Fresh Obsessed!

A professor of Marketing at Baruch College in New York said in a recent CanWest News Story that "..there is something about merely owning something that changes the way we think about it". ...And I think I agree with this statement when it comes to most material items. I mean, I definitely think that my couch is the most comfortable couch in existence, my tea pot is the secret to brewing a perfect cup of tea and that my oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe is an award winner (...or at least it would be if I entered in a contest)....but can this idea be applied to everything?

The recent CanWest report suggests that Canadians are more likely to consume food & beverages that are past their 'best before' dates from their own refrigerators than from an outside store setting. The study, which will appear in a future edition of the Journal of Consumer Research concludes from this that people "assign more psychological value to things belonging to them". And I guess I agree to see this to some extent...I know I've knowingly eaten yogurt from my fridge that is past its 'best before' date and I'm sure the Heinz bottle in my fridge is past its prime....but is my expired Ketchup really any better for me than an expired Ketchup from somewhere else?

Perhaps more interesting that I took away from this article is that people felt that owning the product made it safer due to their involvement in handling & storing the product...but what about what happens to products before we get them? How safe is our food when we get it from the grocery store? Until recently we were only really concerned with how safe our dairy products were but now even things like spinach, carrot juice & peanut products have been areas of concern. I can recall walking through Loblaws and seeing a brick of cheese abandoned in the cereal aisle for an unknown period of time and wondering what store employees do when they find such items? How often do they make it back onto the shelf for an unsuspecting shopper to discover? And what about when I've reached for the sour cream container that is in the back of the display case in search of the sour cream with the furthest away expiration date (as I am shopping for 1 and can only eat sour cream so fast!) and notice that the ones in the back are very close, if not past the best before date!

I also think this article raised an important point, one which it probably wasn't even intending to do. An assistant professor at the University of Guelph points out that we can expect to see more of this relaxed mentality with respect to expiration dates as the "economic downturn forces further stretching of grocery dollars". Perhaps now more than ever we must ensure that food safety policies & procedures are being followed at all levels from the field to the grocery stores & restaurants we frequent. We know that consumers have faith in their own food handling abilities, and that the state of the economy may reduce family budgets for groceries leading to increased consumption of goods past their "best before date". In light of outbreaks, food recalls and poor practices at the grocery store level, are we wise to maintain that we have a high degree of control over the safety of the foods we eat?