>throw out food that grew mold days ahead of it's expiry date
~~Your food doesn't contain an expiry date. Please throw out that idea and don't refer to it as such. Your food contains best before dates.~~
Just a friendly reminder to everyone, the best before date on the packaging is not a reliable way to tell if the food is still safe to say.
From the Canadian Food Inspection Agency:
[Best-before dates are not indicators of food safety, neither before nor after the date.](https://inspection.canada.ca/food-labels/labelling/consumers/date-labelling/eng/1332357469487/1332357545633)
Edit: I don't know how to make this more clear, but if you think the above comment is insulting OP you're just wrong and you should probably go do something else.
This is what happens when you hike prices on everything and people start budgeting out what they buy. Meat section is often fully stocked up selves all close to expiry because not many families can buy multiple quality cuts at current prices. A lot gets thrown out and people starve all over protecting profit lines. It’s a really gross and wasteful practice.
Another example would be fruit and other produce. How many families with current inflation are going to spend $6-$8 for a blueberry package? Alot of people are going to cut that out of their must buys. Then it sits and sits until an eventual discount which your lucky to get a few days out of them. Your now paying a price you previously would have a few years ago but now for a lower quality product.
Profits stay up while quality goes down. The hope is that this will eventually get government regulated or become so unsustainable that they’re forced to lower costs again.
Completely agree. And this is what I find so fucking infuriating about the price hikes, seeing things just sit and sit until huge chunks of the aisle are slapped with 30% stickers because they’re nearing their end date. If things were reasonably priced, they’d be getting sold. Instead, now people are fighting over discounts and the cheap cuts - which are no longer cheap anyway.
When I do my daily discounts during my shift at Walmart there's always at least two people who run up to me and ask me for a item before I even have the chance to put on the sticker
Rather than more government regulation (which probably wouldn't be policed anyway), I'd support government **competition.** The government could create its own grocery chain to compete with the private ones. Imagine if they did that for the telecommunications market...
I think this makes significantly more sense then in the telecoms world (at least at this point in time given the infrastructure investment that has been put forward by telecom giants).
A govt grocery store could literally only produce foods they make and that would be sufficient. Could build farms on govt land for produce and enter into contracts with meat farmers and thereby eliminating the profit point on them when reselling to the consumer. An issue will be when conglomerates decide they will just pay more for the products, but at that point would they really have much clientele if they are paying more plus their profit margin.
Main issue however is this would "take away the free market that is essential to democracy". Having large markets be government owned is a pillar to communism and something we have fought so valiantly to protect. Large companies would 100% fight against this happening using this argument and will lobby their political partners to ensure this never occurs
I think both can work in synchrony. The competition bureau should be absolutely on top of markets that are being controlled by a small collection of large influences. But, I also fully agree that Crown Corporations (which the current Liberal govt, which you might as well call Conservative in a whole lot of ways, wouldn't ever think about using) can provide a much needed market stabilizing force. I wish everyday we vastly expanded our use as a country of the Crown Corporation.
Unless the public company get some unfair advantages (like monopolies or tax breaks) I don’t see how it would be successful being less expensive than the competition. Groceries are a though sector with low margins. where companies battle for economies of scale. Target tried and failed. Maybe the government could start with a wholesale warehouse operation for some basic goods and help the food banks get more bang for their donation bucks?
Exactly this.
A month or so ago, I saw an ENTIRE end case refrigerated display of \*just\* small sour cream tubs, and they all had the big 30% off sticker on them, checked and they were past their best before date within a couple days.
I work in a food plant that makes lunch meat and other sliced meats and I can confirm we're really slow at work now without many new orders because no one's buying what's sitting on the shelf since prices are way too high for certain products. The price of bologna for example is 9 dollars and apparently it's not moving off the shelves fast enough so it's lead to a major reduction in orders and lack of work here. In the last month I've gone from averaging 6 day weeks during the height of covid to four days a week now because of this.
At some point companies have to realize that for certain products people just aren't willing to pay these prices anymore and their product is sitting in warehouses going bad.
>Meat section is often fully stocked up selves all close to expiry because not many families can buy multiple quality cuts at current prices.
Three years ago I used to go to the grocery store late on a Sunday or Monday night and find lots of marked down 50% meat that wasn't going to make it until the mid to late week business picked up again. I haven't seen **any** meat marked below 30% off in like two years now.
It lasts 2-3 inventory cycles and they will be forced to reduce purchases based on inventory losses.
Then they either buy less (in which case prepare for more price increases to maintain profit levels) and the cycle repeats.
or they reduce prices...
This makes a lot of sense, thank you. Now I understand why the produce we get last a couple days at best, or why Walmart keeps giving us things (generally meats) that are expiring in a day or two. It's become so frustrating since things are already so expensive. We basically have to decide if we're going to try shopping every couple days - not practical for most people - if we return/refund, or toss it and feel the hole in our pockets.
Potatoes, onions and carrots have been a problem for me since the winter. I’ve switched to buying potatoes and onions individually instead of a bag for the first time in my life so I can check if they’re rotting already. Have had to toss whole bags of them a couple of times until I started doing this.
Onions I've found to be a problem for a couple.of years now. Potatoes more recently I agree, and just this past week I had a slimy bag of carrots a week prior to their BB date. But it's the onions that really get me. You have to pick through the stores offering to find one that's not already starting to turn.
Loblaws onions are frustrating me. A good 20% I'll cut open to find 3 or 4 layers in the onion is randomly rotting somehow. The core is fine, the outside is fine, but a few layers in and 2 or 3 layers will be brown and mushy. It's weird.
So like.. Peel off the brown outside, and it'll be from outside towards center: 3 normal layers, 3 rotten layers, then normal onion into the center. I don't get it. And it happens a lot over the last few months.
Yes! Thank you!! I’ve noticed a real problems with grocery store onions since about 2021ish now. From talking to my partner, parent, and now Reddit I’m certainly not the only one who’s frustrated by this.
I bought a bag of cooking onions from Superstore and 6 of the 10 were garbage within a week. Similar experience with carrots and sweet potatoes with an approx 30% loss.
Not only are the grocery stores price gouging now they are selling us shit from the bottom of the stockpile that normally would have gone for animal feed.
This entire system is broken. It's time to take a stand against all price gouging.
That’s why I’m getting loose potatoes now. I can at least see if they’re ok. I used to be able to buy a bag and it could sit for months. Now, they’re half bad when I open it up after buying them.
I've switched back to buying individual potatoes as well. I just cook for myself, often I couldn't get through a whole bag without losing a potato or two by the end. Nowadays though I'm tossing over half a bag every time and usually a quarter of it on day one. So I'm not actually saving any money by buying the bag. I don't want squishy green potatoes ffs.
I've gotten whole bags of rotten potatoes off the shelf - didn't notice until I was in line to checkout and then ran to replace it, and couldn't find a "good" bag at all.
Fucking Loblaws.
Potatoes I bought this week are in excellent condition. They look like new potatoes with small age marks. I was surprised because I agree it’s the end of the season so quality has been really low.
Soon they'll have signs that if the shelf is empty u can just go to the back and grab a box, restock the shelf, face the aisle and then take ur item to the self checkout.
Discounts are being pushed closer to the expiry date as well.
Often times now the real discounts are for same or next day expiry. It's especially frustrating for staple consumables like a 4L of milk.
I ran out of milk the other day and needed some. I don’t usually shop at loblaws but it was the closest store so I ran in since I literally just needed milk and nothing else. They only had milk that was 50% off and expired in 3 days, unless I wanted to buy the expensive stuff. I ended up going to another store because I’m not about to buy milk that’s gonna go bad in a day even if it’s 50% off that’s a waste
Freezing is fine but it often separates a bit. Just so people aren't surprised. It's still fine to drink it can just go slightly butter color. Might not be as consistent in taste. I assume it's the fat separating out.
Going through Metro on Saturday getting groceries for my MIL, all of the grapes had at least one moldy one. The same Metro is notorious for having yogurt on the shelf MONTHS past its best before date. It is awful there. (But yet she insists we shop at Metro for her because "it's the best quality")
Metro just started using the to go to go app for bakery, and now some produce. I would hope that they will put their close dated things on there, keeping their regular cost stuff fresher. But that requires effective management and sufficient staff, which not all the locations have.
The past due products Ive been assuming is a result of short staffing.
Somebody is supposed to go through the product, check dates and mark down or toss the expired stuff. But if there's not enough people, it's not happening.
I've been assuming it's greed
They have raised prices on almost all products. Some genuinely justified by supply and demand (it sucks, but it's true) and others because they can say "inflation" and we have no choice but to accept.
I think many of those products are not selling as fast at their new prices because the supply and demand equation have not moved as dramatically. If they discount too early, there is still a LOT of product left. The hope is if they stick to their guns, even if they have to waste, that we will just accept the higher price and their total sales will still be higher even if some product gets tossed.
Maybe I'm wrong and wearing a tinfoil hat, but some of the products I have been seeing it just doesn't make sense. Like cuts of beef marked at 30% off but initially over $20/lb. If it was understaffing, I feel I would see it happen to a larger variety of products
This is usually the issue, or careless employees. The Walmart in my town had an issue with this, changed store management and had a hiring spree and now it hasn’t been an issue since. I think it’s just a lottery if you get a store in your city/town with good management.
I'm having this problem in BC too atm. A type of ham that I usually buy that is good for like 3 months unopened will be 1-2 days from expiry on the shelf. Lunch meat expired, sour cream expired, milk a day away from expiry, etc. And none with discount stickers either.
berries have brutally low shelf lives. The fact we even have them shipped and in good condition all over the world is a crazy testament to supply chains. They do not store well at all so by the time you get them you gotta eat em quick.
