Food myths and how to curb wastage in the kitchen, according to 1 home economist

Home economist Jodie Kachkar shares some common food myths to help you curb food wastage in the kitchen.

A recent survey showed more than half of Canadians put food cost at the top of their concern list. Home economist Jodie Kachkar joined CTV Your Morning Edmonton’s Kim Wynn with some common food myths you can ignore to help curb food wastage in the kitchen.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kim Wynn: How much does the average household throw away?

Jodie Kachkar: 20 to 25 per cent.

Kim: What items should families throw away if it’s past the expiry date?

Jodie: We have to understand that there’s two different things we’re talking about here. There’s expiry dates and there’s best before dates. In Canadian labelling law, we have two different categories.

Things that expire are things like food replacement, drinks or baby formula. The idea is that this might be all the nutrition that a person is getting, or a baby is getting, so then it would degrade over time. Past the expiry date, we should be getting rid of that, knowing that it may not be as nutritious as it was.

However, everything else has a best before date. These all say “best before” (shows yogurt) and I pulled these out of my personal fridge. I have a yogurt from Dec. 25 (that’s the expiry date), a yogurt from June 25, then some vegan cheese bread from Feb. 2 of 2025.

Kim: One myth is to throw out food on or right before the best before date, but why not?

Jodie: Because it still might be fine. If you have something that’s got a “best before” date that’s past its date, then just taste it and trust your nose and your tongue. See what you think. Like if there’s mold growing on the top of your sour cream, I would throw it away. But I would not worry about the date in your personal home. Restaurant rules are very different, so that’s a different setup but the average homeowner, please just trust your gut.

Kim: What are some other food myths that are out there?

Common Food Myths

• People wash their chicken. That always makes me a little concerned because unless you’re using soap, all you’re doing is spreading salmonella potentially around your workspace. Please don’t wash your chicken, just cook it and then clean up appropriately.

• “Adding salt to pasta water will boil faster,” no. If you added about two tablespoons per liter of water, eventually you might reduce it by about a degree. But the reason you add salt to pasta water is because it’ll add flavor to your pasta.

• Adding potatoes to make a dish less spicy. If you’ve seasoned something and you regret it, sometimes there’s this myth that you could add potatoes to it. That will just spread the spices out, which might work, but if you’re trying to reduce the spicy flavour, try adding something acidic or sweet or a dairy product and that’ll help meld and blend that down.

• Don’t eat raw cookie dough or cake batter. This one is true and often people think it’s because of the raw eggs. Actually, in Canadian egg management, we have exceptional standards and really, really safe products. The concern is actually because of raw flour. In raw flour, we’re starting to see E.Coli in it, which is not a problem once you cook it, but I don’t know that I’d eat it raw. In fact, I would not.