Asda shoppers have been left baffled after spotting that best before dates on fruit and vegetables have disappeared and been replaced with a ‘secret code’.
The supermarket no longer prints easily decipherable best before dates on key fresh produce like apples, oranges and pears, and the reason is down to food waste.
Instead, the supermarket prints a code which shoppers have successfully managed to crack to work out what the secret best before dates really are.
Reddit user u/EpicFishFingers said: “Instead of best before dates for fruit & veg, Asda have switched to an indecipherable code consisting of a letter A-L and a number between 1 and 31.”
u/geezso said: “Simply month and date. Very easy to get on with. Been like that for at least 12 months I’m sure.”
Apparently, A is January, and L is December – which is not immediately obvious.
But a lot of people didn’t know what the codes stood for, and thought that best before dates had been removed.
u/GronakHD said: “Tbf I didn’t realise, just assumed that they weren’t getting used by dates anymore. Never paid attention to the dates anyway, have always just checked if it was alright by the looks and feels of it.”
And u/C2BK denied that it’s a best before date at all, simply a stock control code used internally, in a bid to stop people looking at best before on fruit and veg.
They said: “That’s because best before dates are inappropriate for fruit and veg, as they lead to people throwing away perfectly edible food. Right now I’m eating a meal that includes tomatoes and an apple that had best before dates of approx. one month ago, and they’re both absolutely fine.
“Sorry to break this to you, but it’s blatantly obvious that 12 letters and numbers from 1 to 31 is a stock control system.”
And others said that whatever the answer, best before dates simply aren’t needed on fruit and veg.
u/fun_level_7787 said: “Tbh, it’s simple to tell when food is OK to eat vs. Not OK. Having these dates only leads to food wastage, which is a major problem around the world but it’s simply there to get items off the shelves. If you went to a market, most things aren’t dated anyway?”
u/janner10 said: “If only you could you tell by touch and sight alone.”
According to Love Food Hate Waste, the removal of a clearly identifiable best before is a deliberate choice by supermarkets like Asda and Morrisons in order to help reduce food waste.
This is because shoppers throw away perfectly good food if they see it’s past the ‘best before’.
Love Food Hate Waste said: “More and more retailers are joining the fight against food waste by removing ‘Best Before’ dates on much of their fresh produce! We’re talking fresh fruit and veg that hasn’t been prepared – so not things like the chopped-up fruit salad pots, carrot batons or salad bags you’d find in the chiller.
“Most of our major supermarkets are making this important change to help stop good food from ending up in the bin. They’ve done this based on recommendations from our own research.
“Our ground-breaking research showed that removing Best Before dates increases the length of time people say they’ll still eat fresh produce. In other words, people work out for themselves whether something is still good to eat, rather than being influenced by the date label.
“Presented with a photo of a slightly tired-looking apple, 46% of people said they’d bin it if it had a date on it, compared with just 7% if there was no date. Indeed, when we looked at the effect of removing dates on five fresh produce items, we saw a significant decrease in household food waste for all of them – except bananas (which don’t usually have a date label anyway). Hence our recommendation to remove date labels from fresh, uncut fruit and veg to reduce food waste.”