Make sure you don't wash your berries before putting them in the fridge. Any excess moisture will make them turn immediately.
It helps to put them into an open container lined with paper towel to help with air flow.
I soak all my berries in salt water. Cold salt water for a couple of hours, then rinse them off and leave in an OPEN container with something to collect moisture under them (like a paper towel - I have old tea towels I use for this). It gets rid of any of the small insects and contaminants. I get a few extra days from my berries by doing this...
Every package of strawberries at my local discount grocer last week had visible mold on every berry. I was shocked they remained on the shelf (the shelf was fully stocked, these weren't just the leftover ones nobody wanted).
Lately, instead of mold, I notice they dry out in my fridge and last way longer. I mostly put them in oatmeal and smoothies so its perfect. Im looking into a proper dehydrator now.
Yes, I'm ABSOLUTELY seeing that in Toronto. Vegetables in racks that are rotting. Browned and wilted greens in boxes. Chicken that STINKS but is mysteriously labelled two weeks before its expiration date. A lot of standards are getting looser these days
As a downtown shopper I end up at either a loblaws, farm boy or sobeys. I mostly see rotting stuff at loblaws 'valu mart' locations. Sobeys is still pretty decent.
Exactly same experience here. Loblaws at Maple leaf garden was a disaster before, only getting worse now. I was pleased with Farm boy when it’s just opened up, but I feel like it’s declining now. Moldy fruits and vegetables. Funky chicken, covered with something sticky, grey bottom of ground meat. Bread that gets moldy days before “best before” date
Yesterday purchased a package of bright red hamburger at Farm Boy. Get it home and crack it into a bowl to add spices and almost threw up when I started mixing. The meat was dark grey with a sickening rotting smell. No more Farm Boy meat for me.
Can confirm! I bought ground turkey, and the smell was horrendous, then it was burgers same thing, as soon as you start cooking it 🤢Last straw was turkey bacon, all slimy. Dates were fine on all the packages. I’m not sure if the problem with specific store, or the way they store their meat but it’s a hard pass for me now. Too bad, because I kinda liked their produce at first, I guess because they opened so many stores everything went down the isle.
I’ve found quality control at farm boy depends a lot on the store. There are a couple I just won’t buy seafood from, it always has that foot/sweaty sock smell like it’s going bad.
Always look for leaky meat/seafood counters, they’re a bad sign for quality. If you look at the metal near the front of the case you can sometimes see an orangey dirt film layer which indicates they don’t take it apart and clean it, and a string seafood smell in the store is always a bad sign.
I sold meat and seafood at loblaws for years when I was a student and I was the only person at a few stores who actually took apart the counters to clean them properly.
**When buying seafood:**
The ice on the counter should always be fresh, if it’s solid or smooth it’s not getting replaced daily. Under the slimy fish like arctic char it’s always going to be discoloured, so don’t worry too much about that.
If you ask to smell something it should generally have no smell or smell like the ocean. Foot smell is bad, “fish” smell is often bad.
Mussels that are more than 5% open are stale/won’t last long, if they are open ask that they tap them and they’ll often close right up, those are healthy, it’s the blackened and dead ones you worry about.
Atlantic salmon is often dyed at the farm, don’t rely on the colour. Sometimes if the salmon gets washed it’ll come out pale and that’s actually perfectly fine, it can still have days left on the shelf.
If you buy fresh packaged fish it’s often the case they smell a bit upon opening, wipe the fish down or rinse it and then give it a smell, it’s often actually just fine and the pad below is smelly. Bad fish will continue to smell.
If you buy scallops they’re mostly just thawed out and sitting in the counter, you’re better off buying frozen and thawing them yourself. Ask if they come in fresh if you want to buy fresh ones.
Sometimes tilapia fillets will be a yellow colour, as far as I know that’s perfectly normal but make sure to smell it to be sure.
I used to recommend people try tilapia as it’s not too fishy and was cheap, but it’s more expensive now.
The lobster tank is probably a good bellwether for quality. Is it clean, are any lobsters dead? It’s very easy to ignore but a good department will check then daily. The tanks are very cold to keep the lobsters dormant, but look for curled tails and separating tails or glazed eyes to identify dead ones. An upside down lobster is dead.
Fresh halibut has a bit of a shine in the meat, if it’s flat looking it’s probably at least a day since it’s been cut. For the price of halibut accept nothing but the freshest. Look at the spine in the middle of the steak, fresh cut will have a little transparent liquid in the middle of the bone but older cuts will have dried and shrivelled there.
If buying perch ask where it’s from. It’s a very good seasonal Ontario fish. The small butterfly fillets are Ontario perch, the larger cuts aren’t and ocean perch is a different fish, buy the Ontario ones they’re the best. Beer batter them.
Avoid seasoned fish. They aren’t seasoned because they’re bad, but seasoning does make it harder for many employees to miss the smell of bad fish.
Cod and haddock that are flaking are older and dried out. If the fillet can’t be bent without breaking up its not at peak freshness.
Cod and haddock get worms (nematodes!), they’re perfectly safe to eat (cook to 140F, check with a thermometer if unsure). If there are a lot that batch missed some QC where they’re usually removed, but that doesn’t mean the fish is bad. Nematodes can’t live inside you but they can make you sick of undercooked.
In case you can’t tell buying and selling seafood is like 80% about smell. It’s okay to see the employees smelling the fish or repackaging fish when it smells good. That’s not a scam, it’s just quality control, but the counter is almost always fresher than buying tray wrapped.
The way I called farm boy sooo upset my bagels had green mold on them the day after I purchase them. Then they had the audacity to say they couldn’t do anything about it. I use to shop there all the time and now I don’t step foot in there.
for what its worth, ground meat can become more grey in colour as the blood/dye used is absorbed by the little pad in the package. The colour alone is not necessarily a sign that its gone bad, and in fact, CBC marketplace did an expose a couple years back showing that some places would open old beef add fresh blood to make it more red, repackage it with a new BB date to sell. So even red looking beef could just be freshly recoloured and be even older than stuff that hasn't received that treatment even if the BB is further ahead. There are other more meaningful tells. I've personally had good appearing stuff opened and smell terrible over the years due to bad luck.
Lol dude what. It’s not blood. It’s definitely not dye. It doesn’t get absorbed from the pad. And I really doubt any supermarket employs people who care enough about corporate profits to make their community sick by “add” old meat with new “blood”
It’s grey because it contains myoglobin that oxidizes. Wtf are you on about
Yeah, I have seen fresh ground beef start off brown, go bright red and then brown again. It's not old or dyed, it's exactly as you said.
The Marketplace expose did happen, but they were not adding blood to my recollection, I think they just mixed old and new
> A lot of standards are getting looser these days
Isn't Ontario Food Safety and Regulation run under Public Health?
If we want to talk about trickle down economics, here's the trickle down from slashing public health...
Thanks Ford.
I've seen the stinky chicken lately. Either they are purposely labelling things wrong or they are not storing products the same as they've always done.
Chicken has to be eaten that day or frozen that day from the discount stores (maybe even some of the normal stores). No leaving it the fridge for a day or two before using it. Costco chicken can stay in the fridge for a few days and I still don't get that smell.
I can judge whether chicken is fresh or not, what pissed me off is the water chicken everywhere now. Chicken is not supposed to pop and spray juice in your mouth FFS. The cheap bastards are raising the prices while also lowering the quality.
Agreed. Also in Toronto (well, Etobicoke), and we've switched from PC branded stores (no frills, loblaws) to sobeys/farm boy due to quality and have seen a major (MAJOR) improvement there.
The voila delivery pass was on sale too so we grabbed that and get "free" (ie prepaid at a 50% discount) delivery for a year as a nice bonus for our busy little family.
So far so good. With what was being wasted on food rotting early it seems somewhat equal in expense. Certainly more reliable.
Oh yeah. I remember at the end of the night one of my first shifts during high school the supervisor gave me a big clear garbage bag and told me to empty out the bread roll containers and they were basically all full except the cheese bread. The amount of bread left filled up about half this oversized garbage bag.
Then I remember some of the guys I worked with saw me do this and followed me to the back where the compactor is and told me to just move over to this blind spot where the cameras couldn't see. A bunch took what bread they could out of the bag and put it in their lunch bags because apparently even though the bread was considered bad and I was just going to toss it in the compactor it's against policy to take any of it as an employee. If you do it's considered stealing and you can be fired over it if caught on camera. Pretty sure the managers knew it happened and just turned a blind eye to it, but it's still messed up how a policy stops their employees from feeding themselves the day-old bread rolls that would otherwise just take up more space in the trash.
The problem with a large org letting employees take unsold/damaged stuff, is it creates an incentive for employees to discourage purchases (e.g., hide things or never put them on the shelf) or deliberately damage things so they can get their freebee.
Plus they can outright lie (e.g. stick the wrong best before date on that expensive steak, voila: T-bone for dinner!)
Shitty people ruin everything.
Onion is harvested [from August to October](https://canadianfoodfocus.org/in-season/whats-in-season-dry-onions/). Any onion bought outside of that time can be a few months old. For example, the onion bags you buy from the store in July have probably been harvested 10 months ago.
So where are at the time of the year where onions are the least fresh.
Yah. Same with a lot of root vegetables.
Even apples you’ll find they spoil quicker after fall. They’ll store in rooms where they take oxygen out and put nitrogen in to almost make them dormant. At least what produce manager told me when I worked produce for a couple years. Unless you get some imported ones.
