A quick sip of the milk, a sniff of the meat or a closer look at the vegetables are often enough to determine whether our food is still good. But many of us are reluctant to rely on our senses alone. When we are in doubt, we often choose to throw out the items in question, especially if their best-before date has passed. We just trust best-before dates. Even though most of us are well aware that no food suddenly goes off as soon as the clock strikes midnight on the date printed on the packaging, more than four million tonnes of food are thrown away every year – in Germany alone. A 2017 survey by the GfK research institute has found that nearly half of that wastage could be avoided.
Five METRO wholesale stores are currently trialling an app that calculates the shelf life of food more accurately. It is called FreshIndex. During the field test, we interviewed Matthias Brunner, the founder of tsenso and the developer of the freshness app: