Supermarkets Started Selling Stale Fruit & Veg?

I'm pretty sure this was something started by Lidl in an effort to prevent people always choosing the freshest fruit and veg and other supermarkets adopted it. I noticed it at Lidl along time before other supermarkets. Loose fruit and veg never had a best before date it was only pre-packed items. A quick look online states Tesco were the first to do this but I noticed it long before the date given for Tesco at Lidl. It used to annoy me as I would always search through fruit and veg to get the items that had the best date on them and I couldn't do that at Lidl.

The thing is without the date sometimes older stock hangs about longer by mistake and you discover its older than you realise. They state it reduces waste but if you take home manky fruit and veg which isn't used its wasted. I would prefer shorter life product to have a slightly lower price which I'm sure they could implement easily. I.e. when it's scanned if there are only 2 days left rather than 3 or 4 you get a 10% reduction or something like that and of course if its the same day perhaps you get a 50% reduction. That way those who want fresher will pay a premium and those who want cheap will go for shorter life products. For me that would mean I would probably go shorter life for most fruit and veg and but fresher for a small percentage of fruit and veg.

I didn’t realise the law had changed on this point, which now explains why on the shelves things aren’t looking their best or already gone off. I think this policy only works in stores where the staff are really on it (& I wouldn’t necessarily expiry a school leaver to be able to tell) terms of checking and realising stock is on the the turn and will reduce to get rid of it. I think rather than best before date it needs a packed or arrival date into store so staff can easily check otherwise the wastage is still going to be the same and agree wastage will be more. I would also find this useful living on my own I don’t eat through things as quickly as a family.

This would also explain on Christmas Eve that it was a really nice and welcomed gesture that my Asda gave lots of veg away for free, which I took to give to my family and their neighbours on Christmas Day (as they live in a small town and don’t have the competition on prices) this was fine for the carrots and parsnips but all the broccoli was already on the turn so no one was taking it and I did think it was a huge waste as they could have reduced it down a few days before and actually got some money for it rather than it be completely wasted, which seemed shocking but this was now you have said because there was no date on the packaging.

Where I am one supermarket was selling fruit and veg clearly mouldy and not reducing it or removing it. I stopped going there

Yes it was done under the guise of not wasting food but use your nose and eyes to tell if it's still fresh. Families probably use a bag of, say potatoes, fairly quickly but single people need them to last longer and end up chucking half the bag. They now get paid for their products on the turn and wastage is passed to the consumer to lose money instead.

Definitely a deterioration in quality but I expect that of yellow sticker products. If in normal aisle I look and if I can feel the ripeness of a product. If it looks and feels wrong I leave it.

I returned a large bag of onion just after Christmas becasue in the centre they were rotting. I didnt have a reciet and when they heard that they said it okay as I told them I used my bank card so there woul dbe a record. They accepted it but as soon as they reaslied it had been over a week they said it was too long. I had to argue the case that you arent going to eat a bag of onions in a fortnight so how would I know you sold me rotten food? I did it in fron tof a whole queue of customers making a point to show the onions and they immediately refunded me.

I think about all the fruit stalls in the high street and in the market. They have showed a sell by date on any of the products but people have been buying from them for years.