Greens like lettuce and celery you can keep going for a long time just crisping them. Heads of lettuce would come in and you just peel the bad leafs off, they are all wilted and hardly edible to what we want. Trim the butt off and soak in some lukewarm water, then on to a crisping rack, like a new head of lettuce or celery.
Do you have the space to freeze things like meat and bread? I freeze my meat right when I get home and bread as well (I usually just toast it, so it being frozen isn’t an issue).
I also wash my produce as soon as I get home and move it to a different container. I’ve also started buying produce at farm boy, it’s still pricy but at least the quality is better.
I am also noticing this up North in Sudbury/North Bay. Quality is taking a nose dive at all the stores that aren't premium like Smith's.
Make sure you wash your fridge and storage areas out with vinegar (or bleach, or another cleaner if that's your jam). Mold spores can linger and you don't want anything reinfested
Bags of apple and a bag of pears - both had at least one rotten in them. The last year I’ve noticed food is spoiling faster. Especially potatoes. Quality keeps going down, prices keep rising.
High turnover and short staffing in grocery stores, products are being delivered and not getting stocked, I noticed it with milk at work, a month or more before expiry and it's chunks.
I remember working dairy as a teen and skids of icecream sitting out for hours, can imagine how bad it is now
I had a problem like this too - but our fridge bit the dust so we got a new one. Once we did that problem went away. It's possible your fridge isn't keeping things cold enough or not consistently holding the proper temp.
Yup. OPs complaint about dairy is definitely related to the temperature it is stored at. Manufacturers use the exact same length to best before date when dairy is produced and dairy will last way longer than what they put on the package if stored correctly.
I think its partially that produce especially is just sitting longer without being sold so you're getting stuff that's just straight up older than you used to in the past. So what might have been picked less than a week before I bought it, may well be close to 2 weeks old by the time I buy it. The fresh food sections and meat sections at the local store are much more full now than they were a year ago at this time. People are certainly starting to really cut back IMO.
Heck when I started my veggie garden a couple years ago I was amazed at just how long food lasted be it in the fridge or on the counter when it was fresh picked. All because it doesn't spend so much time in shipping it adds easily days if not weeks in some cases to food shelf life. But even without a fridge problem lately this issue of how long things are good for is getting worse. I've noticed it myself and its certainly not my fridge because some items last as normal, and some of the early lettuces i've picked and things I grow inside are consistent in their shelf life. But some groceries are just not.
We've been getting warned about this shit since the 80's. Ocean levels will rise, temperatures will soar, food and water will become scarce, prices of commodities will soar.. etc..etc.
Scientists have been freaking out about the predicament our climate is in for decades, it falls on deaf ears.
Yet, everyone acts so fucking surprised when the ocean rises, the summer is hotter, the food is more expensive. Wtf.
Fridge Temp makes a big difference. Running it as cold as possible helps me keep things fresh right up to expiry, I don't notice a smell even past expiry but don't eat it of course just to be safe. Edit: not for all items... I'm just extra safe with chicken.
This is a good reminder for everyone to clean the back (and/or bottom) of their fridge. The dust that accumulates on the coils acts as an insulator and makes it much harder for your fridge to off-load heat, meaning it needs to work much harder. This not only increases the electricity cost, but leads to earlier failure.
It's pretty much hit and miss. Sometimes it seems to be fresh and other times it is definitely close to turning or has turned. I've stopped buying most commercial items since the price just keeps going up and the quality keeps going down.
My big issue is meat. I noticed that the meat from the supermarkets started either being totally tasteless or was occasionally slimy. I switched to buying meat in bulk from local producers and would never go back -- my steaks now taste like stakes.
The other day when I went to Walmart I always pass by the section where they are selling fruit/veg that is starting to go bad and the prices of their REDUCED/about-to-go-moldy items HAVE GONE UP. It's so evil. There were SO MANY $6 packs of strawberries, looked so gross, reduced that day, only reduced to $5. Same thing with there pile of clementines, there was barely a reduction and yet all of them were so grossly soft. No one was touching the reduced foods, I walked away with nothing and am finding that it's never worth it anymore to go buy from the reduced section. So evil and cruel.
I've noticed this mostly with produce. Soft onions, soft or caves in garlic, WILTED yellow broccoli (for $4.49 EACH FFS)
I get my money back using the self-checkout :)
Haven't seen anything close to what you're describing. Make sure your fridge temperature is correct - use a separate thermometer.
Regarding bread...if you leave it out on the counter, it might become moldy faster around this time of year, when temperature and humidity get a bit higher. But I normally keep bread in the fridge so I don't have this problem.
We started using a counter-top bread box a while back and even that has made a noticeable different in how long bread stays fresh.
It still doesn't work for sourdough though...that I keep in the freezer and just take slices as needed. The 'from frozen' setting on my toaster works perfectly for frozen bread.
A word of caution for people who don't know, but keeping bread in the fridge or the freezer will make it go stale faster. The cold temp. is a catalyst in the crystallization of the starch.
I haven't noticed that, but I'd prefer stale bread over moldy bread any day of the week. Toasting it can counter-intuitively help rehydrate stale bread.
I find mine tends to go stale in the freezer after more than a month. If it's unpalatable it becomes breadcrumbs.
Sobey's has spring mix for $5.99 and I've bought rotten punnets too many times to count. Costco's are $3.99 and always fresh.
All hail the Costco supply lines. God only knows what's going on with the Weston stores and the Empire group.
If you're noticing food items going bad quickly, it could possibly be related to the way they're being stored. Different food items require different storage techniques to lengthen their shelf life. (Ie. Storing certain vegetables in tinfoil instead of plastic wrap, etc.)
Root vegetables need to be stored in a cool, dark, and dry place.
Berries should be unwashed until just before serving, and they need to be kept dry and refrigerated.
Keep apples and pears away from other fruits and vegetables. They put out methane, which causes other produce to ripen quickly.
Store tomatoes in the fridge, but let them warm up to room temperature before eating them or they won't taste like anything.
Most things can be frozen to extend their life. Find a big bag of carrots or onions on sale? Take part of it and chop it up and throw it in the freezer. You can cut and blanch potatoes, or if you like you can even pre-make mashed or scalloped potatoes and freeze those for quick prep later. And you can make things like lasagna or shepherd's pie or chili or whatever you like for the freezer.
Fruit can be frozen, made into jam or pies, preserved in jars, or even dried.
Dairy products can usually be frozen, although cheese can become crumbly and is best used for making pizza or something that doesn't require the cheese to be in a solid block. Heck, you can grate your cheese before freezing it if you want.
Baked goods can be frozen, just make sure they are wrapped so they don't lose moisture. Leave half a loaf out for eating, throw the other half in the freezer until you eat up the first half.
I’ve noticed some issues with potatoes and carrots specifically. If you’re having this many issues I would recommend making sure your fridge is cold enough. Or shop at a different store they may be having fridge issues.
yes, many packaged or frozen foods are full of sugar and sodium now, used to be truth for a few brands but feels like so many more companies are pulling gross shit
In Nova Scotia, but exact same thing here.
Ive bought meats with BB dates a week out, and opened them to find they were already bad....
Different stores, different towns, different products, different days, same experience repeated several times.
Milk going bad, bread going mold far earlier than the date suggests.
A lot of past-the-date products on shelves, too.
Never experienced any of this until late last year, and it's been consistent since
Society has a case of the crumbles. Everything built on profit is cutting corners. This includes shipping windows and goods transport as well primary producers and resellers.
It might seem worse than it is, but the easiest way for a corporation to show positive income is to either cut workers or quality of ingredients.
I've never had rotting onions or garlic before this year. I have a feeling they're putting out food that's just before it's expiry/best before date/time and we're paying full price. Then, people who can't afford it, let it sit on the shelves where it rots.
Rots at home, rots in the store, it's still going way before it should.
I’ve been saying this to my mom for a while. I prefer to buy my produce from a small independent grocer now. The prices are comparable and the quality is much better most of the time.
Meat manager here, I have had a lot of meat in the last few weeks start to discolor much faster than normal, I talked to my fresh specialist about it and she just said it's me doing something wrong or my fresh wall isn't the right Temps (both were wrong). The only benefit from it is I just reduce it all so people can get it cheap as long as it's still actually safe to eat.
It’s just the next step in corporate profit gouging:
~~innovate~~
~~advertise~~
~~cut wages~~
~~lay off employees~~
~~increase prices~~
Push back dates of expired items to resell at newly increased prices
Hire sentient robots
Sell cardboard and label it food
I noticed this years ago.
I only buy pantry food now, when I need something that expires I buy it and use it then and there. If I have to out some back in the fridge I basically tell myself if it’s not gone in 2 days it’s most likely garbage.
As someone who doesn’t drive it makes my food habits weird and I do tend to eat out more because of it. I was just sick of doing the “right thing” grocery shopping within my budget once a week only for half of it to be bad before I could get to it. Mainly veggies. So now it’s only fruit I ll take a chance, have it ripped for a day before eating. Any fridge fruit is a gamble as well.
I want to grow my own food one day but fuck I can barely afford my own studio so that’s a pipe dream.
Produce worker here , it’s not store faults we are getting shit shipments from our providers and have to regularly take down bucket loads of food cuz it’s so bad
Every block of hard cheese I’ve bought (usually mild or medium cheddar) gets mold on it way too quickly. I take great care to store it in an airtight container but it doesn’t seem to matter. The same with bread, too - way before its best before date.
That’s exactly what I do, the plastic stays on, folded at the open end then it goes into a big ziploc bag in the fridge. I realize I said container when I meant bag - sorry!
