Food manufacturers are being “far too cautious” when it comes to setting best-before dates for many ambient food products, according to a leading academic in the field of sensory shelf-life testing.
Speaking at Leatherhead Food Research’s food innovation day last week, Dr Guillermo Hough said that consumer testing on products at the end of their shelf-life typically revealed that “many could have had their shelf lives extended”.
Hough, a research fellow at the Instituto Superior Experimental de Tecnologa Alimentaria in Argentina, said that many products had a relatively low rejection rate from consumers at the end of their shelf-life, which suggested manufacturers were being overly conservative with best-before dates and good food was going to waste.
Given that many products were typically consumed well before their best-before dates, even a 50% rejection rate at the end of a product’s shelf-life might be acceptable given the small numbers of consumers that would eat the product at this late stage, he added.
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