Jayne Dowle: I’d bargain on common sense, not sell-by dates

So, in principle, I think this government campaign to stamp out sell-by dates is good. It will save around £680 per family, per year on food wastage, apparently, because – according to a survey by Morrisons – more than 50 per cent of us chuck out the coleslaw as soon the clock gets ticking.

Obviously, I’m with the other half, rummaging round at the end of the day looking for the yellow stickers signalling heavy reductions on random items that never make it onto the shopping list.

The new plan itself is simple: to have one label on each product, either, “use by” for fresh produce or “best before” for tins etc, and this label will only go on food unsafe to eat after a certain date. So no more of that “enjoy by” nonsense, although anybody who thinks you can’t “enjoy” a nice Eccles cake 12 hours after the label tells you its life is over needs to get a life of their own.

No wonder so much of the food we buy ends up in landfill, wasting our money and putting a toll on the environment. It is estimated that every day 1.3 million unopened yoghurt pots, five million potatoes, a million loaves of bread, 440,000 ready meals, 5,500 chickens and a million slices of ham are dumped.

I once sat next to a senior supermarket manager at a very long lunch to launch some consumer product or other. The highlight of this was the half an hour in which he shared with me everything he knew about labelling.

I promise I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that he confirmed all my instincts when he said that most of the labels plastered all over the front of your ready-made curry for two mean nothing much in reality, except to the person in charge of stock-keeping.

In our house, I’ve long promoted a policy of “only throw it in the bin if it’s got blue bits”. My husband’s mother worked for local council restaurant inspections and he often accompanied her on expeditions to rid East Surrey of cockroaches.

His views, understandably, are somewhere near the other end of the scale. The other day he was on one of his regular fridge-clearing missions, and he held up a tub of baking margarine, mouthing the words “end of July” at me, shaking his head. Well, working on the proviso that I made some buns with it just a week or so ago and no-one ended up in A&E, I told him to put it back.

Such evidence proves that I am naturally a tight-wad. So I just hope that in these straitened times this campaign to persuade food suppliers to rethink their policies and instigate a brand-new system of labelling isn’t going to cost a fortune.

It is reported that the supermarkets aren’t happy. Many insist they have already reduced the labelling on their goods and are being shall we say, unco-operative, with the Government. So, some work to do there then.

I worry because you can guarantee exactly where the costs of all this will end up – added on to the price of the food we buy. And we all know how high – and climbing – that is. I’m still stinging from the £5 it cost me on Saturday to buy one packet of chicken and one packet of ham for the children‘s sandwiches.

The prospect of a food shop where every commodity is rounded up to either £5 or £10 is beginning to sound less like a particularly dull futuristic nightmare and more a terrifying reality, but just think of the neat and easy-to-read labels you would have then.

I am sure that the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, is really pleased with herself for coming up with this big idea, especially after her recent debacle doing a U-turn over the selling-off-of-our-forests.

But considering everything else we have to contend with right now, are we really expected to bow down with gratitude over someone pointing out a fact of life which should already be obvious to anyone old enough to be in charge of a fridge?

If you ask me, as a mere shopper and household budgeter, I’d say that Ms Spelman would be better employed tackling the nefarious practices of the profiteering supermarkets which encourage us to spend more and therefore waste more. Those buy-one-get-one-free deals for a start, especially on things which go off quickly, such as fruit and vegetables. And the totally mind-boggingly and frustrating array of bulk buy special offers on items such as milk.

In a normal fridge, who has room for three large plastic bottles of the stuff? Sort that out Ms Spelman, and then I really might begin to believe that you have our own interests at heart, and not your own.