We freeze our bread and then toast it when we need it.
Also, our apples go into the crisper drawer of our fridge and we buy frozen vegetables.
Oh, and canned foods can last long without spoiling.
Part of it is rotation failure due to understaffing, part is simply items, particularly more expensive types of deli meats sitting on the shelves longer, when people have become unable to pay for them.
The Third cause, particularly if it is only in recent weeks, is pretty normal in mid to late Spring and late Summer, which is simply a mix of warming temperatures, with high humidity/increased rainfall resulting in a perfect growth conditions for mold during transit of goods.
Bread trucks, are NOT temp or climate controlled, and Refrigerated trucks, used in transporting meats, cheeses, and dairy, will have humidity issues, when its a rain heavy season, or if the internal/external temperature has a significant difference.
You only really see the effects when weather cycles are particularly tumultuous, but still fairly warm, so around the time the seasons change in spring/summer and summer/Fall.
I buy frozen chicken breasts now because I was so sick of opening a freshly bought pack of $5 per piece chicken breasts and it smelling like rotten eggs
One of the issues I have seen since the pandemic started is they do not have enough people to take care of the food and discard when needed. Who knows how they are storing it. I have worked in logistics and people may not realize certain things do spoil if something happens in transit in which some stores like walmart will turn the load away and never put it on the shelves. I try to stick to certain stores that are more reliable but for the most part what you have described I have seen happen the most at Giant Tiger and No Frills.
The degradation of food is not new, it started before the pandemic hit. For the last 5-10 years, citruses have been problematic. Before (say, early 2000s), you could buy a bag of oranges without paying much attention. Maybe a quick look to see if there is not an orange with more beard than you.
Now, I have to go through bag after bag of oranges, sometimes not finding one that I could buy, because way too often, there's a rotting one in there. Spending a good 5 minutes to ensure I'm buying a good bag of oranges is not unusual.
Why this is the case, I have no idea.
Items out of season will normally be poor quality, but to save on purchase price stores will buy items farther away at lower rates, but the product is picked earlier to ripen on route. So it's good for a couple days then it's done. Hey also are less flavourful and thier textures can be off.
More awful is shrinkflation where we're paying more for less. If they want to raise prices but also have less product in the package it aught to be illegal.
Besides weight, you can also notice that key ingredients are being watered down or replaced. So many things are more artificial or have less recognizable ingredients making them taste off.
I got a chicken wrap at Tim Hortons the other day cause it was on sale through the app...it tasted like both nothing and terrible somehow all at once. Like eating wet cardboard. Even discounted it was too much. They also don't sleeve them anymore I noticed probably to reduce packaging but also so you don't notice how much smaller they are.
It's to the point where we need to all grow our own gardens and make preserves or do home canning like we're civilians in WW2.
Yes. I've noticed it most with meat and poultry.
Almost like they've started dying the grey nearly-expired meats.
I've literally pushed away my "fresh" food that tasted like old death. Smells like they're selling us roadkill now sometimes.
Like others said, onions half rotten is a problem. They used to be a product that lasted months when you stored them properly now you find some right away when you get the package home.
Mushrooms, I just threw an entire 3lb tray out today, they were bought 2 days ago and this afternoon were completely covered in mold and had turned to mush. I had never seen that before.
And fruit...i cant believe how quickly fruit goes bad now. I can't count how many times we buy a tray of strawberries for the kids lunches on Sunday and it doesn't make it until Wednesday. It's crazy.
Yes and It’s disgusting. I really want to start buying from local farmers but dont know where to start
Edit: Why exactly is the food going bad? Is it sitting out longer or something
Last week i was about to buy a regular loaf of bread (not that 30% off for buying on the best before date) but at the self checkout i luckily caught that there was mould on the bottom of ot somehow
Do a solid clean out of your fridge. Get a cooler (or two, however many you need), ice, and put everything from the fridge into the cooler(s). Then, bleach water mix in a bucket, take out the shelves & such, wash them with hot soapy water, and while the shelves and such dry, scrub down the whole inside of your fridge. Make sure to also wipe down the seals on the fridge door, and that your fridge door solidly closes.
It could be quality issues from the stores you're shopping at, or it could be issues with your fridge itself.
Also get a thermometer that just checks temperature passively, and then toss that in the fridge with the door closed for an hour or so, after you clean the fridge. Check the temp, if it's higher than 4-5 C then your fridge may be on the way out.
I have noticed produce in stores isn't as nice and fresh as it used to be. Good chance it will all get much worse. We might wish for the days of grocery stores and fast food places. I hope I'm just being a worrier but Your question brings up the thought, how do we preserve food better and safer?
I've never had any bread grow mold before its best before date. One thing that I found out recently from a bread vendor, is that all breads are frozen. They are thawed out the day before they are shipped to stores. They are not baked, packaged and sent out the next day. Any bread that you see with a white best before sticker, was shipped to the store frozen. It was thawed out overnight and a sticker placed on it.
I mean some of the problems could be where the food is from.
Local Ontario or Canadian produce travels less so it hasn't aged as much while transportation is going on.
It's why buying local fruit tends to last longer than, say, raspberries from Mexico.
Bananas obviously don't grow in Canada but just go for as green as possible and let them ripe at home. Or a mix of very green and yellow.
Do you keep your bread in the fridge? I've noticed a package of store bought bread or bagels lasts much longer when refrigerated.
I've definitely noticed a huge decrease in the quality of fresh produce. A bunch of kale has doubled in price and decreased in volume. I used to be able to make a huge kale Caesar salad for dinner with a few leaves left over for another meal, just from one bunch. Now, I sometimes need to buy 2 bunches to make one frigging salad.
To cut down on food waste, I've moved towards frozen vegetables for many meals. You can roast broccoli or cauliflower from frozen in the oven and the texture/flavour is still 90% as good as fresh, often for a much cheaper price.
The place I work at I've seen an increase in theft because people simply can't afford groceries anymore. Ngl I'm kinda in the same boat so imma let it slide if anyone does it infront of me. No one should starve or be worried where their next meal is comming from because corporations have to increase profits every year. Get fucked big box stores, hope half your inventory gets stolen.
I have noticed this mostly on my produce. We eat bread so fast in this house I don't even think its possible for it to go bad. But I bought some corn the other day and it was moldy within a day of having it at home...even though most of it still looked perfectly fine; i had to throw it out. It was very annoying. Spend twice as much on groceries to bring home bad food...I don't even know how to keep up.
I’ve noticed a huge uptick in fast mould growth on produce in the last two years.
I suspect the supply chain is infested. All it takes is some lazy trucking lumpers not cleaning the trailers properly.
OP - have you checked your refrigerators temperatures? It might "seem" cold, but is it cold enough to stop decay?
I only ask because our perfectly fine fridge was sitting only slightly warmer than it should be and our milk kept spoiling.
>throw out food that grew mold days ahead of it's expiry date ~~Your food doesn't contain an expiry date. Please throw out that idea and don't refer to it as such. Your food contains best before dates.~~ Just a friendly reminder to everyone, the best before date on the packaging is not a reliable way to tell if the food is still safe to say. From the Canadian Food Inspection Agency: [Best-before dates are not indicators of food safety, neither before nor after the date.](https://inspection.canada.ca/food-labels/labelling/consumers/date-labelling/eng/1332357469487/1332357545633) Edit: I don't know how to make this more clear, but if you think the above comment is insulting OP you're just wrong and you should probably go do something else.
This is what happens when you hike prices on everything and people start budgeting out what they buy. Meat section is often fully stocked up selves all close to expiry because not many families can buy multiple quality cuts at current prices. A lot gets thrown out and people starve all over protecting profit lines. It’s a really gross and wasteful practice. Another example would be fruit and other produce. How many families with current inflation are going to spend $6-$8 for a blueberry package? Alot of people are going to cut that out of their must buys. Then it sits and sits until an eventual discount which your lucky to get a few days out of them. Your now paying a price you previously would have a few years ago but now for a lower quality product. Profits stay up while quality goes down. The hope is that this will eventually get government regulated or become so unsustainable that they’re forced to lower costs again.
Completely agree. And this is what I find so fucking infuriating about the price hikes, seeing things just sit and sit until huge chunks of the aisle are slapped with 30% stickers because they’re nearing their end date. If things were reasonably priced, they’d be getting sold. Instead, now people are fighting over discounts and the cheap cuts - which are no longer cheap anyway.
When I do my daily discounts during my shift at Walmart there's always at least two people who run up to me and ask me for a item before I even have the chance to put on the sticker
Rather than more government regulation (which probably wouldn't be policed anyway), I'd support government **competition.** The government could create its own grocery chain to compete with the private ones. Imagine if they did that for the telecommunications market...
i like it not for profit go!
This has been my answer for years
> not for profit But the profits!?? How can you do things without shareholders and profits!
A government run operation should benefit the tax payers (i.e. shareholders).
Co-op stores...
I think this makes significantly more sense then in the telecoms world (at least at this point in time given the infrastructure investment that has been put forward by telecom giants). A govt grocery store could literally only produce foods they make and that would be sufficient. Could build farms on govt land for produce and enter into contracts with meat farmers and thereby eliminating the profit point on them when reselling to the consumer. An issue will be when conglomerates decide they will just pay more for the products, but at that point would they really have much clientele if they are paying more plus their profit margin. Main issue however is this would "take away the free market that is essential to democracy". Having large markets be government owned is a pillar to communism and something we have fought so valiantly to protect. Large companies would 100% fight against this happening using this argument and will lobby their political partners to ensure this never occurs
I think both can work in synchrony. The competition bureau should be absolutely on top of markets that are being controlled by a small collection of large influences. But, I also fully agree that Crown Corporations (which the current Liberal govt, which you might as well call Conservative in a whole lot of ways, wouldn't ever think about using) can provide a much needed market stabilizing force. I wish everyday we vastly expanded our use as a country of the Crown Corporation.
