Would you eat ‘out of date’ food on Christmas Day? We reveal the bargain food websites promising 70% off

APPROVED FOOD and Clearance XL promise to save shoppers up to 70 per cent off their favourite branded foods – but there’s one catch, as the items for sale are nearing or past their ‘best before’ dates.

The food is perfectly safe to eat, according to the Food Standards Agency.

But will they win favour with festive food shoppers this Christmas?

A staggering six out of ten people are willing to eat food that is out of date on December 25, the Sun Online can reveal.

A survey of 2,000 people found 25 – 35 year-olds are the most willing to do so, along with the residents of Norwich and Brighton, according to insurer Aviva.

“It is important not to eat food past its ‘Use By’ date because it could make you ill, but you can eat food past its ‘Best Before’ date as it is highly unlikely to be a health risk,” said Hanna Esselink, a spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency.

“Use By dates relate to food safety and Best Before dates relate to food quality.”

‘Sell By’ or ‘Display Until’ dates are for shop staff and relate to stock rotation, so can be ignored by the consumer, she added. “Consumers should check the Use By or Best Before date instead – there is nothing stopping food past its Best Before date being sold or distributed.”

As a result, out of date food is now exchanging hands online at low prices, along with other groceries which would otherwise be rejected by supermarkets – for example, because there is a problem with the packaging.

But are the discounts offered by and real?

“Around 80 per cent of our food is in date and 20 per cent is out of date – and it is all perfectly good to eat,” says Approved Food founder Dan Cluderay, who buys his stock at rock-bottom prices from wholesalers and retailers.

Some of it is stock that is left behind when there’s a packaging or price change. Other stock is simply seasonally out of date. “No high street retailer will want to sell anything with snowflakes or Christmas on the packaging come January,” says Cluderay.

“Last January, we sold 30,000 advent calendars and 20,000 Christmassy packaged toilet rolls at bargain prices, and it will be the same next year.”

He estimates that his average shopper will get £90 to £95-worth of groceries for each £40 spent on his website, even after taking the delivery charge into account, which is £5.99 for a 25kg box. “A box that size is roughly equivalent to a big trolley shop at the supermarket.”

Unlike with a supermarket, however, the box will be delivered by a courier. This means you will be randomly allocated an hour-long delivery window and must wait around two to three working days for it to arrive.

Clearance XL has a similar business model to Approved Food, but charges even less, at £5.25 for a 30kg box of groceries. Deliveries can take up to five working days to arrive, although the majority arrive sooner.

“We sell groceries that, as a last resort, would be sent to a landfill by a retailer – for example, because it’s passed its best before date or has imperfections like spelling mistakes,” says Paul Swiniarski, managing director of ClearanceXL.

He admits that the groceries he sells may be of a lower quality than you’d expect from a supermarket, but says he doesn’t receive many complaints about the taste of his clearance products.

“I would not sell anything I would not be happy to consume myself and I find a majority of products six months past their ‘best before’ date have tasted normal with no significant differences in tastes or texture. I have also been happy with products 12 months past their ‘best before’ date.”

He does not easily offer refunds to customers who complain on taste grounds. “We do taste test samples, and the dates of each product are listed in the product description, so customers can judge themselves whether they want to purchase the product or not.”

Cluderay says if a customer says something they’ve bought isn’t right, he will believe them. “We have had very few complaints about quality.”

Emma Mumford, aka ‘The Coupon Queen’, is a regular user of the Approved Food website. “I’ll buy two boxes a year and, even after I take into account the delivery charge, I find I typically save about 50 per cent compared to what I’d pay at Tesco – and I always check each price before I buy.”

The 23 year-old says she is wary of buying fresh food from the website, so mainly buys toilet roll and cleaning products like washing up liquid and toilet cleaner in bulk, as well as soup tins and bottled water.

However, she was once tempted to buy 12 packets of Walkers crisps for £2, and two bottles of Coca Cola. “The crisps only had a month left before the best before date, but they still tasted fresh and flavoursome.

However, the coke didn’t taste right to me, although my partner thought it was fine. It wasn’t a big deal though – I just contacted Approved Foods and got a refund.”

She has written sponsored posts about the website on her blog Extreme Couponing and Deals UK and says she would genuinely recommend the site to other savvy shoppers. “The amount supermarkets chuck out is horrific. Using these websites helps to reduce food waste and saves you money, so I think it’s a win-win situation.”

But can you really snap up a bargain at these websites?

We compared the prices of randomly chosen stock available at these websites to similar items for sale at Amazon and Asda, making the most of multi-buy options where available.

In three cases out of 10, we found Asda was cheaper than both Clearance XL and Approved Food – and that’s before the cost of delivery with these websites is taken into account. The supermarket chain also beat or price matched Amazon 90 per cent of the time.

Amazon was the cheapest option only once, matching the low price offered by Approved Food on a tin of Heinz tomato soup. However, it states on its website that it will only sell food that has more than 50 days to go until the expiry date, and considers ‘best before’ dates as equivalent to expiration dates.

On three other occasions, Approved Food was cheaper than the others, even on items that were still in date (although usually the ‘best before’ dates on these items have only about a month left – or less).

Clearance XL offered the cheapest prices on four occasions, and offered very significant savings each time it was the cheapest.

However, it had a smaller range of the branded products we compared available and, unlike the products we found at Approved Food, some its food had ‘best before’ dates stretching all the way back to June 2016.

If buying from these websites sounds like too much hard work, , a food sharing app, is another useful way to reduce your food budget and use up unwanted food – but unlike Approved Food and Clearance XL, it doesn’t cost you a penny.

The free mobile app allows you to browse offers of free food and other grocery items that are available for collection from your neighbours and local shops and cafes.

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