rotten fruitChinaFotoPress/Photocome/Press Association Images

The experts are warning people to take care, after they have discovered our desire to stretch leftovers and avoid waste means we are increasingly likely to use food that's past its best before date, and keep leftovers beyond the recommended limit.

So what are the recommendations, and what could our thrift cost us?

Supermarket Sweep - Tips & Advice

More on food


The warning

The Food Standards Agency issued the warning at the beginning of Food Safety Week. It said that people have been taking drastic steps in response to the soaring cost of food. Its survey found that 97% of people think the cost of their typical shopping basket has gone up significantly in the last three years - by an average increase of around £15 a week. As a result, 47% are trying to make better use of leftover food.

Leftovers

However, some people are keeping leftovers for longer than the recommended limit of two days in the fridge. In fact, one in five just stick it in the fridge until they are ready to eat it - no matter how long that takes.

Supermarket Sweep - Tips & Advice

More on food



Bob Martin, a food safety expert at the FSA, said: "With most of us seeing our weekly shopping bills increase over the last few years, we are all looking for ways to get the most out of our shopping budget. Using leftover food is a good way of making our meals go further. However, unless we're careful, there's a chance we can risk food poisoning by not storing or handling them properly."

Risks

There are around a million cases of food poisoning every year in the UK. The levels increase during summer months anyway, with around 120,000 extra cases of illness from June to August as food is left out in warmer temperatures. The agency says there's a risk that this could be exacerbated as more of us adopt thrifty ways, unless we take extra care.

Use by dates

The FSA is also warning that our desire to reduce food waste means that 40% of us are trying to make food last longer and we're taking a potentially worrying approach to 'use by' dates.

'Use by' dates are the most important date on the food label. They are used on foods that can rapidly become unsafe, such as chilled or ready-to-eat foods. Researchers found that a third of people were more likely to judge when food is safe to eat by its smell, look or how long it has been stored, rather than the 'use by' date.

Bob Martin says: "It's tempting to just give your food a sniff to see if you think it's gone 'off', but food bugs like E.coli and salmonella don't cause food to smell off, even when they may have grown to dangerous levels. So food could look and smell fine but still be harmful.

"These dates provide helpful information on how long food will stay safe for, so it's very important you stick to the 'use by' date. Other dates marked on foods focus less on food safety. The 'best before' date relates to food quality and can be treated more flexibly, while 'display until' dates are there to help shop staff to manage stock."

The FSA's advice on leftovers is:

  • If you are going to store leftovers in the fridge, cool them as quickly as possible, ideally within 90 minutes. Cover them, get them in the fridge and then eat them within two days.
  • Make sure your fridge is operating at the correct temperature – it should be below 5°C.
  • You can also freeze your leftovers, but cool them first to minimise temperature fluctuation in your freezer. They can be safely stored in the freezer almost indefinitely, but the quality will deteriorate gradually with time, so it's best to eat them within three months.
  • Make sure you defrost frozen leftovers properly before using them. If you're going to cook them straightaway use a microwave. If you don't have a microwave, defrost them in the fridge overnight.
  • Eat leftovers within 24 hours of defrosting and do not refreeze again. The only exception to this is if you are defrosting raw food, such as meat or poultry, which can be refrozen once it has been cooked.
  • Cook leftovers until steaming hot throughout.

