcome will likely be the stigma of eating expired food or the perception that this food has gone bad. But hopefully with time and more people becoming educated on nearly expired food and sell by dates, we can help more people get access to better food and cut down on harmful food waste.
What do you think? Would you buy food that was a day away from its expiration?
I already do buy expired foods, there’s a local store for for expired groceries in my town that sells all that stuff. Everything’s thrillingly low priced, and it just so happens that dates that have already passed can be found on the packages. That can be worrying if you’ve never bought and eaten food past it’s date before, but if you couldn’t eat it past it’s date most of the time, then they wouldn’t be able to sell it. The canned goods are safe 99.99% of the time, but since they’re all usually dented, there’s always a slight chance for botulism if the dent happens breaks the airtight seal of the can. Usually you can smell that it’s funky before you cook it.