Sunday, November 15, 2020

Reducing food waste

The Japanese government, and the food industry here, occasionally makes big waves over the amount of food waste in the country, and they will spend part of a news cycle pretending to want to do something about it. Recently, this has surfaced on the radar again.

This time, in typical Japanese behavior, they have a typically Japanese solution - removing the days from "best used by" marks. The reasoning goes that consumers buy food and then don't use it. At some point, they look at the Best Used By date, see that the food is one or two days past the date, and then throw it away out of the fear that it's already spoiled, or won't taste good. So, by removing the day from the package, the argument is that those same consumers will be spurred by the uncertainty (is it still good or not?) into eating or using that food right then and there, rather than tossing it or putting it back on their shelves to throw it away later.

I'm wondering why the food manufacturers don't simply use the last day of the month for the Use By date. Maybe it's more about saving money by using a little less ink on each product...

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