\n<\/p>\n
When it comes to doing the food shop, we all love to bag a bargain.<\/p>\n
But you don’t just have to look for yellow stickers and loyalty prices to check if you’re getting the most bang for your buck.<\/p>\n
Hidden on supermarket shelves are different codes that can help you work out details to help you save.<\/p>\n
From freshness indicators to the date when a promotion will end, taking a closer look can reveal all sorts of information.<\/p>\n
Here we run through a few that you can look for the next time you pop to the shop…<\/p>\n
Make sure you get the fruit and veg that will last the longest <\/strong><\/p>\n This was easy until a few years ago – look at the best-before date on the packet.<\/p>\n But big supermarket chains have started removing these dates from pre-packaged fruit and vegetables in an attempt to reduce waste.<\/p>\n Many have started using different codes to indicate when they are “best before”.<\/p>\n At Asda and Tesco, Which? says the code will start with a letter that represents a month, so A for January, B for February, C for March and so on. Next, there will be a number – this will represent the day of the month.<\/p>\n So if the code was B27, the best before date would be 27 February.<\/p>\n At Sainsbury’s, the code works slightly differently.<\/p>\n It starts with J and ends with S, which stands for the company name (J Sainsbury). The date will be in the middle.<\/p>\n So the best before date of an item with the code J0910S is 9 October.<\/p>\n Morrisons simply uses the first letter of the month and a number, so a product with the code S12 has a best-before date of 12 September.<\/p>\n “Bear in mind that food is usually perfectly edible after its best before or sell by date – it should be fine to eat if it looks and smells okay,” says the consumer group.<\/p>\n “However, food with a use by date, such as pre-cut fruit, must be eaten by midnight of its expiry date, or it could be unsafe.”<\/p>\n