WRAP has published new guidance underlining the fact that food past its Best Before date remains safe, and perfectly good to eat for days, weeks, months or even years after the date depending on the type of food and if it has been stored correctly.

The guidance aims to increase the amount of food made available by businesses for redistribution by ensuring that all food items, including any approaching or past the Best Before date, are considered for redistribution and that current organisational policies that might not allow this are reviewed.

The simple-to-use guide will also give redistribution organisations across the UK the confidence to accept more quality food past the Best Before date; by building on existing guidance on food labelling in ways that can be easily implemented in accordance with UK laws on food safety.

Many businesses and redistribution organisations do include food approaching, or past the Best Before dates, but WRAP believes the practice could be greatly increased, and that much more food could reach those who need it most.

© Visual by WRAP

In addition, WRAP made available a selection of key food waste prevention messages, social media copy and social media visuals that can be used by any interested stakeholder to support communications during the COVID-19 crisis.

Furtheromere, WRAP commissioned a UK representative survey, conducted online from 6th to 9th April 2020, with over 4,100 adults with responsibility for grocery shopping and/or food preparation.

Key findings were:

• The majority of UK citizens are managing their food better in lockdown, including more pre-shop planning, better in-home food management and using creative approaches to cooking.
• These new behaviours are leading to a reported 34% reduction in waste of potatoes, bread, chicken, and milk.

WRAP is calling on businesses, local authorities and others to help citizens make this the 'new normal'. More information can be found here.

Last but not least, WRAP led a study published in April 2020 in the Journal of Cleaner Production comparing measurement of household food waste using food waste diaries and waste compositional analysis.

Diaries were found to underestimate household food waste by between 7% and 40%. The study concludes that diaries are useful for obtaining approximate estimates of household food waste and detailed information on what, why, and where food is discarded.

However, diaries are not suitable for tracking household food waste over time or evaluating food waste interventions, despite being recommended by some organisations. Waste compositional analysis is usually more accurate for these purposes. Read the full paper here.