Think fresh, buy stale

Fermented sprouts, stale chicken, rotting vegetables. Your air-conditioned grocery store is selling you stale items

Beware of your friendly neighbourhood grocery store. It may well be selling you items way past their expiry dates. These stores, which have thrown the pheriwalas out of business, are doling out fermented sprouts, stale chicken and rotting vegetables.

Most of these products come with a best before date, which crudely translates into expiry date. MiD DAY bought bread, sprouts, packaged chicken, vegetables, spices, corn and hot dogs from leading retail outlets in the national capital. To our shock, most items were stale.

Sad state

"Last Friday, I purchased a pack of sprouts from a Safal outlet at Sector 36, Noida. I didn't check the date on the cover. Later, I saw worms inside," said Harshvardhan, a software professional.

When MiD DAY contacted the executive on duty at that Safal outlet, Sachin said, "What we sold was fine.

Customers often tear apart the packaging while checking the products and that's when the products get stale." But he agreed to tender a written apology to Harshvardhan.

The situation was no better at several other retail stores in Delhi. We went shopping at Spencers (Malviya Nagar), SRS Value Bazaar (Malviya Nagar), Big Apple (Khirki Extension), Reliance Fresh (Taimoor Nagar, Lajpat Nagar, Savithri Nagar), 6Ten Your Shop Your Time (Malviya Nagar) and More (Gupta Colony). At all these outlets, we were billed for products, which, according to the 'best before packaging date', were not fresh.

Most of these retail outlets admitted that according to their policy, such products should not be sold.
Manawar Alam, operations head, Big Apple said, "It's entirely our mistake. The store management should have made sure that customers don't walk out with such products."

A Reliance Industries spokesperson explained, "We would never indulge in such unfair trade practices. The goof-up is regretted. However, Best Before Date (BBD) is not exactly the expiry date for a product unlike in the case of medicines. BBD gives you an idea of the period during which a product retains its maximum nutrition (in case of edible items)."

Dates not visible

At Spencers, the confusion was more profound as the manufacturing date on several products was not even visible.

While a representative of More, which belongs to the Aditya Birla Group, could not be contacted for a response, a 6Ten representative, requesting anonymity, did not connect us to the department concerned.

Calls and e-mails to Shakuntala Sarkar, corporate communication representative for Spencers Retail, went unanswered despite her commitment to a written response from Summer Singh Shekhawat, head of marketing, Spencers Retail.

Food for thought