Food waste is a major issue all around the world, but one Swedish company is doing something about it. Coop has officially launched an ‘Old Milk’ fragrance — which, yes, smells like spoiled milk — to urge citizens to rely on their sense of taste and smell rather than expiration dates when deciding whether to throw away outdated food.
A study by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency shows that 30 percent of food waste in Sweden is still edible. It is estimated that most food waste in the world is from dairy products, tea and coffee. To combat wasting this amount of food, Coop, a popular grocery chain in the country, developed a spray that smells like spoiled milk. The hope is that the fragrance will encourage people to smell and taste food before tossing it out.
— Read more at Coop launches fragrance that smells of old milk to combat food waste at Inhabitat.
A battle in our house. I hardly ever look at dates and go by look and smell. My husband is obsessed with the dates….
SAME.
Tea and coffee get wasted? Don’t think I’ve ever thrown out either.
I wondered what that meant, but I think they’re conflating “throwing away edible food” with all “what food items are in trash bins”. If you look carefully at the wording, they are saying that 70% of “food waste” is NOT edible, and they are not really including tea and coffee in the 30%.
Fascinating! I always rely on my nose.
I would be cautious in generalizing this. Milk is handled according to very precise regulations before it is sold, and pasteurized sour milk won’t make you sick anyway.
Prepared foods and home cooked foods can be more hazardous, and some organisms that cause food poisoning are not detectable by smell.
Also, some people do not have an acute sense of smell, especially elderly people.
I realize food waste is a huge problem. It appears to me that supermarkets over stock many items and that there are many comsumers (like me) who overestimate what they will get around to cooking and eating in a given week. There are many ways to reduce waste without risking food poisoning.
I used to work at Coop many years ago and we were very environmetally aware even then, but I learned to taste and smell produce by my mother long before that.
Not too keen to sample Spoiled Milk, though.