Fair comment. But “Hey, I know what I’m doing”.
In the face of Bidenomics’ rising prices, consider this:
Sell-by Dates, Tyrants of the Kitchen
From time to time there are public outbreaks of concern—ranging from mild fretting to near-hysteria—over sell-by dates (aka “use by” and “best by” dates).
Those who see them as guarantors of food safety resolutely avoid buying anything whose sell-by date is nigh or throw out anything whose date has passed. They are deluded. For most products, sell-by dates mean nothing to the consumer. There are a few and specific exceptions, most of them normally handled by the human nose: dairy items, for example. Further, they are in no way “official.” That is, they are not required by state or federal law or required by the USDA; not calculated by lab-coated health or nutrition personnel; not critical to safety or quality. No. They are created by brands—the food processors whose names appear on the labels. And their purpose (how mundane!) is merely to create shelf pace.
Understand this: canned and frozen foods are immune to the Cinderella Effect. They do not change for the worse at the stroke of midnight. They don’t turn poisonous, lose color, decline in flavor or change in any other detectable way. The only thing that changes is their name: at midnight they become Garbage.
Personal experience: During infantry training at Fort Devens, Mass. in 1961, my class of 3500 cadets several times endured an exercise called “eating tactical.” That meant bayonet drill or romancing the 81-mm. mortar was punctuated by lunch in the field, starring C Rations (predecessor of today’s MRE’s, or Meals Ready to Eat), which consisted mainly of little olive-drab cans of “chow” meant to fortify warriors ducking incoming in foreign climes. The cans all bore dates. And they weren’t ‘best-by’ but ‘packed-on.’ Some were from the 1940s.
What the hell: we were teenage boys, a demographic widely and accurately reputed to willingly eat almost anything, so we fell to, making faces and cracking wise, but “chowing down” nonetheless. While none of us sent his compliments to the chef, none of us got sick, either.
Nor will you. Fact is, if you’re looking for what is modishly termed ‘settled science’ these days you need seek no farther than the canning industry. It knows its business.
What, then, is the reason for sell-by dates?
Easy-peasey: the demands of the supply chain. Agribusiness–Big Dirt—requires reliable supplies of food in predictable quantities to spring from the soil, be loaded aboard transports, shipped to canneries, shipped again to wholesalers and finally unloaded at supermarkets and groceries. The last link in the chain is the consumer, and if the consumer doesn’t bite, or bite fast enough, unsold inventory stacks up. Problem: more shipments are already unstoppably en route, à la ”The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Shelves, in short, have to be cleared.
Retailing ain’t what she used to be. Back in the day, there were individual stores whose owners would order mostly what people wanted, a little of what they hoped to trade them up to, and whatever they got “call” (customer requests) for. No more. Nowadays supermarket and bodegas alike are simply signed up to take what producers send them. I have seen the process in action.
Personal experience: At my beloved corner bodega one day I was bitching to the owner that the Entenmann’s coffee cakes had run out weeks ago and not been replenished. I was in mid-grievance when I saw the Entenmann’s step-van pull up and double-park out front. Seconds later Entenmann’s route driver bustled through the door with a double armload of fresh snacks. In a few more seconds he restocked his rack with whatever the bakery had handed him (and again it was not coffee cakes) and then was gone. Mission accomplished.
It’s the same with stuff Big Dirt ships to supermarkets, only scaled up to require 18-wheelers, fork lifts and loading docks. Stuff comes in like the tide, and because of sell-by dates, there’s somewhere to put it.
When Mr. Sell-By comes to call, sandwich shops and the like often simply throw food out (some New York City sushi joints often cut prices 50% sales at 5 PM). Before that date, savvy retailers also have sales and wholesalers dump wholesale lots on chains like Odd Lots, Lot Less and Last Lot. These are not dollar stores; they are specialists in last chances–odd lots, overruns, marketing failures, bankrupt stock and remainders as well as foodstuffs menaced because time’s wingèd chariot is worryingly near. So, no, Amazon can’t sell me a half-pound puck of France’s Président brie for $12.94, nor can Target for $5.59 nor even Walmart ($4.70). No, I merely compose my mind in patience until it turns up, eventually, at Jack’s 99¢ Store for $1.99. It then usually has two or three weeks to go before the sell-by guillotine falls, but what do I care? I know I’ll last at least two weeks more, and I stock up.
But most consumers believe in sell-by dates because sellers do, and sellers believe in them—or at least ACT on them—because of legal liability. Can you imagine the carnage that would result if there were even one consumer who a) claimed poisoning from past-date food, b) still had the dated can and c) had even kept the receipt? Thousands of ambulance-chasers would be maimed for life in the frenzied scramble to bag that person as a client. Now imagine the scene in court as the ambulance-chaser holds the can and receipt aloft and declaims to the jury that “this billion-dollar supermarket chain deliberately and with callous I difference to human suffering chose to risk my client’s life rather than lose a few pennies by putting this tainted product on the shelves instead of where it belongs—in the trash!” (hurls can into wastebasket).
In this country, juries eat that stuff up.
So: safety is not an issue. Quality, within reason, is not an issue. What also isn’t an issue but should be is that with the USDA estimating U.S. food waste at 30-40%, the tyranny of the sell-by date is a major contributor.
Here endeth the lesson.
© 2023 Bill Marsano
