Secret codes to avoid nearly-mouldy fruit and veg

[platinumsage]

Does anyone know how to decipher these codes?

I always get the strawberries / whatevers with the longest best-before date, so I know it hasn’t been sitting in the shop for ages, and will hopefully last a good while at home.

M&S scraps 'best before' dates on fruit and veg to cut food waste

The High Street giant becomes the latest food retailer to take action to stop food being binned at home.

www.bbc.co.uk

“Marks & Spencer is taking "best before" dates off more than 300 fruit and vegetable items to tackle food waste. They will be replaced by a code that M&S staff can use to check freshness and quality.”

 

[t0bytoo]

The only thing I’ll have to go on will be reaching to the back of the shelf and hoping I get the fresher item.

 

[Edie]

If your doing your food shop in M&S I doubt you have much to worry about

 

[friedaweed]

If your doing your food shop in M&S I doubt you have much to worry about

Aye. If the guy selling the big issue outside turns it down you know its off.

 

[Epona]

Best before dates (rather than use by dates) on most fresh produce items are semi-fictional guesswork at best, which is why supermarkets are removing them from many items.

 

[smmudge]

On peppers, peaches and nectarines it's when the skin starts to go a bit wrinkly

On broccoli it's when the top starts going mushy and black

On mushrooms it's when they get brown patches

On avocados it's when you poke it and your finger goes through the skin

HTH

 

[Epona]

I don't think I've ever looked at the date on produce (fruit and veg) - for a start I try to buy it loose if I can rather than in plastic, and secondly look and feel will tell you more about the freshness/ripeness than any printed date on a bit of plastic.

 

[platinumsage]

I don’t care about the best before date, I care about the harvesting date and use the bb date as a proxy for that.

With lots of fruit you can’t tell in the shop which is freshest, and hence which will last longer after you bought it, without seeing which boxes are dated before others.

 

[Epona]

Have you never bought fruit and veg off a market stall or from an old style greengrocer's shop?

Having dates (harvesting, best before, whatever) for these things is a relatively recent thing.

 

[circleline]

There is always some sort of code on the bag, usually 6-8 digit, I think. These will still go in numerical order, so you can at least tell which are the 'older' batch, but only by comparison with a later number, so you can select the fresher samples.