In my current supermarket, and most that I’ve ever seen, milk is displayed in open fronted cabinets with, I’m guessing, cold air blown in from the back. This means that the cartons in the front of the rows are exposed along one face to the ‘normal temperature’ of the air in stores. Which is generally warmer, yes?
This might have been for only a short time, maybe the previous shopper who grabbed a quart of 2% milk only took it three minutes ago, but I’m really anal about keeping milk cold.
So I represent a third class of shopper. I never take the FIRST carton of milk in the row, nor do I dig to the back. I grab the SECOND carton for the sake of that probably insignificant temperature difference, glance at the expiration date to be sure it’s at least four days away, and go away content.
So, am I more or less a selfish jerk than the deep divers? Or do I get a pass because I’m mentally warped on this aspect?
Why should I spend money on something I’ll have to throw away before I can finish it?
I check dates and pick the freshest of:
Milk - includes all dairy products
Bread products
Packaged lettuce
Meats - includes ground beef, lunch meat, hotdogs, etc.
Pretty much anything that’s perishable, I check dates.
I’ll take the (reasonably) oldest because ‘don’t waste food’ was drilled into my head as a kid, and ‘stock rotation’ when I was working at the pizza joint as a teen. If everyone leaves the older stuff it will go bad and nobody wins. I land on the side of ‘violating a social contract’ by digging for the best. But then, social contracts are pretty much out the window these days so it’s not like it matters.
ETA : if you’re throwing stuff out because it went bad on you, maybe try buying less to begin with.
Putting out less of each item, so people are forced to buy the older stuff first.
Stores want the image of “abundance” by restocking shelves long before they get anywhere close to empty. Well, then, customers being able to buy the newest stuff first is the price they pay for their image engineering.
I check dates on diet sodas, because lots of people don’t even realize that they have a best before date, and it’s a lot shorter than you’d think. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen stores selling diet cola long past this date - in one memorable case, about a year and a half out of date.
BTW - Those products nearing their sell by date? Many get sent to the store’s deli and ends up on their prepared foods counters. Apparently, the boom in roast chickens rose out of the need to dispose of nearly expired poultry from the meat department.
Picking the freshest meat and dairy products is exactly the same as picking the best fruit and vegetables from the produce bins - it’s getting the best value for your money. Or should I eat bruised apples for the sake of the social compact?
That’s fine. Mark down stuff with a shorter sell by date. That way, people have an incentive to get it, it doesn’t go to waste, and people can save money.
They do it in the meat section all the time, and I appreciate the savings for things that I plan on cooking and eating in the next day or so. No reason that they cannot also do the same practice in the dairy section.
I try to get the freshest milk, as no one drinks it, and I pretty much just use it to make sausage gravy and mac n cheese every now and then. I buy it by the quart, and usually still throw out a quarter to a half of it when it goes bad.
Except that significant amounts of waste are already being created, in large part because of retailer’s stocking policies. So, “It would lead to waste” isn’t really that compelling an argument, since we already have lots of waste.
In fact, if everyone “acted selfishly”, it might even force the retailers to adjust those practices, and thus reduce waste overall.
I do the same thing; grab the second carton of milk, on the theory that perhaps someone took out the first carton and then put it back after it had a chance to warm up for a while.
An additional cost of the second case: people who can’t or don’t shop every couple of days would often be unable to have relatively perishable items, because they would much more often find that everything on the shelf would go bad before the next time they’d be at the store.
So either they’d have to shop more often – at an environmental cost as well as a personal one, unless they live in walking distance from the store; or they’d have to eat more limited diets.
If I’m sure I’ll use it before it goes bad, I’ll cheerfully take the one at the front. And I’ll often take the one at the front – plus one or two from the back if they’ve got longer dates and I think it likely that I’ll use them all before I’m next at the store; which in my case may be as much as three weeks later.
See above. You’d be forcing people to either shop more often, or to limit their diets.
I think people who live very close to a good grocery store, and/or who pass right by one nearly every day in the ordinary course of otherwise going about their lives, often don’t realize that there are others for whom a trip to the grocery involves a significant chunk of their time and also involves significant transportation (and therefore also environmental) costs.
So then adopt the “Stop worrying about what others are doing” plan. You know, the one we’re already using.
This all feels like a First World Problem to me. Get back to me when people are fighting over the expired milk, because that’s all there is left. “Oh my god, you left me the milk that only has a week left on its best before date! You fiend!” just doesn’t get my hackles up.
Maybe not buying in larger quantities than they sell in a reasonable amount of time (perhaps because it’s cheaper) ? I’ve never run into the following at supermarkets - but there’s deli/bodega /whatever you call the store that carries a limited selection of groceries/cleaning products/cold cuts and sandwiches/drinks and snacks around the corner from my house that I basically haven’t gone to in over 25 years. The previous owners* would leave stuff on the shelf until it sold - and what prompted me to stop going there was when I stopped in to buy something , all of it had expired some months ago and I told the owner so - and a couple of days later it was still there - because " you expect me to throw it out?",
I fell a little bad because it’s been sold a couple of times and the current owners may be different - but I just don’t think of going there anymore.
It’s not enough to get close to empty. You have to get completely empty. Otherwise, what’s left will still be the oldest and never get bought.
Zero, I’d say.
I once bought a Mountain Dew from a vending machine once and it gave me a diet Pepsi. I consider the latter undrinkable and ended up leaving it on my desk. One day, several months later, I found my desk covered with clear but brownish liquid–and an empty can. I eventually found the pinhole where the revolting fluid had dissolved through. I can’t quite explain how the drink had chemically converted into whatever it ended up being.
I don’t think a single person on this thread is suggesting to buy items that expire before you can use them. The question is about unconditionally always picking the farthest-out date, even if the nearer dates are still farther out than you need.
Well, that’s certainly gross. No one here is suggesting to buy already-expired merchandise.
A poorly-run business might end up with old stock because they are bad at predicting demand. But even a well-run business will have to discard stock if everyone only picks the freshest, unless they occasionally let the stock run out completely or find some new use for it (discount bin, whatever). On the other hand, if everyone always picked from the front, and the business is good about tracking demand, then the difference in freshness will never be very high. Everyone benefits overall, even if at an individual level it’s not always the optimal selfish decision.
I wish. On Christmas Eve I ended up grabbing half a gallon of milk without looking at the date, and discovered when I got home with it that its’ date was just 3 days later. And it didn’t even make it to the marked date before it spoiled. sigh. I got a whole 12oz out of it before I had to pour it down the drain.
When it’s not absolutely bonkers right before Christmas, I look at dates and take the farthest out one I can get. I’m the only human in my home, so I don’t feel bad leaving milk dated sooner for people who will have a better shot of using it up.
That doesn’t make any sense. You only know what is the oldest because you have something to compare it to. If there are 30 cartons of milk, 15 say Feb 20 and 15 say Feb 23, and everyone buys all the Feb 23 ones first, then the ones left will all say Feb 20. If they don’t restock with new ones, everyone else will continue to buy the ones that are left.