Are yellow-sticker reduced items safe to buy and freeze?

Reduced shelves are genuinely good value and they are also where the margin between a bargain and a bin job is thinnest. The whole thing turns on one distinction — which date the item carries — and on getting it into the freezer promptly rather than optimistically into the fridge.

Safety

Step by step

1. Read which date is on it.Use-by is a safety date and appears on meat, fish, dairy, ready meals and prepared salads. Best-before is a quality date and appears on tins, dried goods, biscuits and most vegetables. Reduced items with a best-before are a straightforward bargain. Reduced items with a use-by are on a clock.
2. Never buy anything already past its use-by.Even at a heavy discount, even if it looks and smells fine. Use-by dates account for the growth of organisms that do not announce themselves. Shops should not be selling them, and a bargain is not a reason to accept one.
3. Decide before you buy whether it goes in the freezer today.If the answer is 'I will probably use it tomorrow', the honest answer is usually no. Buy it if you have a plan for it tonight, or if you will freeze it when you get home. The half of the reduced shelf that gets thrown away is the half bought on optimism.
4. Get it home cold.A cool bag, and reduced items into the fridge or freezer as the first thing you unpack. An hour in a warm car has used up a meaningful part of the remaining life, and that life is exactly what you paid a reduced price for.
5. Freeze it the same day, before the date passes.You can freeze food right up to the end of the use-by date, and it stops the clock there. What you cannot do is let the date pass and then freeze it — freezing preserves the state the food is in, it does not improve it.
6. Freeze in usable portions and label it.Split a large pack into meal-sized amounts, wrap tightly with the air pressed out, and label with the contents and the date frozen. A big unlabelled block is far less likely to be used.
7. Know what is worth it and what is not.Worth it: meat, fish, bread, cheese, butter, cream and vegetables you will cook or freeze. Rarely worth it: prepared salads and cut fruit, which deteriorate fast and freeze badly; and anything you would not otherwise have bought, since the discount is irrelevant if you do not eat it.
8. Cook it thoroughly and be stricter for vulnerable people.Reduced meat, poultry and fish get cooked all the way through, not served pink or lightly cooked. For pregnant women, small children, older people or anyone immunocompromised, do not buy short-dated high-risk items at all.

Tips

• Reduction times vary by shop and are fairly consistent week to week. A single conversation with staff at the counter saves a lot of speculative trips.
• Bread, cheese, butter, cream and milk all freeze well and are frequently reduced. Milk and bread freeze particularly usefully in a small household.
• Cooked meals made from reduced ingredients can be frozen too — cook it tonight, cool it fast, freeze the surplus.
• Discount does not create need. The only genuine saving is on food you would have bought anyway or will definitely eat.

Common mistakes

• Buying a lot of short-dated food and putting it all in the fridge — A fridge full of items all expiring tomorrow cannot be eaten in one evening, so most of it is thrown away and the saving becomes a loss. Freeze on the day of purchase or do not buy it.
• Treating use-by like best-before — They are different kinds of date. Best-before is about quality and food past it is often perfectly good. Use-by is about safety, and there is no visual or smell test that substitutes for it.

Questions people ask