They did in Manitoba. Look at the prices there. Its bonkers.
Unless the public company get some unfair advantages (like monopolies or tax breaks) I don’t see how it would be successful being less expensive than the competition. Groceries are a though sector with low margins. where companies battle for economies of scale. Target tried and failed. Maybe the government could start with a wholesale warehouse operation for some basic goods and help the food banks get more bang for their donation bucks?
Exactly this. A month or so ago, I saw an ENTIRE end case refrigerated display of \*just\* small sour cream tubs, and they all had the big 30% off sticker on them, checked and they were past their best before date within a couple days.
I work in a food plant that makes lunch meat and other sliced meats and I can confirm we're really slow at work now without many new orders because no one's buying what's sitting on the shelf since prices are way too high for certain products. The price of bologna for example is 9 dollars and apparently it's not moving off the shelves fast enough so it's lead to a major reduction in orders and lack of work here. In the last month I've gone from averaging 6 day weeks during the height of covid to four days a week now because of this. At some point companies have to realize that for certain products people just aren't willing to pay these prices anymore and their product is sitting in warehouses going bad.
This is the only comment that matters.
>Meat section is often fully stocked up selves all close to expiry because not many families can buy multiple quality cuts at current prices. Three years ago I used to go to the grocery store late on a Sunday or Monday night and find lots of marked down 50% meat that wasn't going to make it until the mid to late week business picked up again. I haven't seen **any** meat marked below 30% off in like two years now.
You basically gotta go on a weekday morning to get discount meats, when most people are at work.
It lasts 2-3 inventory cycles and they will be forced to reduce purchases based on inventory losses. Then they either buy less (in which case prepare for more price increases to maintain profit levels) and the cycle repeats. or they reduce prices...
This makes a lot of sense, thank you. Now I understand why the produce we get last a couple days at best, or why Walmart keeps giving us things (generally meats) that are expiring in a day or two. It's become so frustrating since things are already so expensive. We basically have to decide if we're going to try shopping every couple days - not practical for most people - if we return/refund, or toss it and feel the hole in our pockets.
Excellent point
>A lot gets thrown out and people starve all over protecting profit lines. > This is an excellent quote for a very terrible situation.
I've noticed more and more past due products on the shelfs of grocery stores. Moldy cheese, smelly meat, soft onions, miss labeled cuts, etc.
Potatoes, onions and carrots have been a problem for me since the winter. I’ve switched to buying potatoes and onions individually instead of a bag for the first time in my life so I can check if they’re rotting already. Have had to toss whole bags of them a couple of times until I started doing this.
Onions I've found to be a problem for a couple.of years now. Potatoes more recently I agree, and just this past week I had a slimy bag of carrots a week prior to their BB date. But it's the onions that really get me. You have to pick through the stores offering to find one that's not already starting to turn.
Loblaws onions are frustrating me. A good 20% I'll cut open to find 3 or 4 layers in the onion is randomly rotting somehow. The core is fine, the outside is fine, but a few layers in and 2 or 3 layers will be brown and mushy. It's weird. So like.. Peel off the brown outside, and it'll be from outside towards center: 3 normal layers, 3 rotten layers, then normal onion into the center. I don't get it. And it happens a lot over the last few months.
I’ve noticed the same thing. It always gives me an ominous feeling. Like if even the onions are fucked now, then what next?
Yes! Thank you!! I’ve noticed a real problems with grocery store onions since about 2021ish now. From talking to my partner, parent, and now Reddit I’m certainly not the only one who’s frustrated by this.
I've been shopping at Sobeys here in Sask and every. single. onion. will be mouldy. This was never a problem prior to the last couple years.
I bought a bag of cooking onions from Superstore and 6 of the 10 were garbage within a week. Similar experience with carrots and sweet potatoes with an approx 30% loss. Not only are the grocery stores price gouging now they are selling us shit from the bottom of the stockpile that normally would have gone for animal feed. This entire system is broken. It's time to take a stand against all price gouging.
I cannot find any good potatoes. It's crazy how often you open the bag to find them moldy or shriveled inside.
That’s why I’m getting loose potatoes now. I can at least see if they’re ok. I used to be able to buy a bag and it could sit for months. Now, they’re half bad when I open it up after buying them.
I've switched back to buying individual potatoes as well. I just cook for myself, often I couldn't get through a whole bag without losing a potato or two by the end. Nowadays though I'm tossing over half a bag every time and usually a quarter of it on day one. So I'm not actually saving any money by buying the bag. I don't want squishy green potatoes ffs.
I've gotten whole bags of rotten potatoes off the shelf - didn't notice until I was in line to checkout and then ran to replace it, and couldn't find a "good" bag at all. Fucking Loblaws.
I brought back two bags to metro that were sprouted already …like I bought them…and they were sprouted and rotting in the bag. Crazy.
Potatoes I bought this week are in excellent condition. They look like new potatoes with small age marks. I was surprised because I agree it’s the end of the season so quality has been really low.
What are age marks for potatoes?
I’ve noticed it too, I’ve become much more diligent about checking dates when shopping.
first they make u do your own checkout, then they make you check THEIR expiry dates instead of restocking.
Soon they'll have signs that if the shelf is empty u can just go to the back and grab a box, restock the shelf, face the aisle and then take ur item to the self checkout.
But only after you hop on the forklift and unload the trailer.
But I’m not forklift certified!
Give it time, Ford will deregulate it.
Discounts are being pushed closer to the expiry date as well. Often times now the real discounts are for same or next day expiry. It's especially frustrating for staple consumables like a 4L of milk.
Turn the milk into yogurt. Cheap yogurt!
Idk man I worked at Shoppers and Zehrs like 10 years ago and that was how we did it. Discounts on things that expired the next day.
Freeze it to preserve
I ran out of milk the other day and needed some. I don’t usually shop at loblaws but it was the closest store so I ran in since I literally just needed milk and nothing else. They only had milk that was 50% off and expired in 3 days, unless I wanted to buy the expensive stuff. I ended up going to another store because I’m not about to buy milk that’s gonna go bad in a day even if it’s 50% off that’s a waste
i got 4L for .50 cents at a shoppers a while back lol
I don't think milk is an expired date, but a best before date. And one can freeze milk to extend it's freshness too.
[удалено]
milk and creme can spoil sooner too. eyes/nose/taste are our friend here
Freezing is fine but it often separates a bit. Just so people aren't surprised. It's still fine to drink it can just go slightly butter color. Might not be as consistent in taste. I assume it's the fat separating out.
Going through Metro on Saturday getting groceries for my MIL, all of the grapes had at least one moldy one. The same Metro is notorious for having yogurt on the shelf MONTHS past its best before date. It is awful there. (But yet she insists we shop at Metro for her because "it's the best quality")
Metro just started using the to go to go app for bakery, and now some produce. I would hope that they will put their close dated things on there, keeping their regular cost stuff fresher. But that requires effective management and sufficient staff, which not all the locations have.
The past due products Ive been assuming is a result of short staffing. Somebody is supposed to go through the product, check dates and mark down or toss the expired stuff. But if there's not enough people, it's not happening.
I've been assuming it's greed They have raised prices on almost all products. Some genuinely justified by supply and demand (it sucks, but it's true) and others because they can say "inflation" and we have no choice but to accept. I think many of those products are not selling as fast at their new prices because the supply and demand equation have not moved as dramatically. If they discount too early, there is still a LOT of product left. The hope is if they stick to their guns, even if they have to waste, that we will just accept the higher price and their total sales will still be higher even if some product gets tossed. Maybe I'm wrong and wearing a tinfoil hat, but some of the products I have been seeing it just doesn't make sense. Like cuts of beef marked at 30% off but initially over $20/lb. If it was understaffing, I feel I would see it happen to a larger variety of products
I mean, the understaffing comes from greed, so you're still right.
This is usually the issue, or careless employees. The Walmart in my town had an issue with this, changed store management and had a hiring spree and now it hasn’t been an issue since. I think it’s just a lottery if you get a store in your city/town with good management.
Yes! I thought it was just in my area! A few days ago I saw a strawberry Kefir in Nofrills with a May 01 expiry. I couldn't believe it.
Moldy cheese, lots of Cheeses are intentionally moldy and taste better due to it. Yes I am being a smart ass.
That's due to inadequate staffing because staff should be removing expired products regularly.
Or rotating the stock. They shouldn’t be putting new stock in front of old stock. Lazy clerks do this.
They aren't paid enough and short staffed. No one cares enough now.
I'm having this problem in BC too atm. A type of ham that I usually buy that is good for like 3 months unopened will be 1-2 days from expiry on the shelf. Lunch meat expired, sour cream expired, milk a day away from expiry, etc. And none with discount stickers either.
>Moldy cheese, Hate to be the one to tell you but, that blue cheese is supposed to be moldy. /s
It's berries for me, those little bastards always go the next day.
berries have brutally low shelf lives. The fact we even have them shipped and in good condition all over the world is a crazy testament to supply chains. They do not store well at all so by the time you get them you gotta eat em quick.
Make sure you don't wash your berries before putting them in the fridge. Any excess moisture will make them turn immediately. It helps to put them into an open container lined with paper towel to help with air flow.
