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Citrus fruits, for example, are to be sold without a best-before date from September
Photo: Joel Carrett / dpa
In the fight against food waste, the British supermarket chain Waitrose is doing away with the best-before dates on hundreds of products.
As the company announced, the “best before” notice will disappear from almost 500 items from September – especially packaged fresh fruit and vegetables, herbs and plants.
This should serve to encourage customers to eat food that has expired but is still good.
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Shopping at Waitrose in south London (pictured 2021)
Photo: Aaron Chown / dpa
The date determines until when the manufacturer guarantees that the food will retain all its specific properties if it is stored correctly - but it can still be eaten later.
This is to be distinguished from the use-by date, which is written on perishable foods.
Subsequent consumption is associated with health risks.
According to Waitrose, this data should remain.
Food waste remains a "big problem" in the UK, Waitrose parent company John Lewis said in a statement.
British households throw away 4.5 million tonnes of edible food every year.
Marija Rompani, Director of Sustainability and Ethics at John Lewis Partnership, “In the UK alone, 70 per cent of all food in your home is wasted”.
By using up the fresh food available in our homes, it could also save on weekly grocery shopping, which is an increasingly pressing concern for many, the company says.
The chain criticized that this would also waste energy and raw materials for food production.
Instead, consumers should be encouraged to use their own judgment in consuming the food.
A similar measure was already an issue in the European Union last year – when a corresponding proposal was being discussed within the Commission.
Read more about this here .
ani/AFP