The Rebirth of Expired Food

If you’ve been reading Shelf Life Advice regularly, you know that most food recently past its “use-by” date is perfectly safe and probably still tasty, assuming it’s been handled properly.  The federal government doesn’t even require food product dates except on baby formula and some types of baby food.  The FDA has stated that, in most cases, these dates merely indicate the beginning of a decline in quality (not safety), as indicated by the manufacturer. However, many states have laws and many supermarket chains have policies that lead to the removal of food from store shelves as soon as it passes its “sell-by” date. Do you wonder what happens to all this perfectly good food?

Wonder no more. Some answers have been provided by Nadia Arumugam in a January 2012 Atlantic article entitled “What Happens to Old and Expired Supermarket Products.”  A shorter version of this piece appeared in Forbes, and the website Delish summarized the Atlantic piece.

It’s good to know that a significant amount of expired food actually finds a home in someone’s stomach.  Here’s what happens:  In many supermarkets, once the stores close at night, the night staff goes through the shelves looking for items that have just expired or are about to expire.  They remove these and dispose of them in one of these ways:

-Some items are turned over to the deli department, where they’re converted into one of the store’s ready-made products—perhaps egg salad, a ham and cheese sandwich, soup, or a packaged entrée.

-Some items are donated, generally to a homeless shelter, food pantry, soup kitchen, animal shelter, or some other charity.  (Some food banks, however, will not accept outdated foods because either they or the people they serve are afraid that these foods can cause illness.) In 2005, the FMI (Food Marketing Institute) reported that more than 50% of the 8,360 supermarkets the organization surveyed donated 100,00 pounds of product they couldn’t sell to food banks.

-Along with damaged and out-of-season items, some outdated merchandise is sent to huge reclamation centers, usually operated by a supermarket chain or wholesale distributor.

From the reclamation center, items are sold to salvage grocery stores or discount stores. They dispose of spoiled food, resell merchandise, resell some to the salvage industry, and donate the remainder to food banks.

-Some discarded supermarket food is rescued from garbage bags or cans by individuals who are homeless, hungry, and not finicky about the dates on their food.

-Last and probably least familiar to most of us, the Atlantic article discusses Freegans, a community that subsists on minimal consumption and salvaged goods. They collect expired items not because they’re broke and desperate but because they have made a “lifestyle choice” to use them. Why? One Freegan (Leia Mondragon) explained that the group believes “expiration dates exist to promote consumerism,” in other words, “to get stores to keep buying in bulk and keep things moving into and out of shops.” [We’ve heard many consumers express similar suspicions, saying the “use-by” dates are the manufacturers’ strategy for getting consumers to throw out unspoiled edibles and then spend money on replacing the item. However, Shelf Life Advice does not believe that is the motive for product dating. We’ve been told by a food scientist that manufacturers actually want the longest possible shelf life date on their products.]   Leia Mondragon, is convinced that, if she picks up food the same day it’s discarded, it will be safe and taste fine for at least a few more days because stores discard edible items as soon as they reach the “use-by” date, before they have time to go bad. 

Despite the many ways that expired food is saved from being wasted, Americans still throw out a huge amount of food.  If you want to save some money and help the nation cut down on waste by purchasing expired food, you’re quite unlikely to run into trouble buying “old” dry cereal or expired canned goods.  As long as a can is not badly dented, not leaking, and not swollen (bloated or puffed up) on top, it should be okay. Dr. Ted Lebuza, professor of food science at the University of Minnesota, says that many foods—such as canned tuna, canned soups, and salad dressings--can be safely consumed years after their stamped date.  While the quality might suffer if you kept them that long, (for instance, the salad dressing ingredients might separate) they would remain safe to consume. 

To locate more information about expired food, put the phrase “expired food” or “use-by” dates into the “Search” feature on the home page of Shelf Life Advice.  We especially recommend the following articles:

http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/it-says-use-tomorrow-you-dont-have

http://shelflifeadvice.com/content/do-food-product-dates-make-consumers-safer-or-just-poorer

Source(s):

theatlantic.com “Second Life: What Happens to Old and Expired Supermarket Products”
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/01/second-life-what-happens-to-old-and-expired-supermarket-products/251052/

forbes.com “What Happens to Old and Expired Supermarket Foods”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/01/06/what-happens-to-old-and-expired-supermarket-foods/  

delish.com “What Happens to Expired Supermarket Food?”
http://www.delish.com/food/recalls-reviews/expired-supermarket-foods

usda.com “Food Product Dating”
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Factsheets/Food_Product_dating/index.asp