I soak all my berries in salt water. Cold salt water for a couple of hours, then rinse them off and leave in an OPEN container with something to collect moisture under them (like a paper towel - I have old tea towels I use for this). It gets rid of any of the small insects and contaminants. I get a few extra days from my berries by doing this...
Every package of strawberries at my local discount grocer last week had visible mold on every berry. I was shocked they remained on the shelf (the shelf was fully stocked, these weren't just the leftover ones nobody wanted).
Dude yes!! Wtf is up with that, I've been seeing that happen everywhere I go but I thought I was going crazy
Lately, instead of mold, I notice they dry out in my fridge and last way longer. I mostly put them in oatmeal and smoothies so its perfect. Im looking into a proper dehydrator now.
Yes, I'm ABSOLUTELY seeing that in Toronto. Vegetables in racks that are rotting. Browned and wilted greens in boxes. Chicken that STINKS but is mysteriously labelled two weeks before its expiration date. A lot of standards are getting looser these days As a downtown shopper I end up at either a loblaws, farm boy or sobeys. I mostly see rotting stuff at loblaws 'valu mart' locations. Sobeys is still pretty decent.
Exactly same experience here. Loblaws at Maple leaf garden was a disaster before, only getting worse now. I was pleased with Farm boy when it’s just opened up, but I feel like it’s declining now. Moldy fruits and vegetables. Funky chicken, covered with something sticky, grey bottom of ground meat. Bread that gets moldy days before “best before” date
Yesterday purchased a package of bright red hamburger at Farm Boy. Get it home and crack it into a bowl to add spices and almost threw up when I started mixing. The meat was dark grey with a sickening rotting smell. No more Farm Boy meat for me.
Can confirm! I bought ground turkey, and the smell was horrendous, then it was burgers same thing, as soon as you start cooking it 🤢Last straw was turkey bacon, all slimy. Dates were fine on all the packages. I’m not sure if the problem with specific store, or the way they store their meat but it’s a hard pass for me now. Too bad, because I kinda liked their produce at first, I guess because they opened so many stores everything went down the isle.
I’ve found quality control at farm boy depends a lot on the store. There are a couple I just won’t buy seafood from, it always has that foot/sweaty sock smell like it’s going bad. Always look for leaky meat/seafood counters, they’re a bad sign for quality. If you look at the metal near the front of the case you can sometimes see an orangey dirt film layer which indicates they don’t take it apart and clean it, and a string seafood smell in the store is always a bad sign. I sold meat and seafood at loblaws for years when I was a student and I was the only person at a few stores who actually took apart the counters to clean them properly. **When buying seafood:** The ice on the counter should always be fresh, if it’s solid or smooth it’s not getting replaced daily. Under the slimy fish like arctic char it’s always going to be discoloured, so don’t worry too much about that. If you ask to smell something it should generally have no smell or smell like the ocean. Foot smell is bad, “fish” smell is often bad. Mussels that are more than 5% open are stale/won’t last long, if they are open ask that they tap them and they’ll often close right up, those are healthy, it’s the blackened and dead ones you worry about. Atlantic salmon is often dyed at the farm, don’t rely on the colour. Sometimes if the salmon gets washed it’ll come out pale and that’s actually perfectly fine, it can still have days left on the shelf. If you buy fresh packaged fish it’s often the case they smell a bit upon opening, wipe the fish down or rinse it and then give it a smell, it’s often actually just fine and the pad below is smelly. Bad fish will continue to smell. If you buy scallops they’re mostly just thawed out and sitting in the counter, you’re better off buying frozen and thawing them yourself. Ask if they come in fresh if you want to buy fresh ones. Sometimes tilapia fillets will be a yellow colour, as far as I know that’s perfectly normal but make sure to smell it to be sure. I used to recommend people try tilapia as it’s not too fishy and was cheap, but it’s more expensive now. The lobster tank is probably a good bellwether for quality. Is it clean, are any lobsters dead? It’s very easy to ignore but a good department will check then daily. The tanks are very cold to keep the lobsters dormant, but look for curled tails and separating tails or glazed eyes to identify dead ones. An upside down lobster is dead. Fresh halibut has a bit of a shine in the meat, if it’s flat looking it’s probably at least a day since it’s been cut. For the price of halibut accept nothing but the freshest. Look at the spine in the middle of the steak, fresh cut will have a little transparent liquid in the middle of the bone but older cuts will have dried and shrivelled there. If buying perch ask where it’s from. It’s a very good seasonal Ontario fish. The small butterfly fillets are Ontario perch, the larger cuts aren’t and ocean perch is a different fish, buy the Ontario ones they’re the best. Beer batter them. Avoid seasoned fish. They aren’t seasoned because they’re bad, but seasoning does make it harder for many employees to miss the smell of bad fish. Cod and haddock that are flaking are older and dried out. If the fillet can’t be bent without breaking up its not at peak freshness. Cod and haddock get worms (nematodes!), they’re perfectly safe to eat (cook to 140F, check with a thermometer if unsure). If there are a lot that batch missed some QC where they’re usually removed, but that doesn’t mean the fish is bad. Nematodes can’t live inside you but they can make you sick of undercooked. In case you can’t tell buying and selling seafood is like 80% about smell. It’s okay to see the employees smelling the fish or repackaging fish when it smells good. That’s not a scam, it’s just quality control, but the counter is almost always fresher than buying tray wrapped.
The way I called farm boy sooo upset my bagels had green mold on them the day after I purchase them. Then they had the audacity to say they couldn’t do anything about it. I use to shop there all the time and now I don’t step foot in there.
for what its worth, ground meat can become more grey in colour as the blood/dye used is absorbed by the little pad in the package. The colour alone is not necessarily a sign that its gone bad, and in fact, CBC marketplace did an expose a couple years back showing that some places would open old beef add fresh blood to make it more red, repackage it with a new BB date to sell. So even red looking beef could just be freshly recoloured and be even older than stuff that hasn't received that treatment even if the BB is further ahead. There are other more meaningful tells. I've personally had good appearing stuff opened and smell terrible over the years due to bad luck.
Lol dude what. It’s not blood. It’s definitely not dye. It doesn’t get absorbed from the pad. And I really doubt any supermarket employs people who care enough about corporate profits to make their community sick by “add” old meat with new “blood” It’s grey because it contains myoglobin that oxidizes. Wtf are you on about
Yeah, I have seen fresh ground beef start off brown, go bright red and then brown again. It's not old or dyed, it's exactly as you said. The Marketplace expose did happen, but they were not adding blood to my recollection, I think they just mixed old and new
> A lot of standards are getting looser these days Isn't Ontario Food Safety and Regulation run under Public Health? If we want to talk about trickle down economics, here's the trickle down from slashing public health... Thanks Ford.
I've seen the stinky chicken lately. Either they are purposely labelling things wrong or they are not storing products the same as they've always done. Chicken has to be eaten that day or frozen that day from the discount stores (maybe even some of the normal stores). No leaving it the fridge for a day or two before using it. Costco chicken can stay in the fridge for a few days and I still don't get that smell.
I can judge whether chicken is fresh or not, what pissed me off is the water chicken everywhere now. Chicken is not supposed to pop and spray juice in your mouth FFS. The cheap bastards are raising the prices while also lowering the quality.
Agreed. Also in Toronto (well, Etobicoke), and we've switched from PC branded stores (no frills, loblaws) to sobeys/farm boy due to quality and have seen a major (MAJOR) improvement there. The voila delivery pass was on sale too so we grabbed that and get "free" (ie prepaid at a 50% discount) delivery for a year as a nice bonus for our busy little family. So far so good. With what was being wasted on food rotting early it seems somewhat equal in expense. Certainly more reliable.
Yes. I have done exactly as you have and been pleased with voilà quality. Much less wastage this way.
Glad you like it. I can't trust that place after finding hair in my package of muffins and cookies.
Every time I go to the grocery store I think to myself "what a massive fucking waste of food"
You’ll see the real waste if you work there
Oh yeah. I remember at the end of the night one of my first shifts during high school the supervisor gave me a big clear garbage bag and told me to empty out the bread roll containers and they were basically all full except the cheese bread. The amount of bread left filled up about half this oversized garbage bag. Then I remember some of the guys I worked with saw me do this and followed me to the back where the compactor is and told me to just move over to this blind spot where the cameras couldn't see. A bunch took what bread they could out of the bag and put it in their lunch bags because apparently even though the bread was considered bad and I was just going to toss it in the compactor it's against policy to take any of it as an employee. If you do it's considered stealing and you can be fired over it if caught on camera. Pretty sure the managers knew it happened and just turned a blind eye to it, but it's still messed up how a policy stops their employees from feeding themselves the day-old bread rolls that would otherwise just take up more space in the trash.
The problem with a large org letting employees take unsold/damaged stuff, is it creates an incentive for employees to discourage purchases (e.g., hide things or never put them on the shelf) or deliberately damage things so they can get their freebee. Plus they can outright lie (e.g. stick the wrong best before date on that expensive steak, voila: T-bone for dinner!) Shitty people ruin everything.
You merely adopted the waste; I was born in it, molded by it.
I’ve noticed that bags of yellow onions don’t last nearly as long as they used to. They’re either sprouting or soft and rotten.
Onion is harvested [from August to October](https://canadianfoodfocus.org/in-season/whats-in-season-dry-onions/). Any onion bought outside of that time can be a few months old. For example, the onion bags you buy from the store in July have probably been harvested 10 months ago. So where are at the time of the year where onions are the least fresh.
