Norq From Ork

A few months ago I went to pay for some grapes that had been reduced and the cashier told me he wasn’t able to sell them to me because they had gone out of date the day before.

‘It’s ok, they’re grapes’ I told him.  I mean an out of date grapes, isn’t that just a sultana? They were fine and safe to be sold, until the clock struck twelve and the date changed. And then seemingly all of sudden they are deemed unsafe and not fit for human consumption. I was willing to risk it and take the hit, but there was no way the perfectly acceptable plump, ripe grapes were getting past the till, which was rigged to forbid sales of out of date food for those who like to live life on the edge.  Madness.

I also discovered a date on my salt this week.  Surely not?  Himalayan rock salt that has been around for a gazillion years must suddenly be consumed by July 2017.  Utter madness I tell you. I mean salt was used to preserve food!  Oh the irony. In my opinion its a conspiracy by the salt people to make us throw away out of date salt and buy new salt.  I won’t do it I tell you. In fact I can pretty much guarantee this salt is going to be around for another two years at least. There are limits as to how much you can safely consume in a day.

I’m from an era where we were considered capable of thinking for ourselves, applying a bit of common sense and deciding if food was safe to eat.  If it smelled ok, and looked ok it was pretty much ok. In fact, I was raised on out of date food and regularly tell me kids ‘it’ll be fine’

Years ago I worked for a supermarket and a customer returned a block of stilton because it had been sold a day out of date.  Stilton sits going mouldy for about a year so what difference does a day make?

This week I’ve eaten almonds in a salad that went out of date in 2015, yoghurt that went out of date several days before, out of date cheese, and most likely other food stuffs and survived to tell the tale. Long live common sense and happy eating.