Brits relaxing in their attitudes to expiry dates, survey finds

Expiration dates lead to a lot of unnecessary food waste, with several UK supermarkets already having discontinued these on a range of items in order to try and reduce wastage. But the rising cost of food is causing Brits to reconsider the (often arbitrary) dates on food packaging.

Data from Attest, highlighted in its UK F&B report 2022, finds that 18.1% of people have recently started eating foods after their expiration date. Added to the 48.9% of consumers who’ve done this for a while, this means 67.0% of Brits – more than two-thirds – are now comfortable to make their own judgements about the freshness of goods.

A further 19.7% have recently started eating opened foods beyond the advised time (in addition to the 51.0% of people who already do this). Meanwhile, 52.6% of people say they will remove ‘bad bits’ from food so it can still be eaten. This includes 16.8% who’ve made this change recently, suggesting that inflation is leading people to reassess what’s safe to eat. Shoppers are also saving money by buying reduced price food that’s close to expiring; 50.4% have done this for a while, and a further 27.9% have just started. But while they might be happy to buy close-to-expiry products at a discount, when consumers are paying full price, they look for as long an expiry date as possible. A huge 91.8% of people say they check expiry dates prior to purchase to ensure a long life (including 21.5% who started doing this recently). This suggests removing expiration dates would help retailers reduce wastage of unsold products.

There’s little science behind expiration dates, yet our data shows we instinctively feel some foods are safer to eat beyond their expiration dates than others. We showed respondents a list of 11 foods and asked them which they would eat beyond their expiry date if they looked, smelled and tasted fine. The food most likely to be eaten is crisps/snacks (64.1%) followed by biscuits/sweets (60.4%) and cereal (54.2%). More than half (53.8%) said they would eat bread after it had expired but only 28.6% would consume milk past its expiration date. Least likely to be eaten after expiry are cooked meat (23.1%) and fresh meat (21.1%).‍