Cheap, delicious and 12 years out of date: Life as a ‘best before’ pioneer

Australians waste about 7.6 million tonnes of food each year – a whopping 312kg a person. But Tom Bowden thinks there’s a simple way to reduce that figure.

Generic family dinner. iStock picture

There are two types of people in the world, I think.

Those who adhere strictly to the notion that “best before” and “use by” dates should be followed to the letter, those that see them as a guide only, and those who failed year 1 maths. I fall very much in the second camp.

I’ll give you some examples. I found these Cup A Soup packets in a box of old work stuff I was clearing out the other day. Best-before date on those bad boys was August 2013.

Just for sh-ts and giggles, I threw the contents of one in a cup to see if it was any good. I’m still here.

Tom Bowden took on a nearly 12-year-old packet of Cup A Soup …

And lived to tell the tale. Picture: The Advertiser

Same goes for a tin of baked beans I found at the back of the kitchen cupboard. Not sure how he got overlooked back there, but his best before date was 2018. Again, just for sh-ts and giggles, I tried him on Tuesday. I live to tell the tale.

A few weeks ago, I found some lemon and herb marinated chicken skewers from Coles hidden in the fridge under some grapes. Expiry was two days before. Packet wasn’t puffing and there was no weird scent.

“The marinade will mask spoilage, but if you cut into it and it smells fine in the centre, you’re probably all right,” my mother-in-law said. Here I am, not just surviving but, judging by the fact a girl outside the Reject Shop of my local Westfield recently asked me for my number, thriving.

My displays of testicular fortitude don’t always work out though. The other day I found a brie in the fridge. Missed its use-by date by about a good three weeks. A visual assessment and a fairly thorough smell check (it was a little ammonia-ish, but then some cheeses are) and I determined it to still be what I would categorise as “broadly feasible”. I was wrong. Sh-ts. No giggles.

A few years ago, there was this thing called the National Food Waste Strategy Feasibility Study. It revealed Australians waste about 7.6 million tonnes of food across the food supply chain each year – 312kg a person.

Fly too close to the sun with use by dates on cheese and you will get burned, Tom Bowden warns.

This costs the economy about $36.6bn each year, with the biggest contributor being households at 30 per cent of that total, with each on average throwing away about $2500 of wasted food.

So what am I saying? People should try to see if food is OK before they blindly throw it out based on a use-by date? Yeah! Within reason.

Recently expired biscuits and dry ingredients are, in all likelihood, probably fine, but have a crack at the salmon a week after it’s passed and you’re playing Russian roulette with your colon. Except in that game there’s almost definitely a bullet in every chamber.

Perhaps it’s my upbringing, as we couldn’t really afford to waste food, but if the block of cheese had some mould on it, you cut it off and ripped into the good bit. If the leg ham smelt a little funky, you wiped it with a vinegar cloth. If it still smelt funky, you kept cutting until you got a good bit. If the milk started to sour, you’d make a cake from it.

Supermarkets throw away so much “out-of-date” food each year that’s fine to eat. Maybe they should have a cut-price outlet for some of these safer products, keeping them out of landfill for a bit and allowing those who are happy to enjoy them to save a few bucks in the process.

Some of you will be nodding your head in agreement at my behaviour – others probably horrified by it.

I’m just fortunate my wife still lets me cuddle her after I’ve eaten a packet of Shapes seven years after they’ve expired. Here’s to growing old – and maybe some mould – together!

Originally published as Cheap, delicious and 12 years out of date: Life as a ‘best before’ pioneer