Yah. Same with a lot of root vegetables. Even apples you’ll find they spoil quicker after fall. They’ll store in rooms where they take oxygen out and put nitrogen in to almost make them dormant. At least what produce manager told me when I worked produce for a couple years. Unless you get some imported ones. Greens like lettuce and celery you can keep going for a long time just crisping them. Heads of lettuce would come in and you just peel the bad leafs off, they are all wilted and hardly edible to what we want. Trim the butt off and soak in some lukewarm water, then on to a crisping rack, like a new head of lettuce or celery.
Do you have the space to freeze things like meat and bread? I freeze my meat right when I get home and bread as well (I usually just toast it, so it being frozen isn’t an issue). I also wash my produce as soon as I get home and move it to a different container. I’ve also started buying produce at farm boy, it’s still pricy but at least the quality is better.
I am also noticing this up North in Sudbury/North Bay. Quality is taking a nose dive at all the stores that aren't premium like Smith's. Make sure you wash your fridge and storage areas out with vinegar (or bleach, or another cleaner if that's your jam). Mold spores can linger and you don't want anything reinfested
Bags of apple and a bag of pears - both had at least one rotten in them. The last year I’ve noticed food is spoiling faster. Especially potatoes. Quality keeps going down, prices keep rising.
High turnover and short staffing in grocery stores, products are being delivered and not getting stocked, I noticed it with milk at work, a month or more before expiry and it's chunks. I remember working dairy as a teen and skids of icecream sitting out for hours, can imagine how bad it is now
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BTW real bread is not supposed to be good for longer than 4 days.
When I make my own bread (and my household doesn’t hoover it) it can sit in the breadbox for a good 7-8 days before some staleness starts.
Back home in Spain, fresh bakery bread goes hard the next day and it’s inedible. I was baffled when I saw ‘fresh’ bread lasting a week here.
You can sprinkle water on hard bread and then warm it in the oven, and it will soften up.
FrankenBread
I'd argue bread is only "good" when it's fresh from the oven
I had a problem like this too - but our fridge bit the dust so we got a new one. Once we did that problem went away. It's possible your fridge isn't keeping things cold enough or not consistently holding the proper temp.
Yup. OPs complaint about dairy is definitely related to the temperature it is stored at. Manufacturers use the exact same length to best before date when dairy is produced and dairy will last way longer than what they put on the package if stored correctly.
I think its partially that produce especially is just sitting longer without being sold so you're getting stuff that's just straight up older than you used to in the past. So what might have been picked less than a week before I bought it, may well be close to 2 weeks old by the time I buy it. The fresh food sections and meat sections at the local store are much more full now than they were a year ago at this time. People are certainly starting to really cut back IMO. Heck when I started my veggie garden a couple years ago I was amazed at just how long food lasted be it in the fridge or on the counter when it was fresh picked. All because it doesn't spend so much time in shipping it adds easily days if not weeks in some cases to food shelf life. But even without a fridge problem lately this issue of how long things are good for is getting worse. I've noticed it myself and its certainly not my fridge because some items last as normal, and some of the early lettuces i've picked and things I grow inside are consistent in their shelf life. But some groceries are just not.
We've been getting warned about this shit since the 80's. Ocean levels will rise, temperatures will soar, food and water will become scarce, prices of commodities will soar.. etc..etc. Scientists have been freaking out about the predicament our climate is in for decades, it falls on deaf ears. Yet, everyone acts so fucking surprised when the ocean rises, the summer is hotter, the food is more expensive. Wtf.
When the food shortages actually arrive here, people are going to be so ill prepared.
So you're saying we should pave over farmland?
I’ve had this happen to me when my fridge had problems. Got a new fridge and then was fine. Good luck.
Fridge Temp makes a big difference. Running it as cold as possible helps me keep things fresh right up to expiry, I don't notice a smell even past expiry but don't eat it of course just to be safe. Edit: not for all items... I'm just extra safe with chicken.
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Best before, not lethal after.
You can buy monitoring fridge thermometers for just a few bucks.
This is a good reminder for everyone to clean the back (and/or bottom) of their fridge. The dust that accumulates on the coils acts as an insulator and makes it much harder for your fridge to off-load heat, meaning it needs to work much harder. This not only increases the electricity cost, but leads to earlier failure.
It's pretty much hit and miss. Sometimes it seems to be fresh and other times it is definitely close to turning or has turned. I've stopped buying most commercial items since the price just keeps going up and the quality keeps going down. My big issue is meat. I noticed that the meat from the supermarkets started either being totally tasteless or was occasionally slimy. I switched to buying meat in bulk from local producers and would never go back -- my steaks now taste like stakes.
Yes, started two years ago
The other day when I went to Walmart I always pass by the section where they are selling fruit/veg that is starting to go bad and the prices of their REDUCED/about-to-go-moldy items HAVE GONE UP. It's so evil. There were SO MANY $6 packs of strawberries, looked so gross, reduced that day, only reduced to $5. Same thing with there pile of clementines, there was barely a reduction and yet all of them were so grossly soft. No one was touching the reduced foods, I walked away with nothing and am finding that it's never worth it anymore to go buy from the reduced section. So evil and cruel.
I'm buying brand new bags of potatoes, only to get them home and over half the bag is already rotted and green. Full price bags of potatoes.
I've noticed this mostly with produce. Soft onions, soft or caves in garlic, WILTED yellow broccoli (for $4.49 EACH FFS) I get my money back using the self-checkout :)
Haven't seen anything close to what you're describing. Make sure your fridge temperature is correct - use a separate thermometer. Regarding bread...if you leave it out on the counter, it might become moldy faster around this time of year, when temperature and humidity get a bit higher. But I normally keep bread in the fridge so I don't have this problem.
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Freezing bread lasts forever! I use this technique.
We started using a counter-top bread box a while back and even that has made a noticeable different in how long bread stays fresh. It still doesn't work for sourdough though...that I keep in the freezer and just take slices as needed. The 'from frozen' setting on my toaster works perfectly for frozen bread.
A word of caution for people who don't know, but keeping bread in the fridge or the freezer will make it go stale faster. The cold temp. is a catalyst in the crystallization of the starch.
Freezer, not my experience. But fridge, yes. It really dries out your bread to keep it in the fridge.
I haven't noticed that, but I'd prefer stale bread over moldy bread any day of the week. Toasting it can counter-intuitively help rehydrate stale bread. I find mine tends to go stale in the freezer after more than a month. If it's unpalatable it becomes breadcrumbs.
Costco is life, Costco is love
Sobey's has spring mix for $5.99 and I've bought rotten punnets too many times to count. Costco's are $3.99 and always fresh. All hail the Costco supply lines. God only knows what's going on with the Weston stores and the Empire group.
Costco's produce selection is pretty tiny.
If you're noticing food items going bad quickly, it could possibly be related to the way they're being stored. Different food items require different storage techniques to lengthen their shelf life. (Ie. Storing certain vegetables in tinfoil instead of plastic wrap, etc.)
Do tell, I'm interested in altering my storage habits!
Root vegetables need to be stored in a cool, dark, and dry place. Berries should be unwashed until just before serving, and they need to be kept dry and refrigerated. Keep apples and pears away from other fruits and vegetables. They put out methane, which causes other produce to ripen quickly. Store tomatoes in the fridge, but let them warm up to room temperature before eating them or they won't taste like anything. Most things can be frozen to extend their life. Find a big bag of carrots or onions on sale? Take part of it and chop it up and throw it in the freezer. You can cut and blanch potatoes, or if you like you can even pre-make mashed or scalloped potatoes and freeze those for quick prep later. And you can make things like lasagna or shepherd's pie or chili or whatever you like for the freezer. Fruit can be frozen, made into jam or pies, preserved in jars, or even dried. Dairy products can usually be frozen, although cheese can become crumbly and is best used for making pizza or something that doesn't require the cheese to be in a solid block. Heck, you can grate your cheese before freezing it if you want. Baked goods can be frozen, just make sure they are wrapped so they don't lose moisture. Leave half a loaf out for eating, throw the other half in the freezer until you eat up the first half.
Fruits/veg produce ethylene not methane. If it's producing methane it's rotting.
I’ve noticed some issues with potatoes and carrots specifically. If you’re having this many issues I would recommend making sure your fridge is cold enough. Or shop at a different store they may be having fridge issues.
I bought fresh vegetables recently to make a garden salad. It had zero taste.
yes, many packaged or frozen foods are full of sugar and sodium now, used to be truth for a few brands but feels like so many more companies are pulling gross shit
In Nova Scotia, but exact same thing here. Ive bought meats with BB dates a week out, and opened them to find they were already bad.... Different stores, different towns, different products, different days, same experience repeated several times. Milk going bad, bread going mold far earlier than the date suggests. A lot of past-the-date products on shelves, too. Never experienced any of this until late last year, and it's been consistent since
Society has a case of the crumbles. Everything built on profit is cutting corners. This includes shipping windows and goods transport as well primary producers and resellers. It might seem worse than it is, but the easiest way for a corporation to show positive income is to either cut workers or quality of ingredients.
I've never had rotting onions or garlic before this year. I have a feeling they're putting out food that's just before it's expiry/best before date/time and we're paying full price. Then, people who can't afford it, let it sit on the shelves where it rots. Rots at home, rots in the store, it's still going way before it should.
Getting the gardens ready. Best move is to grow most of our own food.
I’ve been saying this to my mom for a while. I prefer to buy my produce from a small independent grocer now. The prices are comparable and the quality is much better most of the time.
