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Daily household waste
It’s time to check out that pretty tin of butter cookies sitting on your shelf since Chinese New Year.
Whether or not they were bought on impulse or received as a gift from your relative, chances are it is nearing its expiry date.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), which governs the safety of our food imports, requires most pre-packed food to be permanently date-marked with words like ‘use by’, ‘best before’ and ‘sell by’.
These dates determine the shelf life, or expiry date, of a product. But they could lead us to discard food indiscriminately. If the informal survey is representative of our eating habits, most of us – 70 per cent – condemn food that has been slightly expired by one to three days.
Bank analyst Amy Shang, 26, will never think twice about throwing away expired food, regardless whether it is dried or canned. “All expired food should not be eaten because it is bad for health,” she reasons.
Nichol Ng, 32, managing director of food distribution company FoodXervices, finds that this form of date-marking leads to food wastage inevitably. “A ‘use by’ date doesn’t mean the product has expired. The quality may be poorer, but it doesn’t mean the food is totally inedible,” she says.
Though foods that have past their expiry date should not be consumed, chief dietitian at Changi General Hospital Magdalin Cheong says dried products are generally “safer” as they have lower moisture content.
Another catch in expiry dates is that labels differ across countries, blurring the lines of to-eat and not-to-eat.
“It’s the same product in the same tin and the same technology. If you give a tin of tomatoes that’s one year expired to people in Africa, they will definitely be able to eat it without a problem,” adds Ms Ng.
Heather Chi, 22, founder and directive director of anti-hunger youth collective Food For All agrees. One way is to have a policy change or clarification on expiry dates, ideally spearheaded by AVA and the Health Promotion Board, she says.
“It is to let consumers know that expired food is safe within certain boundaries, and let distributors and retailers know that they will not be liable for selling or redistributing food to food ration programmes.”
Being savvy about expiry date labels can save us from throwing away perfectly edible food. But until a top-down approach is implemented, reducing waste starts from curbing shopaholic instincts at the supermarket.
ARTICLE RESOURCES:
• Reducing solid waste in supermarkets
• People & food waste in Sydney
• Understanding food labels
“Figures from the National Environment Agency showed that food waste totalled 570 million kilos in 2008.” —> i was going to throw away my half eaten sandwich but after reading this statistic i think i’ll make myself finish it.
Good post! I pray this evil ash cloud will go away. My cousin is stuck in Greece and she’s running out of cash. I heard the volcanic ash will be staying for at least another 3 weeks but I don’t know if I should believe it. Does anyone know if it’s really true?