Health & Science
Good, Old Food
Some turn to expired groceries as a money-saving strategy - and that's not always a bad thing
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Ever wonder what happens to supermarket food past its “sell by” date?
Some might be processed for sale in the supermarket deli; some thrown out or donated to food banks; and some sold off to “salvage” stores that resell it at a steep discount.
Such food isn’t necessarily bad for you. Some outdated food can still be safely eaten, according to University of Minnesota food science professor Ted Labuza.
“Foods can remain safe to consume for some time beyond sell-by and even use-by dates, provided they are handled and stored properly,” Labuza said.
Canned foods and shelf-stable goods such as salad dressings can even be consumed for years beyond their expiration dates, he said.
Apart from baby formula and certain baby foods, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even require product dating: expiration dates are simply an indication of optimum quality as deemed by the manufacturer.
More people are turning to outdated food now, as a money-saving strategy during tough times, those interviewed at food banks and salvage stories say.
Trying Out a Salvage Shop
Walk through the Country Discount Grocery in Wautoma, Wisconsin, and you’ll find outdated Quaker’s granola bars, Cheerios and bottles of A1 Steak Sauce, a situation mirrored in hundreds of salvage shops across the country.
Salvage shops sell outdated, damaged and out-of-season items, known as “unsalables.” They get their stock from reclamation centers, operated by the supermarket chains, or by wholesale distributors.
Dangerous items such as broken jars and obviously spoiled foods are discarded.
Every two weeks, grocery owner Patricia Quillen takes delivery of unsalables in her 53-foot trailer. Banana boxes are packed with dozens of different foods and health and beauty items. Quillen says she really doesn’t know what she’ll be selling until she opens the 1,152 boxes.
Up to 50 percent of her stock is outdated, and another 10 percent to 15 percent is near its “best before” stamp date.
But her 100 or so daily customers put up with this, since she offers 50 percent discounts.
Outdated cans of Campbell’s chunky soup at 80 cents, and Campbell’s regular soups at 50 cents, were big sellers last winter.
When she opened her grocery five years ago, “people thought we were going to kill them,” she said, adding with a laugh: “so we told them we only depend on new customers because we killed off our old ones.”
She soon educated them.
“At first they would buy $10 worth, and if they lived through that, they would come back and buy $25,” she said. Now some of her customers spend hundreds of dollars at a time.
Gayle Bryant, 37, of Longview, Washington, tries to keep to a weekly grocery budget of $60 to feed her family of six, and shops at salvage stores at least twice a week.
While Bryant won’t touch outdated dairy products, she’ll happily put expired canned foods, cereal and granola bars into her shopping cart.
“I did my own research, because a lot of people are scared of eating expired foods,” she said.
Expired Groceries at Food Banks
Food banks also receive more than 100,000 pounds of outdated and damaged food each year, donated by more than half of America’s 8,360 supermarkets, according to a 2005 FMI Supermarkets and Food Bank study.
More than 12,00 soup kitchens, homeless shelters, food pantries and other charity agencies served by the Feeding America West Michigan Food Bank receive outdated food.
If there is any doubt over its safety or quality, the food bank’s dietician will test it.
“If it’s going bad, there’s rarely any mystery,” said Executive Director John Arnold. “It lets you know, either with its appearance or its smell or its texture.”
Not all food banks trust salvaged food, though. According to Anne Goodman, executive director of the Cleveland Food Bank in Ohio, “when we get retail products from grocery stores, we sort out products which are past their expiration date and we throw them away. We never take a chance.”
"Salvage" stores sell outdated food products at as little as half price.
Photo courtesy of the Country Discount Grocery