A number of supermarkets give their food that has reached its sell by date to local charities. When I used to work for the Shaftesbury Society, we would go to M&S on a Saturday at closing time and come back with crates of all sorts - only for the residents, the staff were not to take it home (depending who was on duty
). A friend of mine here collects food for the Salvation army to use in their work with the homeless in this area and one or two other charities. Once she had several boxes of bananas that were still green but had to go as they'd reached their SBD. Ridiculous. Between Christmas and New Year she had loads of bread and buns and no one to take it in as they were closed for the break.
I have lots of bread and buns in my freezer
.
I hate food waste and it'sjust not necessary in most cases. I've opened yoghurt months after it went out of date and it's been fine. Come to that, archaeologists have found tinned food still edible after hundreds of years. We bought a freezer from my neighbour and she asked me to throw away the contents as they had been in there more than a year. We've nearly finished eating it.