Some buy it to save money; others to save the planet. The market for ageing food is booming – but what’s it like and is it safe?
My lunch is some one-year-out-of-date Marmite peanut butter spread over cracked black pepper Nairn’s oatcakes (best before December 2021). It follows a breakfast of old pink Coco Pops and a mid-morning snack of crisps that the manufacturer suggests I should have eaten when Theresa May was still in Downing Street.
Many people are quite relaxed about food dates, sniffing their milk or inspecting their salad bag rather than relying on what the manufacturer has printed on the packaging. But there is a new breed of bargain hunter: one who actively seeks out food that is not just two days or two weeks out of date, but sometimes two prime ministers beyond its best before. Many do it purely to save money, others to help the planet, quite a few for the strange thrill of hunting down obscure jars of fish paste that would otherwise end up being thrown away. I have decided to join them, if only for a week, to discover why so much food destined for our supermarket shelves never makes it that far – and how retailers specialising in selling “recovered” or “rescued” food are booming. Crucially, I want to find out if any of it tastes OK.
The Daventry warehouse of Best Before it’s Gone, run by Dan Parslow (top). ‘The cost of living crisis is definitely driving this,’ he says of the recent big rise in customer numbers. Photographs: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
