No one likes to throw away perfectly edible food, but confusion over labelling
is fuelling the amount we chuck out at home. The rules are changing, though,
and Clare Finney wraps up the latest advice on best-before and use-by datesThe sense
(and nonsense)
H
ere’s a sentence I never
thought I’d commit to
paper: I’m with Theresa
May. Not on her politics, but with
her cavalier approach to jam.
When she was PM, she revealed
to ministers during a Cabinet
discussion on food waste that she
scrapes the mould off the top of old
jam and finds the rest “perfectlyedible”. I can’t conceive of doing
otherwise: I grew up with a father
who would cut the mould out of fruit
and took a sniff-it-and-see approach
to milk and butter. Today, the
edibility of eggs long after their ‘best
before’ date are the hill I choose to
die on, while my boyfriend attempts
to pry them from my hands.
The jury may have decided on ourformer prime minister – but it’s still
out on jam mould. When May’s
spreadable story broke last year, the
Food Standards Agency (FSA)
advised that food obviously
containing mould should not be
eaten. A professor of bacteriology
on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme
countered, saying that he too would
scrape off surface mould “depending