Food labels: Best Before and Use By dates

CC-BY Flickr user wooties

In this age of increasingly ubiquitous health and safety, and its combination of beneficial effect and unintended consequences and abuses, I realised that after living in the UK for almost 10 years I had no idea of the difference in meaning between Use By and Best Before dates on food packaging.

Do you know the difference? Would you stake your health on it?

I had more or less worked out that Use By is probably for foods that go bad or decompose over time and that Best Before is probably for foods that don’t go bad but the manufacturers consider to be degraded over time. But this not-quite-understanding has seen me throw away quite a lot of food over the years, as I wasn’t about to risk anyone’s health on an assumption.

But it turns out that — with the exception of eggs — these assumptions were correct. Here’s what the UK’s Food Standards Agency has to say (paraphrased):

Best Before Dates

Appear on a wide range of frozen, dried, tinned and other foods, and are more about quality than safety, except for eggs. When the date runs out it doesn’t mean that the food will be harmful, providing it’s stored according to the label instructions, but it might begin to lose its flavour and texture.

However, you shouldn’t eat eggs after the ‘best before’ date as they can contain salmonella bacteria, which could start to multiply after this date.

Use By Dates

Appear on food that goes off quickly, such as smoked fish, meat products and ready-prepared salads. Don’t use any food or drink after the end of the ‘use by’ date on the label, even if it looks and smells fine. It could put your health at risk, and may even do so before this date if the food is not stored according to the storage instructions.

Freezing food can extend food beyond it use by date, but you still need to follow any freezing-related instructions on the pack.

Once opened, you need to follow any opening-related instructions, such as ‘consume within 7 days after opening’ — and you still need to make sure it’s used by the ‘use by’ date, even if that’s the next day.

This explains why WW2-era tins of corned beef and 17th century bottles of French wine are still consumable today. Think again before throwing away those tins of tomatoes and soup that have been languishing at the back of your cupboard or pantry for the last few years.

For more information, see the following Food Standards Agency pages:

• Best Before
• Use By
• Terms on Labels

Speaking of ubiquitous health and safety: This article does not replace your common sense or your responsibility for your own wellbeing. Go to the horse’s mouth to double-check for yourself. These guidelines may not apply outside of the UK.

Book Review: The G.I. Diet by Rick Gallop

Some time ago, I read about glycaemic index (GI) and how it is related to the sugar impact of foods. Unlike traditional caloric measurement — where when calories burned exceed the calories eaten, you’ll lose weight — GI is directly related to the impact of carbohydrates upon the body, specifically metabolism and blood sugar. A great deal of research has gone into determining the GI of numerous foods and it is freely available online at the Glycaemic Index Foundation, conveniently listed for public use by type and brand.

Following on from this, I have just finished reading a book by the former president of the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario, Rick Gallop, called The G.I. Diet: Glycemic Index (Amazon|Amazon UK). I think it’s excellent, and I thought I’d share my review of it here.

This book educates the reader about the importance of glycaemic index in food and how to permanently change your lifestyle to keep your ideal weight for life. Unlike other diet books I’ve read, this book covers more than just the initial weight loss. It achieves this in two phases: the first covers the steady, safe and sustainable reduction of weight, and the second covers how to maintain your ideal weight once you reach it. This isn’t about a crash diet, and doesn’t require any dietary replacements or strange supplements.

In addition to the weight loss and maintenance phases, it gives advice on what to do when you get complacent or when you have bad days. The author knows it will happen, that it’s not cause for alarm or a reason to give up, and shows how to remedy the situation. The GI of foods are arranged in a traffic light colour system to indicate red (high-GI), amber (moderate-GI) and green (low-GI) foods. At its simplest, the weight loss phase recommends eating only ‘green light’ foods and the maintenance phased allows ‘green light’ and ‘amber light’ foods (‘red light’ foods are considered unwise regardless of your BMI; not an unfair assessment). It is easy to understand and can be integrated into everyday life — including the inevitable pub lunches, restaurants and takeaway. And it doesn’t unrealistically assume that you live like a monk or stick religiously to it all the time.

For the sceptically-minded, this book contains none of the red flags normally associated with nutritional and dietary advice, no unsupported claims, no supplements or special products need to be purchased, no denial of important food groups or dietary diversity, and it was written by the former president of Ontario’s heart and stroke foundation. Although a proper review would need to be based upon giving the diet a full workout, after reading it through I’m confident this book is worth your time.

The GI book I read prior to this was The Glycemic Load Diet by Rob Thompson (Amazon|Amazon UK) which is another way of approaching the same issue.

To be clear, there’s a difference between glycaemic index (GI) and glycaemic load (GL). The former is an absolute value for each food type, irrespective of quantity and how it would apply to common use. The latter is a ranking system that considers both the GI and the quantity of the food (based upon the physical amount of carbohydrates in the portion), using the formula: (GI x carbohydrate(g))/100. Some examples:

• A popular ‘fruit and fibre’ type cereal has a GI of 67. A 30g portion (114 calories; 21g carbohydrate) has a GL of 14, and a 60g portion (228 calories; 42g carbohydrate) has a GL of 28.
• A McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish has a GI of 66 and a portion size of 128g (according to The GI Foundation). It contains 303 calories and 30g carbohydrate, giving it a GL of 20.

It’s interesting to see that both products have the same GI, though a large bowl of the cereal has fewer calories but a higher GL. (Though the Fillet-O-Fish has traditionally been one of the least unhealthy items on their menu).

In my opinion, Gallop’s traffic light system seems to provide a more straightforward system for use in the average person’s daily life and is very simple to follow as it provides a list of preferred foods, but Thompson’s use of GL provides a portion size-sensitive way of taking care with what you consume and gives the individual greater ability to tailor their food consumption to suit their own lifestyle.

Moved blog to WordPress

I’d been having some problems with my previous blog host, and I wasn’t comfortable with having that much data all under one username and password, so I made the decision to move this blog here, to WordPress.

I was able to import the data seamlessly with just a few mouse clicks and a number of URL changes. Fantastic!

Holiday break

I have a large chunk of the next 2 weeks off and, as Christmas and the New Year fall within that period, I don’t expect to be doing much running or gym. So this is to let my lone reader (to borrow Terry Wogan’s standard joke) know that there is unlikely to be anything meaningful posted before 1 January.

So for those of you who celebrate something: happy whatever. And for all: happy holidays and have a great new year.