Lack of solidarity also involves taking the yogurts with the latest best-before date

There are vendors who have started placing yogurts with the closest best-before date at the end of the row, and not at the beginning. They break the patterns we consumers have, who go looking for the food stacked at the end because we know those are the ones with the furthest best-before date, and that way we can store them for more days at home. Our inconsiderate gesture will cause yogurts to be rejected, which will most likely enter the food waste circuit. Furthermore, they will enter it unfairly, because yogurts have a best-before date, and not an expiration date. What does each of these concepts mean? Perhaps we should also ask ourselves why we buy a product if we have no intention of consuming it immediately. If we bought products knowing that we would consume them soon, we would take those with the closest best-before date. But since we would be entering another complex topic, let's address date labeling.

“Best before is a quality indicator,” says dietitian-nutritionist and researcher at Fundació Alícia, Alba Coll, who differentiates the concept from the expiry date, which is the most common for food products and is indeed a safety indicator. "It means that, beyond the date marked on the label, the food is not considered safe even if it looks good or smells good,” explains Coll.

Aromas and texture are lost but not food safety

With the best-before date, it is a whole different story. We will be able to eat the food in question safely days after the date and it will not do us any harm. What will happen is that "it will not have the quality it had when it was made". It will probably no longer have the acidity, the texture, the aroma, or other organoleptic and sensory indicators that it had when it was prepared. In other words, the best-before date of yogurts "is the date until which the manufacturer has guaranteed that the food will maintain its specific properties, provided that it has been stored under optimal conditions", says the researcher. It is impossible to say until what day beyond the date the yogurts will be good, but it can be assured that common sense is a good indicator: "Smelling, tasting, checking if the container is bloated or if there is any indicator of deterioration, such as mold, are the tips that have always been followed with yogurts, and not so much looking at the dates or the kilocalories or other data".

To continue, it must be said that yogurts are fermented foods, made from milk. Thanks to this fermentation, lactic bacteria transform part of the milk's components and produce lactic acid, which modifies its taste, texture, and acidity. “The acidity of the yogurt hinders the growth of many microorganisms, and at the same time contributes to extending its shelf life”. For this reason, if we have a yogurt with an upcoming best-before date but we refrigerate it correctly, it will remain safe. The most important thing is that we do not break the cold chain for hours, from the moment we take the product out of the establishment's fridge until we store it in our home fridge. Nor that we take it out of the fridge one day and leave it for hours and hours on the kitchen counter. If the cold chain has been maintained correctly, the yogurt with an expired best-before date will remain safe for the body, although there may be changes in texture, acidity, aroma, or taste. But there will be no need to throw it in the trash because, beyond whether it has more or less aroma or is more or less acidic, the benefits it will provide to the body will remain the same: it will help to strengthen our microbiota as the good fermented product that it is.