Milk and dairy products are sold at a grocery store in Aylmer, Quebec, Thursday, May 26, 2022. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick
Starting Tuesday, there will be a new resource to help Canadians decide whether it's safe to eat food that's past its expiration date.
An app called “Too Good To Go” has launched a “See, Smell, Taste” campaign in Canada. The app partners with manufacturers and retailers across Canada to place stickers on certain products and, with the help of the app, tell you whether the product is safe to eat or not.
Shiyun Wang, a professor of food safety engineering at UBC, said the expiration date indicates whether a product is at its freshest, not whether it's safe to eat.
“Food products with a shelf life of 90 days or less are required to display a best-before date. Manufacturers have to label the date to meet regulations, but as long as these foods are unopened, they are guaranteed to remain fresh and of high quality until that date,” Wang explained.
“Once food has passed its expiration date, it may lose its original freshness, flavor, and nutritional value.”
These rules also apply to dairy products, she says.
“If you store milk properly in the fridge and it's a day or two past its expiration date, it's not spoiled. You can smell it and it looks perfectly fine. Is it still drinkable? My answer is yes.”
Wang added that canned and dried foods don't actually need expiration dates.
“There are a few reasons for this, but one is that manufacturers still want to tell us about the freshness of their foods, but these foods are generally considered shelf-stable and therefore don't really need best-before dates.”
Madison Maguire is the head of fleet and warehouse operations for Canadian food waste charity Second Harvest, which says that about 60 per cent of food produced for Canadians is wasted each year, which amounts to just over 35 million tonnes.
She says a lot of food is safe to eat after its expiration date.
“There are actually only five foods that have expiration dates in Canada. Those foods are things like infant formula and nutritional supplements for seniors. The other two are products that require a prescription. The expiration dates on those foods relate to the nutritional content, not the freshness of the product.”
Maguire says that if the product is stored properly, refrigerated or not, it's safe to consume, but that doesn't mean it's safe for everyone.
“Then I say do a smell test too. If you put the yogurt in the fridge, open it and you're not sure, you can do a smell test,” she explained.
“[This] “This is one of the most misunderstood topics and can lead to a lot of food waste, because a lot of food is wasted unnecessarily if it's based solely on the date of the product without testing or opening it.”
This comes after a new report from Food Banks Canada showed many Canadians are currently struggling.
“30 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 30, 44.5 per cent of single-parent families and 42 per cent of renters live at the poverty level, meaning they cannot afford two or more household necessities.”
The institute's experts estimate that “25 per cent of Canadians live below the poverty line, while the official poverty rate is 10 per cent.”
The group is calling for the use of a Material Poverty Index (MDI) to give authorities a better understanding of what people are struggling to pay for.
“Implementing the MDI in Canada would improve our understanding of the extent and nature of poverty and could help explain the gap between actual demand for food banks and the current official poverty rate. We urge the Government to incorporate the MDI into its official poverty reduction strategy as part of a portfolio of indicators to assess poverty levels in Canada,” said Kirsten Beardsley, CEO of Food Banks Canada.
–With files from Mike Lloyd
