I think we can all agree that it’s a disgraceful shame that huge volumes of food still perfectly safe to eat are wasted, especially in a country such as South Africa, where more than 20% of households have inadequate access to food.
One of the factors driving the waste of still-safe-to-eat food is a widespread misunderstanding of “date marks”.
That’s the term our health department’s food labelling regulations use instead of “expiry dates”.
That’s because the catch-all phrase “expired food” has led to the belief that any food that’s even a day past that date on the packet or tin is “toxic”, “rotten” or “off” and will cause the eater some form of harm.
The reality is that there are two very different forms of date marks.
• Use-by dates, which appear on perishable foods, indicate that the food should absolutely not be consumed after that date. That’s most definitely a safety risk.
• Best-before dates appear on foods that have a very long shelf life, such as pastas, rice, cereals and biscuits. They remain at peak quality until that date and then very slowly start to lose some of that quality, while remaining perfectly nourishing and safe to eat.
(Sell-by dates were introduced by retailers as a form of stock control. Those foods remain safe to eat for a few days after purchase.)
And here’s the thing — while removing or altering any date marks is outlawed, as is selling any food past its use-by date, it is legal to continue to sell food past its best-before date because it has been scientifically proven to remain safe for quite some time after that.
Ideally, of course, those foods should be discounted.
But just over a week ago the National Consumer Commission announced that it joined forces with other government departments to go after retailers selling “expired foods”.
The store raids began in Limpopo.
“The team discovered that there is widespread non-compliance, especially of goods that have passed their sell-by, use-by or best-before dates,” the commission said.
They were duly removed from the shelves and confiscated: baby food, sweets, cool drinks, noodles, snacks, tinned foodstuff, juices “with the potential of causing harm and compromising the health of consumers”.
There was absolutely no distinction drawn between highly perishable foods with use-by and/or sell-by dates, and shelf-stable goods — dry and canned — with best-before dates.
“There is an equally reprehensible practice that the inspection uncovered, which is retention of the goods past date markings and continuing to sell them to consumers at ‘discount prices’,” the commission said.
“No ‘discount’ is worth the health or wellbeing of consumers.”
This is not the first time government agencies at national and provincial level have conducted such indiscriminate raids, perpetuating the myths and demonising those who are legally selling food that is still safe and nutritious.
When I raised this with the NCC’s head of complaints and investigations Prudence Moilwa, she repeatedly referred to the “rotten chicken” and “foaming fruit juice” that had been confiscated during the raids.
That’s admirable, of course: no-one in their right mind would want such dodgy food to remain on sale.
And while it’s currently not illegal to sell baby food which is past its best-before date, our draft new regulations do exclude baby food from foods which may still be sold beyond their best-before date.
Rightly so, I reckon.
But confiscating shelf-stable sweets, cool drinks, noodles, snacks and tinned food?
Moilwa maintained that the Consumer Protection Act’s section 55 provides that consumers “have a right to goods that are of good quality and safe”.
Safety may not be the issue with those foods, she said, but they aren’t good quality after their best-before dates.
I’ve engaged with multiple food scientists in recent days about this.
There’s a difference between good and best quality, they said.
For starters, they said, the manufacturers are very conservative when applying those best-before dates, and while the food may be at its peak in terms of quality up to that date, after that it ever so slowly diminishes but remains good quality, legally saleable, and safe to eat for many months, and in some cases, years afterwards.
It absolutely does not belong in the bin or the landfill.
Dave Bester, whose chain of Foodeez stores in Cape Town has been selling shelf-stable foods close to and up to six months past their best-before dates for nearly a decade, at heavily discounted prices, said none of what he sells has ever been found to have made his customers ill.
“Many people on limited incomes, including Sassa pensioners, often express gratitude for having access to the food products we sell,” he said.
Moilwa contended that the lining of canned goods began to deteriorate after the best-before date, with the result that the food reacted with the can and became toxic.
Canning experts told me that was not generally the case, and that problem cans almost always showed visual signs of that long before the best-before date was reached.
One said she would happily eat canned food a year to 18 months after its best-before date, provided the can was not bloated or leaking, which would indicate that the lining had been compromised.
In many developing countries, including Brazil, she said, the governments had a team of scientists assessing canned food nearing its best-before dates and if it was found to be “still fine”, as it almost always was, it got the green light to be sold, so as to avoid food waste.
Enforcement is good — we need more of it in this country.
But treating all “expired food” as harmful and illegal does more harm than good.
• Contact Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via e-mail consumer@knowler.co.za or on X (Twitter) @wendyknowler