Monday, June 15, 2009
Unsold items go from shelves to food banks
Tom Angleberger
The New River Valley-based reporter answers your questions Mondays in his column, What's on Your Mind?
Recent columns
Q: We walk through supermarkets, noting the "sell by" dates on perishables. It's obvious the entire stock of meat, fish and dairy products could never be moved by the dates on the labels. What happens to that stuff the day after expiration? We suspect that it's relabeled with new dates. Hope we're wrong.
-- Carter Elliott,
Christiansburg
A: You seem to be taking a rather cynical view of this situation. But, in reality, it has a very positive outcome: Unsold food feeds people in need.
"In the first quarter of 2009 alone, Kroger has donated 186,000 pounds of meat to local food banks in our mid-Atlantic region," Kroger spokesman Carl York told me.
Here's how the process works:
"We watch our dates closely throughout the store on all of our products," York explained. "In meat, in particular, just prior to when chicken, beef, pork and, in many cases, lunch meat reach their expiration date, the product is pulled and immediately put into a freezer in the back of our store. A representative from the food bank periodically comes by and picks up the frozen product to be used to help feed the hungry."
This way, according to York, food that would have been destroyed gets put to use.
Now, a company doesn't get to be as successful as Kroger just by being nice. It has to be smart, too.
Modern grocery stores have access to mountains of data about our shopping habits. They know, for instance, how many rib-eyes they sold on Father's Day last year and they can make a pretty good guess about how many they'll sell this Father's Day. If they can make the right call, they won't have any leftovers. But if they cut it too close, then dad doesn't get to put a rib-eye on the grill Sunday.
York didn't go into details about how Kroger makes similar decisions. But he did say, "our stores manage inventory very closely to keep the product fresh and on good turns. This keeps our customers happy and doesn't tie up additional dollars in inventory."
Grammar Grumblings
"My pet peeve is everywhere," Carolyn Winborne writes. "I think for the rest of my life I'll be listening to people who say, 'I'm gonna lay around the house all day.' But if you can persuade them to just lie around instead, I would be very happy. I wonder if they still teach the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs."
Well, I'd love to make you happy. But I couldn't tell a transitive verb from an intransitive one if it bit me in the adjective. Luckily, I can turn to the Grammar Guru for help!
Retired English professor Virgil Cook explained that "lay" is indeed transitive. What does that mean?
"Lay requires an object," explained Cook. "You lay the book on the table. Lie does not require an object. You can't lie anything down."
I'd like to give myself some time to try to let that one soak in, so we won't open up the can of worms that comes with the past tense of "lie."
Laying up some questions
Readers, I'm collecting questions for the summer edition of Ask the Readers. This is your chance to see if anyone out there knows where to buy some lost miracle product or recalls some tidbit of local history or has the recipe for a famous local dish or just about anything else.
Got a question? Call Tom Angleberger at 777-6476 or send an e-mail to woym@roanoke.com. Don't forget to provide your full name, its proper spelling and your hometown.
Look for this column on Mondays.
