As darkness falls, your local supermarket becomes
a hive of activity. From canned vegetables and
salad dressings to fresh vegetables and deli meats,
countless items are removed from shelves by night
staff. Approaching their expiration dates or because
they are no longer at their peak quality, most stores
consider them unfit for sale. With 15,000 different
products in an average supermarket and 25,000 in
a superstore according to the Food Marketing
Institute (FMI), retailers in the US are lumbered with
endless pounds of past-their-prime items every
year.
So what comes of all of this food? Fresh vegetables
and meats, are often cooked up for in-store deli and
salad counters before they spoil, says supermarket
consultant David J. Livingston. A portion of it is
inevitably thrown into the garbage and ends up in
landfills. But surprisingly much of it finds a second
home. Some is given away to food banks, some
sold to salvage stores and the rest taken by people
who scrounge outside supermarkets.
With the current economic troubles, expired foods are increasingly becoming a part of America’s
diet. Salvage stores are seeing a steady uptake in business from cost conscious consumers.
Similarly food banks across the country have reported an increase of up to 40 percent in the
demand for emergency food assistance in the last year, according to a survey by Feeding
America, a network of over 200 food banks.
And the Food and Drug Administration approves of outdated fare! The government agency
determines that expiration dates are simply an indication of optimum quality as deemed by the
manufacturer. “Foods can remain safe to consume for some time beyond sell-by and even useby dates provided they are handled and stored properly,” says Dr Ted Labuza, professor of food
science at the University of Minnesota. For fresh produce and refrigerated foods this means
storage at below 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Canned foods and shelf-stable goods like salad
dressings, Labuza adds, can be consumed for years beyond their expiration dates. While their
quality might suffer, for example emulsified dressings may split, they will not pose a safety
hazard unless contaminated. Apart from baby formula and certain types of baby foods, product
dating is not even required by federal regulations.
Back on the Store Shelves
Take a walk through the Country Discount Grocery in Wautoma, Wisconsin, and you’ll see
outdated packs of Quaker’s granola bars, Cheerios cereal boxes and bottles of A1 Steak Sauce.
Hundreds of salvage grocery stores just like this one take advantage of the fact that retailers are
generally not beholden to abide by dates stamped on food items.
Distinct from outlets run by manufacturers such as Pepperidge Farm and Entenmann’s which
retail outdated baked goods from overproduction, salvage grocery stores sell-past-their-prime
foods which are discarded by supermarkets and regular grocery stores.
Outdated foods, damaged and out of season items from supermarkets, collectively known as
“unsaleables”, are sent to large clearing houses known as reclamation centers. These are most
often operated by the supermarket chains themselves or wholesale distributors. Here,
dangerous items such as broken jars and obviously contaminated or spoiled foods are disposed
of. The remainder is sold into the salvage industry or donated to food banks.
Every two weeks Patricia Quillen, owner of the Country Discount Grocery re-stocks with a 53ft
trailer load full of goods from the reclamation center. The unsaleables are packed into cardboard
banana boxes, each one containing a mixture of up to 40 different food and health and beauty
items. No one box is identical. So Quillen says she really doesn’t know what’s going to line her
shelves until she opens them up In fact, out of the 1152 boxes in a single delivery there might
be just one jar of blueberry jam!
Up to 50% of her stock is outdated and a further 10-15% is very close to its best before stamp.
But clearly her customers don’t mind. “We have about 100 customers every day and 150 on the
weekend,” Quillen says. She checks online, visits Wal-Mart and uses leftover price labels on
stock as an indicator of the former retail value of her stock. Then she prices it a full 50 percent
cheaper. Outdated cans of Campbells chunky soup at 80 cents and Campbells regular soups at
50 cents were big winter sellers. With the arrival of Spring, Quillen anticipates that the canned
fruit will be in demand.
While her customers now don’t think about the dates but when she first opened the shop five
years ago, it was a different scenario. “People thought we were going to kill them,” she said,
adding with a laugh, “so we told them we only depend on new customers because we killed off
our old ones.” But she soon educated them. “At first they would buy $10 worth and if they lived
through that, they would come back and buy $25,” she says. Now some of her customers spend
hundreds of dollars at a time.
While other businesses may be suffering during these lean economic times, Quillen says that
her sales have increased nearly 40 percent on last year. And she’s confident that this isn’t a fad.
“We don’t expect to lose any customers as the economy gets better, she says, “because when
they hit the regular stores, they won’t be able to handle those prices any more.”
While Gayle Bryant, 37, from Longview, Washington, may not splash the cash at salvage stores
as she tries to keep to a weekly grocery budget of $60 to feed her family of six, she shops at
them at least twice a week. And she often brings home outdated foods. “I did my own research
because a lot of people are scared of eating expired foods,” says the housewife.
While Bryant won’t touch outdated dairy products she’ll happily throw expired canned foods,
cereal and granola bars into her shopping cart. With saving of more than half of what she would
spend in a regular store for the same amount, she knows its worth glossing over a past bestbefore date or two, especially since she’s never had any problems with the quality of her
purchases.
