Co-Op will remove best-before dates from hundreds of their products

• The cooperative is scheduled to schedule more than 150 items starting tomorrow
• Fruit and vegetables can be eaten well beyond the best-before date

Co-op removes sell-by dates from hundreds of fresh produce to reduce household food waste.

The move, which will be unveiled tomorrow, is the latest success of The Mail on Sunday’s War On Food Waste campaign, which aims to reduce the amount of food wasted in households by 30 per cent.

The cooperative will remove dates from more than 150 items, including apples, oranges, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, onions and broccoli. Encrypted codes are used to ensure that the products sold are fresh.

Shoppers are encouraged to use common sense by telling households on packaging that if fresh fruit and vegetables look and feel good enough to eat, they are.

A study by this newspaper of the UK’s ten largest supermarket chains found that almost all were not following labeling guidelines.

Since 2019, food retailers have been advised that milk, yoghurt and other dairy products can now have a best-before date instead of an expiry date, provided there is no food safety risk.

But the labels, which only refer to a product’s quality, are blamed for customers throwing away good food because they are confused with expiration dates that indicate food safety.

Shelf life tests conducted by the Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) have shown that fruit and vegetables can be eaten well beyond the best-before date when stored optimally.

For broccoli, a difference of 15 days was observed between the best before date and the first signs of spoilage. It was 20 days for potatoes and over 70 days for apples.

Last year, Co-op introduced a “Freeze me” message for its own-brand dairy products after it was revealed that more than £150million worth of milk is wasted every year, with unused amounts at home contributing to 90 per cent of that.

The supermarket also announced that it would replace the sell-by date on all its own-brand yogurts with sell-by dates.

Adele Balmforth, Co-op’s Propositions Director, said: “As we face an environmental and livelihood crisis, we are committed to helping our customers reduce food waste and save money.

“Date codes can influence decisions at home and result in good food being thrown away – at a cost to both people and our planet.

“In addition to removing best-before dates from fresh fruit and vegetables, our inclusion of storage instructions can also help produce last longer.”

l Sainsbury’s introduces discounted fruit and vegetable crates to reduce food waste and save customers money.

The Taste Me, Don’t Waste Me boxes, which will be available in more than 200 stores from today, cost £2 and contain product that would otherwise have been wasted but is safe to eat.

The move is part of the retailer’s commitment to halve its food waste by 2030.