Europeans are divided when it comes to expired food. A Eurobarometer asked Europeans the following question:

What would you do if you find a packet of spaghetti in your kitchen with no ‘Best Before’ date, and you cannot remember when you had bought it?

More than two-thirds (70%) of EU respondents said they would use the package regardless of the lack of information

Respondents in richer nations are the ones most likely to actually eat the ‘expired’ spaghetti rather than throw it out, putting it to waste. This applies regardless of the lack of information on the package. While only 36% of Romanians and 44% of Greeks would consume the product, 85% of Austrians and 84% of German and French consumers would do likewise.  Romanians (56%) and the Greeks (50%) are the ones most likely to throw their food out.

The majority of respondents in 23 of the 28 EU member states said they would continue to use opened food products beyond the recommended storage date if these products did not look as though they had problems. Austria (82%) stands in the lead for the high use of the products. In Malta (52%), Bulgaria (57%), Cyprus (58%) Greece (60%) and Romania (65%) a majority said that they would throw the food away regardless of how it looked.

These five countries also had the highest proportion of respondents who said they would throw away unmarked non-perishable goods if they could not ascertain their ‘Best Before’ date. The majority of Cypriots (77%) and Greeks (76%) say they want ‘Best Before’ dates to remain on labels for certain non-perishable foods, such as rice, pasta, coffee and tea, which currently have to be labelled with this information. However, in 12 of the 28 EU Member States, only a minority regarded this information as necessary, with as little as a quarter (25%) giving this response in France, Austria, Netherlands and Germany.