Ryan Blankenship, 34, owner of the California Discount Grocery, got into the salvage business
less than two years ago when he realized how lucrative an industry it was. Recently he noticed
that the amount of expired foods he receives fluctuates with the seasons. “ At the beginning of
the year we got a lot of outdated holiday foods,” he explains attributing the abundance of stock
to the recession’s effect on holiday spending. “But now only about 20-25 percent of what we
have is expired.”
Nonetheless, Blackenship has a store policy of not putting anything on his shelves that are more
than three months old mostly because the older the foods the less likely it will sell. Still, it’s
easier to shift certain types of outdated items than others. “Canned foods will sell much more
easier than say cookies or chips if they are past their best-before date. We don’t offer old bread
like day-old bakeries, or anything like that, just because it would be difficult to sell,” he says
From Supermarket Aisles to Feeding America’s Hungry
According to a 2005 FMI Supermarkets and Food Bank study, more than half the 8360
supermarkets surveyed donated to food banks 100,000 pounds of food that they could not sell
(comprising of outdated, damaged and out of season products) annually. Feeding America West
Michigan Food Bank which serves over 1200 soup kitchens, homeless shelters, food pantries
and other charity agencies, is one such recipient. According to Executive Director John Arnold,
up to 40 percent of the food that they receive is close to expiring or already expired.
If there is any doubt over the safety or the quality of a food, the bank’s certified dietician will be
brought in and it is subjected to a formal “testing” procedure. When it comes to a perishable
item, there are clear indicators of quality. “If it’s going bad there’s rarely any mystery! It lets you
know, either with its appearance or its smell or its texture,” says Arnold.
Still despite general confidence amongst food banks that expired foods can be safely distributed
to their agencies, not everyone agrees. According to Anne Goodman, Executive Director of the
Cleveland Foodbank in Ohio, “when we get retail products from grocery stores we sort out
products which are past their expiration date and we throw them away. We never take a
chance.”
Still, perhaps if Goodman had heard the comment a certain manufacturer once told Arnold, she
might be less cautious. “We put enough preservatives in our food to embalm an elephant,” the
manufacturer confessed.
And If You Don’t Want to Buy Outdated, Just Take It
If you see Leia Mondragon, 24, rifling through trash outside the grocery stores of Manhattan’s
West Village, don’t be tempted to offer her your loose change. Unlike the homeless or needy
who must resort to picking from trash, Mondragon’s penchant for outdated foods is a lifestyle
choice. Mondragan believes that expiration dates exist to propel consumerism as do many of
her fellow Freegans – a community who subsist on minimal consumption and salvaged goods.
“The manufacturing world uses it as a way to push products through the system; a way to get
the stores to keep buying in bulk and keep things moving in and out of shops,” she says.
At least twice a month and sometimes more, Mondragon arms herself with bags or a cart and
goes foraging through New York City’s urban jungle either by herself or with friends. In the
evening stores will leave their trash outside on the sidewalk awaiting collection for garbage
trucks that come around one or two in the morning. The Freegans ensure they arrive before the
trucks to avoid losing their spoils.
“I don’t go by the dates, I only pay attention to my senses,” Mondragon says. “This is backed up
by billions of years of evolution, we’ve survived by sensing what is good for us and what is not.”
Nonetheless, with most stores removing stock from shelves on the day or the day before its
sell-by dates arrives, Mondragon knows that she has a few days before anything in the trash will
go bad. “Stores are not going to sell something that as soon as you buy it it’s going to rot,” she
theorizes. Furthermore, as she picks up her food only a couple of hours after it has been
dumped, even produce and fresh meat will not likely spoil from lack of refrigeration.
In fact spoilage is something that Freegan Sowmya Reddy has never experienced from eating
outdated foods from the trash. Neither has she seen any vermin amongst her dinner. “Because
the trash bags are tied up tightly and dumpsters closed, rats or mice cannot get in,” she says.
Having recently moved to New York City from Bangalore, India for her post-graduate studies,
Reddy has even been able to find a taste of home in the trash. When she wants Indian
ingredients like chilies and spices, she heads down to Manhattan’s Murray Hill which is full of
Indian grocery stores.
True enough, “you learn how to be resourceful for things,” explains Mondragon whose favorite
supermarkets are D’Agostino’s and Gristedes for general groceries. “I know what sorts of things
a lot of places throw out, what they usually overbuy or have excess stock on.” And even if the
Freegan menu relies on expired fare from the garbage, her choice is far from limited.
Mondragon knows exactly where to go for bagels, broccoli rabe, kale, especially ripe mangoes
and even cupcakes.
Venture past the Crumbs bakery on West 8th in Manhattan at 9 p.m. one evening, and chances
are you’ll catch Mondragon with her head inside a trash bag searching out the vanilla cupcakes
with chocolate frosting. Just don’t fight her for them, there’s plenty to go around, she says.
Read more of my work at www.nadia-arumugam.com, and if you have an interest in cooking
and gardening in tight urban spaces, check out my other blog, Spade & Spatula .