Waste not - and take use-by dates with a pinch of salt

My grandmother had a larder. It was a big stone room with a mesh over the window instead of glass and food would sit around on slate slabs until we ate it. My grandfather had a barn in which he would hang any game he acquired, often for months until he considered it ready to hand over to my grandmother for cooking. My mother was brought up eating food stored this way without once being hospitalised with galloping diarrhoea or any other gut problem. I spent a big part of my childhood with them and other than being made to eat strange and undesirable animal parts, meal times at Granny's were not risky.

Food labelling started in 1980 and hasn't changed much since. But our preparation and hygiene standards certainly have. Back then the shelf life of food was shorter and with new preservatives and preparation techniques many foods now have double the shelf life. Any microbiologist will tell you that fresh, in-date food that has not been cooked properly poses a vastly higher infection risk than out-of-date food that has. Given how ready we are to sue at the drop of a hat, the food industry inevitably plays it very safe. There is a large safety margin added into use-by dates to ensure that the industry is protected. And call me cynical but strict use-by dates are also in their financial interests. A short fridge life will increase the chance that we chuck it out without eating it and go back to buy more.

I am now readying myself for the angry letters that I'm sure will come flooding in to tell me that it is a disgrace that I should be telling people it's OK to eat out-of-date food. But as always it all boils down to common sense, so often lacking in today's litigation-crazy society. But there are simple rules that you can follow to reduce your risks even if your food is a bit old.

Wash your hands before and after handling food, don't use the raw meat knife for anything else and always cook food for the correct length of time. Of course children, pregnant women, ill people and pensioners may be especially susceptible to the bacteria in "off" food and a recent increase in cases of listeria infection could be related to people eating gone-off food.
But I would propose this: any foods a few days past the use-by date will be fine to eat, especially if you need to cook it. Though treat anything you eat raw, particularly dairy products or cold rice, with more suspicion. In doing this and applying common sense, we can greatly reduce the amount of food we waste.