10 of the biggest consumer rip-offs

  • 1. Mobile data roaming charges
    <p> <span style="text-align: left; ">Using a mobile phone to make and receive calls, send texts and browse the web while abroad can be extremely costly &ndash; especially if you are travelling outside the European Union (EU), where calls can cost up to 10 times as much as at home.</span></p> <div> </div> <div> To avoid high charges, Carphone Warehouse suggests tourists ensure a data cap is in place, use applications to check data usage, turn off 'data roaming', avoid data-intensive applications such as Google Maps and YouTube and use wi-fi spots to update social networking sites.</div>
    1. Mobile data roaming charges
  • 2. PPI
    <p> <span style="text-align: left; ">Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) is supposed to help people to continue meeting their loan, mortgage or credit card repayments if they fall ill or lose their jobs. However, policies are often over-priced, riddled with exclusions and sold to people who could not make a claim if they needed to.</span></p> <div> </div> <div> At one point, sale of this cover - which was often included automatically in loan repayments - was estimated to boost the banks' profits by up to &pound;5 billion a year.</div> <div> </div> <div> Now, though, consumers who were mis-sold PPI can fight back by complaining to the bank or lender concerned and taking their case to the Financial Ombudsman Service (08000 234567) should the response prove unsatisfactory.</div>
    2. PPI
  • 3. The Lottery
    <p> It could be you, but let's face it, it probably won't be. In fact, buying a ticket for the Lotto only gives you a 1 in 13.9 million chance of winning the jackpot.</p> <div> </div> <div> With odds like that, you would almost certainly be better off hanging on to your cash and saving it in a high-interest account.</div>
    3. The Lottery
  • 4. Budget airlines
    <p> No-frills airlines such as EasyJet may promote rock-bottom prices on their websites. But the overall fare you pay can be surprisingly high once extras such as luggage and credit card payment fees have been added - a process known as drip pricing.</p> <div> </div> <div> Taking one piece of hold baggage on a return EasyJet flight, for example, adds close to &pound;20 to the cost of your flight, while paying by credit card increases the price by a further &pound;10.</div> <div> </div> <div> It may therefore be worth comparing the total cost with that of a flight with a standard airline such as British Airways.</div>
    4. Budget airlines
  • 5. Credit card cash withdrawals
    <p> Cash advances, which include cash withdrawals, are generally charged at a much higher rate of interest than standard purchases.</p> <div> </div> <div> While the average credit card interest rate is around 17%, a typical cash withdrawal of &pound;500, for example, is charged at more than 26%.</div> <div> </div> <div> What's more, as the interest accrues from the date of the transaction, rather than the next payment date, costs will mount up even if you clear your balance in full with your next payment.</div>
    5. Credit card cash withdrawals
  • 6. Supermarket 'deals'
    <p> Supermarkets such as Tesco and Asda often run promotions under which you can, for example, get three products for the price of two.</p> <div> </div> <div> However, it is only worth taking advantage of these deals if you will actually use the products. Otherwise, you are simply buying for the sake of it, which is a waste of your hard-earned cash.</div> <div> </div> <div> To avoid paying over the odds, it is also worth checking the price per kilo to ensure that larger <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/05/24/supermarkets-slammed-for-multi-buy-rip-offs/">'economy' packs really are cheaper</a> than the smaller versions.</div>
    6. Supermarket 'deals'
  • 7. Train fares
    <p> Buy a train ticket at the station on the day of travel and the price is likely to give you a shock - especially if you are travelling a long distance at a busy time of day.</p> <div> </div> <div> However, <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/03/13/how-to-cut-the-cost-of-your-commute/">you can cut the cost of train travel</a> by 50% or more by going online and making the purchase beforehand - especially if you book 12 weeks in advance, which is when the cheapest tickets are on sale.</div> <div> </div> <div> Other ways to reduce the price you pay include avoiding peak times and taking advantage of so-called carnet tickets, which allow you to buy, for example, 12 journeys for the price of 10.</div>
    7. Train fares
  • 8. Packaged current accounts
    <p> Most High Street banks offer packaged accounts that come with monthly fees ranging from &pound;6.50 up to as much as &pound;40, with a typical account charging about &pound;15 per month.</p> <div> </div> <div> Various benefits, such as travel insurance and mobile phone insurance, are offered in return for this fee. But whether or not it is worth paying for them depends on your individual circumstances.</div> <div> </div> <div> Before signing up, it is therefore essential to <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/01/14/maximise-your-current-account/">check that you will make use of enough of the benefits</a>, and that you cannot get them for less elsewhere.</div>
    8. Packaged current accounts
  • 9. Overseas withdrawals/card payments
    <p> Overseas money transfers or travel money purchases attract the same high rate of interest as credit card cash withdrawals.</p> <div> </div> <div> Worse still, most credit cards &ndash; and debit cards &ndash; also charge you a foreign loading fee if you use them to make purchases while abroad.</div> <div> </div> <div> You can, however, <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/02/17/how-to-avoid-overseas-bank-fees/">avoid these charges</a> by using a Saga Platinum or Nationwide Building Society credit card.</div>
    9. Overseas withdrawals/card payments
  • 10. Premium rate phone lines
    <p> Numbers starting 0871 cost 10p or more from a landline, while those starting 09 can cost more than &pound;1 a minute <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/03/21/call-0800-0808-and-0870-numbers-for-free-from-your-mobile/">from a mobile phone</a>.</p> <div> </div> <div> And the operators of these high-cost phone lines, some of which are banks, often get a cut of the call charges.</div> <div> </div> <div> Most 09 numbers are linked to scams and should therefore be avoided at all costs, while 0871 numbers can often be bypassed by searching for an alternative local rate numbers on the saynoto0870.com.</div>
    10. Premium rate phone lines


More stories