Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
I am very specifically talking about *private individual* foodwaste here, not that of stores, restaurants and other institutions where other rules apply. I'm saying many people today do not examine the food they bought to check its' condition but exclusively go by the the stamped date on the package.
Of course they do, that's what it's for. If it's before that date, they have the protection of quality assurance and some ability to get reimbursed if it turns out to be bad. If it's after that, it's up to your ability to judge, which most people don't have much of for food, and if you get it wrong you're out of luck.

As somebody who works at a grocery store, we take that date pretty seriously because we basically have to if we want any trust at all. By far our biggest losses are on things like produce that don't have those dates because things can and have gone off days before one would expect them to and we have to bend over backwards to assure people we want them to have good safe food without that date on it.