4 ms·

I used to work at a shelter. We had an “in” with a local grocery store. They would throw the leftover food out by placing it in nicely on the back dock instead

• tialaramex 7y ago
  Places that forbid this tend to do so because it's the only way to cure rampant theft. "Oh, I thought that £500 of fresh rump steak was expired. Whoops. No, I have no idea how my old school friend happened to know I'd made that mistake so as to arrive in a truck less than a minute after I carefully stacked the boxes of steak in the disposal area". For stuff with a Best Before rather than Use By tag all the cheaper stores I use just mark it down. Crisps that "expired" two months ago probably aren't as crisp as they intended (moisture in the outside air will very slowly penetrate even the metalized foil container) but they're not dangerous, if your budget is tight maybe 50% off is a good deal on those crisps. For Use By stuff yeah, probably eating these cooked chicken slices on Tuesday after they expired on Monday won't kill me, but I get where they're coming from. It's about margin, just like on aircraft. If you're on a twin-engine jetliner and it loses the left engine in cruise, that plane is still fine, it was designed to handle the stress of maximum power take-off on a single engine every time. It could definitely still go to your destination. But it won't - it's completely understandable that we always treat that plane as an emergency and try to get it down immediately for the sake of safety margin.