A savvy Tesco shopper has revealed the way to save money on two fresh food items at the supermarket by paying attention to ‘secret codes’ printed on the packets.
Tesco is one of several major supermarkets which has abolished best-before dates on fresh food, including potatoes, cucumber, carrots and other fresh fridge staples.
The change was made in a bid to reduce food waste, which occurs when people throw their fruit and veg in the bin because they have passed their best-before date.
That’s a problem because best before is only a guide, not a hard rule (like ‘use by’), and so many millions of people wasted perfectly good food that would still be safe to eat.
The flip side of the change is that shoppers buying fruit and vegetables have no way to tell how long a cucumber or a bag of potatoes has been on store shelves, so those anal about grabbing the bag with the longest date can’t do anything to get the freshest produce.
Well, one Tiktok user and Tesco regular has revealed there is a way to tell: by looking at the ‘secret code’ used internally by staff at the store and printed on every label.
Jess22x showed off a close-up of a bag of Maris Piper potatoes sold at Tesco, with the code ‘A12’ printed on the label.
A cucumber next to it had ‘A11’ on the packaging.
She told her followers: “I just thought that veg didn’t have sell by dates, I just go off how it feels and what it looks like.
“But this is the sell by date. So the letter is the month and then the number is obviously the date.
For example, A12 is January 12th. So when you’re looking through all the bags of potatoes, A31 will last longer at home than, say, A26 because it has six more days before its sell-by. B1 would be a day longer than A31 because it’s February 1st.
In this way, you can still make sure you grab the freshest produce possible and, in turn, reduce food waste and save money because you will reduce the risk of throwing it away because it’s gone off.
