M&S fresh food codes

I bought a pack of Kentish cherries from M&S a couple of weeks ago. When I opened the pack, several of the ones underneath were already mushy and grey with mould.

I could have returned them, of course, but that would involve paying £2.50 to park to get to the store.

My understanding is that it’s only the ‘best before’ advice which is going, not the ‘use by’ which of course it’s important to abides by.
I hope that’s the case anyway.

But why throw away the pears @nannymags27 ? unless rotten the pears don't know they have a sell by date!

Can’t answer your question but I advocated dropping the use by/bb dates on food and replacing them with a packed on date. This has become even more important for me and many thousands of others since covid stripped us of our taste and smell. Unless you can see that food has gone off or someone tells you, you may be poisoning yourself and others.

Gardenersdelight …because they were squidgy, going black inside and, to my mind, inedible. Otherwise I wouldn’t have thrown them out. I would have eaten them.

Surely with fresh fruit or vegetables you can tell whether they are still edible by the look and feel of them, does not need a date. Meat, fish & dairy products are of course different but even these can have a use by date and be off if it is a hot day when you bought them and they were left in the car/delivery vehicle too long.

In Lidl and Aldi they use 4 digit codes.

The dates are in a day and week format on the front of packaged fruit and veg. So, in the photo the passion fruit are week 35, day 3; the tomatoes are the 2nd day of week 34 and the pak choi is the 4th of week 35.

Pittcity Thanks! That’s very interesting. I agree with toscalily that you can, of course, tell by looking at fruit etc whether it’s still edible. My original point was, however, that because I shop for the week I would like to know how many days are left in an item before it becomes inedible. Has the packaged item I’m looking at on the shelf got one day or, for example, four days life still left.

Fair enough @nannymags27 but having a useby date won't have stopped them going off.
I often rescue fruit and vegetables via the olio and they can last weeks or even months past sell by or best before date

Goodness knows how we used to manage before such dates and unnecessary packaging existed.

How on earth did anyone justify putting a sticky label on every apple!

Jaxjacky. Goodness knows how we used to manage before such dates and unnecessary packaging existed
Loose fruit and vegetables allow you to see the whole item, with prepackaged ones 50% is hidden, usually as Sod’s law would have it, the bad side.

More robust fruit like apples, and yes, pears, along with citrus and even bananas are still sold loose in nearly all supermarkets. Why buy the pre-packed stuff? Loose fruits are usually cheaper too.
And in stallholder markets, there are no sell-by dates at all.
But luckily I can generally remember when I've bought my shopping. I certainly wouldn't throw away fruit I've had for a couple of weeks, even if it's less than perfect. It can still be baked or stewed, or made into pies and crumbles.

Back in the day we got fresh in season fruit and vegetables. Now we get food not fresh obviously been stored and rotten by the time you get home from the shop. Even with a good date on it and the mentioned shop is guilty of that one. I don't buy from there now I cannot count the amount of times I binned fruit the very next day after purchase. It's three miles away from home not worth taking it back.

Redhead, the next time you buy something packaged that is not fresh, or shows mould, take a photo showing the date, and try to keep your receipt. Most grocery stores will reimburse you if you talk to customer service, or the department manager. Luckily my shop is nearby, but there have been a few times where I didn't want to bring back the soggy item just to show them so I took a photo instead.

I know I use the best-before dates when purchasing dairy, and meat and look at the dates when purchasing packaged produce (like the mixed greens in packages),but I use my eyes, nose and touch for most produce.

I don't toss food just because it is past it's best before date. I check to see if it has gone off before I toss anything.

True mokryna, I tend to buy loose, not packaged as someone else said.