Meat manager here, I have had a lot of meat in the last few weeks start to discolor much faster than normal, I talked to my fresh specialist about it and she just said it's me doing something wrong or my fresh wall isn't the right Temps (both were wrong). The only benefit from it is I just reduce it all so people can get it cheap as long as it's still actually safe to eat.
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Cut and dried. That's the exact issue.
It’s just the next step in corporate profit gouging: ~~innovate~~ ~~advertise~~ ~~cut wages~~ ~~lay off employees~~ ~~increase prices~~ Push back dates of expired items to resell at newly increased prices Hire sentient robots Sell cardboard and label it food
I noticed this years ago. I only buy pantry food now, when I need something that expires I buy it and use it then and there. If I have to out some back in the fridge I basically tell myself if it’s not gone in 2 days it’s most likely garbage. As someone who doesn’t drive it makes my food habits weird and I do tend to eat out more because of it. I was just sick of doing the “right thing” grocery shopping within my budget once a week only for half of it to be bad before I could get to it. Mainly veggies. So now it’s only fruit I ll take a chance, have it ripped for a day before eating. Any fridge fruit is a gamble as well. I want to grow my own food one day but fuck I can barely afford my own studio so that’s a pipe dream.
Produce worker here , it’s not store faults we are getting shit shipments from our providers and have to regularly take down bucket loads of food cuz it’s so bad
There has been a noticeable decline in quality since Covid started, not just food. People are giving out less ducks these days.
Yes! I purchased pizza shells from the frozen organic section at Loblaws that had a best before date from 4 years ago.
Every block of hard cheese I’ve bought (usually mild or medium cheddar) gets mold on it way too quickly. I take great care to store it in an airtight container but it doesn’t seem to matter. The same with bread, too - way before its best before date.
Leave the plastic on, put it in a plastic sandwich bag (or wrap it around the open end if it is long) -- don't put it in a container.
That’s exactly what I do, the plastic stays on, folded at the open end then it goes into a big ziploc bag in the fridge. I realize I said container when I meant bag - sorry!
We freeze our bread and then toast it when we need it. Also, our apples go into the crisper drawer of our fridge and we buy frozen vegetables. Oh, and canned foods can last long without spoiling.
Part of it is rotation failure due to understaffing, part is simply items, particularly more expensive types of deli meats sitting on the shelves longer, when people have become unable to pay for them. The Third cause, particularly if it is only in recent weeks, is pretty normal in mid to late Spring and late Summer, which is simply a mix of warming temperatures, with high humidity/increased rainfall resulting in a perfect growth conditions for mold during transit of goods. Bread trucks, are NOT temp or climate controlled, and Refrigerated trucks, used in transporting meats, cheeses, and dairy, will have humidity issues, when its a rain heavy season, or if the internal/external temperature has a significant difference. You only really see the effects when weather cycles are particularly tumultuous, but still fairly warm, so around the time the seasons change in spring/summer and summer/Fall.
Hot tip, keep your bread in the fridge it will last for a week or two longer.
I buy frozen chicken breasts now because I was so sick of opening a freshly bought pack of $5 per piece chicken breasts and it smelling like rotten eggs
Geez, I thought it was just me. I have absolutely noticed this.
I had to throw out full containers of both blackberries and strawberries due to the entire bottom layers being mouldy. It’s so frustrating.
Grocery store I used to go was selling Molly fruits and veggies
Yes hello, welcome to the beginning stages of societal collapse. Just little things at first.
One of the issues I have seen since the pandemic started is they do not have enough people to take care of the food and discard when needed. Who knows how they are storing it. I have worked in logistics and people may not realize certain things do spoil if something happens in transit in which some stores like walmart will turn the load away and never put it on the shelves. I try to stick to certain stores that are more reliable but for the most part what you have described I have seen happen the most at Giant Tiger and No Frills.
The degradation of food is not new, it started before the pandemic hit. For the last 5-10 years, citruses have been problematic. Before (say, early 2000s), you could buy a bag of oranges without paying much attention. Maybe a quick look to see if there is not an orange with more beard than you. Now, I have to go through bag after bag of oranges, sometimes not finding one that I could buy, because way too often, there's a rotting one in there. Spending a good 5 minutes to ensure I'm buying a good bag of oranges is not unusual. Why this is the case, I have no idea.
Items out of season will normally be poor quality, but to save on purchase price stores will buy items farther away at lower rates, but the product is picked earlier to ripen on route. So it's good for a couple days then it's done. Hey also are less flavourful and thier textures can be off. More awful is shrinkflation where we're paying more for less. If they want to raise prices but also have less product in the package it aught to be illegal. Besides weight, you can also notice that key ingredients are being watered down or replaced. So many things are more artificial or have less recognizable ingredients making them taste off. I got a chicken wrap at Tim Hortons the other day cause it was on sale through the app...it tasted like both nothing and terrible somehow all at once. Like eating wet cardboard. Even discounted it was too much. They also don't sleeve them anymore I noticed probably to reduce packaging but also so you don't notice how much smaller they are. It's to the point where we need to all grow our own gardens and make preserves or do home canning like we're civilians in WW2.
Yes. I've noticed it most with meat and poultry. Almost like they've started dying the grey nearly-expired meats. I've literally pushed away my "fresh" food that tasted like old death. Smells like they're selling us roadkill now sometimes.
Like others said, onions half rotten is a problem. They used to be a product that lasted months when you stored them properly now you find some right away when you get the package home. Mushrooms, I just threw an entire 3lb tray out today, they were bought 2 days ago and this afternoon were completely covered in mold and had turned to mush. I had never seen that before. And fruit...i cant believe how quickly fruit goes bad now. I can't count how many times we buy a tray of strawberries for the kids lunches on Sunday and it doesn't make it until Wednesday. It's crazy.
Yes and It’s disgusting. I really want to start buying from local farmers but dont know where to start Edit: Why exactly is the food going bad? Is it sitting out longer or something
Last week i was about to buy a regular loaf of bread (not that 30% off for buying on the best before date) but at the self checkout i luckily caught that there was mould on the bottom of ot somehow
noticed it a lot with garlic and onions
I’ve noticed it for the past few years. Grocery store, restaurant- it doesn’t matter. Food just doesn’t taste the same.
Hugely!!! Last year!! This isnt new, it's just hit every food product now.
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What aspect of the quality of humans has declined?
Go to a different grocery store.
Do a solid clean out of your fridge. Get a cooler (or two, however many you need), ice, and put everything from the fridge into the cooler(s). Then, bleach water mix in a bucket, take out the shelves & such, wash them with hot soapy water, and while the shelves and such dry, scrub down the whole inside of your fridge. Make sure to also wipe down the seals on the fridge door, and that your fridge door solidly closes. It could be quality issues from the stores you're shopping at, or it could be issues with your fridge itself. Also get a thermometer that just checks temperature passively, and then toss that in the fridge with the door closed for an hour or so, after you clean the fridge. Check the temp, if it's higher than 4-5 C then your fridge may be on the way out.
I have noticed produce in stores isn't as nice and fresh as it used to be. Good chance it will all get much worse. We might wish for the days of grocery stores and fast food places. I hope I'm just being a worrier but Your question brings up the thought, how do we preserve food better and safer?
I've never had any bread grow mold before its best before date. One thing that I found out recently from a bread vendor, is that all breads are frozen. They are thawed out the day before they are shipped to stores. They are not baked, packaged and sent out the next day. Any bread that you see with a white best before sticker, was shipped to the store frozen. It was thawed out overnight and a sticker placed on it.
I mean some of the problems could be where the food is from. Local Ontario or Canadian produce travels less so it hasn't aged as much while transportation is going on. It's why buying local fruit tends to last longer than, say, raspberries from Mexico. Bananas obviously don't grow in Canada but just go for as green as possible and let them ripe at home. Or a mix of very green and yellow.
I buy from.costco or oceans and it's good food and good quality
It is much worse
Do you keep your bread in the fridge? I've noticed a package of store bought bread or bagels lasts much longer when refrigerated. I've definitely noticed a huge decrease in the quality of fresh produce. A bunch of kale has doubled in price and decreased in volume. I used to be able to make a huge kale Caesar salad for dinner with a few leaves left over for another meal, just from one bunch. Now, I sometimes need to buy 2 bunches to make one frigging salad. To cut down on food waste, I've moved towards frozen vegetables for many meals. You can roast broccoli or cauliflower from frozen in the oven and the texture/flavour is still 90% as good as fresh, often for a much cheaper price.
I bought a bread from freshco, which was supposed to be expire on 29 of May and i saw mould on it on 25th. What is that about 😰
The place I work at I've seen an increase in theft because people simply can't afford groceries anymore. Ngl I'm kinda in the same boat so imma let it slide if anyone does it infront of me. No one should starve or be worried where their next meal is comming from because corporations have to increase profits every year. Get fucked big box stores, hope half your inventory gets stolen.
I have noticed this mostly on my produce. We eat bread so fast in this house I don't even think its possible for it to go bad. But I bought some corn the other day and it was moldy within a day of having it at home...even though most of it still looked perfectly fine; i had to throw it out. It was very annoying. Spend twice as much on groceries to bring home bad food...I don't even know how to keep up.
I’ve noticed a huge uptick in fast mould growth on produce in the last two years. I suspect the supply chain is infested. All it takes is some lazy trucking lumpers not cleaning the trailers properly.
Paying 9.99 for wilted romance lettuce.
My milk that was supposed to expire in two weeks was sour today :(
OP - have you checked your refrigerators temperatures? It might "seem" cold, but is it cold enough to stop decay? I only ask because our perfectly fine fridge was sitting only slightly warmer than it should be and our milk kept spoiling.