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Too Good To Go's “sight, smell and taste” food labelling, a first in North America, encourages Canadians to think before throwing out expired food.
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Published on June 18, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 3 min read
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Canada has become the first country in North America to adopt Too Good To Go's “look, smell, taste” label, joining 13 European countries. Greenhouse is one of 15 food companies to place the label next to the best-before date on their products ahead of their launch on June 18. Photo courtesy of Too Good To Go
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Best before dates are notoriously misleading. Contrary to popular belief, they have nothing to do with food safety, only with maximum quality as determined by the manufacturer. Foods can be safe to eat past these dates, but the exact dates vary from product to product. Food that has passed its expiration date may simply have less flavor, texture or color than when you previously had it.
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Too Good To Go, an app that provides unsold food to consumers for less than half price, has launched a new labeling program in Canada. The “look, smell and taste” label aims to reduce food waste at home by reminding people that food is still edible even after its expiration date.
Cracker Barrel, Epic Torfu, Green House, KopiTime and Ristorante (Dr. Oetker) are among 15 food brands that have added Too Good To Go's Look, Smell and Taste label next to the expiration date, ahead of its launch on June 18. Last year alone, more than 500 brands printed the label on more than 6 billion European products.
“We always say our competition is the trash can,” says Andrea Lee, country director for Too Good To Go Canada. “We look, we smell, we taste and we make the right decision. And we know it's still edible and that the best-before date is a key indicator of freshness for food safety.”
Since launching in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2016, Too Good To Go has expanded to 18 countries across Europe and North America, including France, Italy, the United States and Spain. The app launched in Canada in 2021 and the company says it has prevented more than 5 million meals from being wasted since then.
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The Look, Smell and Taste label was introduced in Europe in 2019. Canada was the first country in North America to introduce the label, joining 13 European countries. The Look, Smell and Taste label will be introduced on 15 brands in Canada, but Lee's goal is to have it on all products with a best-by date.
“Food waste occurs at every stage of the value chain, so the technology we've built is just one step. And I think this part is very exciting because education goes much further if we can empower people to make their own informed and educated decisions. So I believe that if we work with the partners we bring on board, our reach can be much broader and we can go even further.”
At least one billion meals are wasted per day in households around the world, according to the United Nations Food Waste Index Report 2024. Research by Second Harvest has found that about 60% of all food produced in Canada, or 35.5 million tonnes, is lost or wasted, most of it at home.
According to a survey by Too Good To Go, 92 per cent of Canadians check the expiration date on food before eating it. “Not eaten by the expiration date” is the second most common reason for households throwing away food. 40 per cent of Canadians throw out expired food at least once a week, despite not understanding what an expiration date means or the difference between a best before date and a use by date (which applies to a limited number of products with nutritional specifications, such as liquid food formula and infant formula).
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A best before date doesn't mean “expired,” says Sylvain Charbois, director of the Agri-Food Analytical Laboratory (AAL) at Dalhousie University and an unpaid ambassador for the Look, Smell, Taste campaign.
Previous AAL research has found that only 27 per cent of Canadians would be okay with no best-before dates. Charbois believes the new labels are a compromise between doing away with dates altogether and making people more aware of what they mean. “Will it affect behaviour? I don't know, but it will at least make people think about the issue and question the validity of the dates on packaging. Frankly, best-before dates are very trivial. There is no science to them at all and people think they are scientific. Not at all.”
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