Which? has identified Waitrose as the supermarket with the shortest average shelf life for fresh food, at 7.7 days, while Asda delivered the freshest produce.
Shelf life study details
A dozen mystery shoppers placed identical online orders over a fortnight for 29 fresh and perishable products at six major supermarkets: Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose. In total, more than 2,000 items were examined.
The investigators calculated the number of hours remaining from delivery time until midnight on each item's use-by date, working out an average duration per retailer.
Waitrose's shortest shelf life
Waitrose performed worst on average for several products, including scones, bread, fresh pasta sauce, fresh tagliatelle, houmous and pork sausages. As an example, two packets of Waitrose beef mince and a pack of chicken thighs were delivered with a use-by date just one day after arrival.
Tesco dispatched fresh produce with an average of 8.8 days remaining before expiry. One customer received fresh pasta sauce and pork sausages both with just 3.4 days of shelf life remaining, while Tesco's online guidance suggests customers should expect a week for the sauce and no less than five days for the sausages.
Other supermarkets' performance
At Sainsbury's, the average shelf life stood at 10.2 days, with three products - sweetcorn and two packets of basil - carrying a best-before date on the actual delivery day. Ocado stocked some longer-lasting items, including two ham packets with over 20 days remaining. However, one customer received basil that was technically in date but looked black and wilted.
Morrisons did reasonably well, though one substituted raspberry trifle had fewer than four hours until expiration. By comparison, Which? found one customer received houmous with 24.38 days left.
Asda's freshest produce
Asda delivered the freshest groceries. Five customers received beef mince with no less than 18 days left before its use-by date, while one cod packet had seven days remaining. A pasta sauce had an average of 33.6 days remaining, compared with just 12.2 days when purchased from Waitrose - despite the Waitrose product costing 23p more.
All supermarkets featured in the study were contacted for comment by Which?, however Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's didn't supply an official response. An Ocado representative stated: "We are proud of our Fresh+ promise, making us the only UK online grocery retailer to offer a life guarantee on all fresh products. Our promise guarantees a minimum number of days of freshness on products ranging from fruit and veg to bread and milk, ensuring customers can trust Ocado to deliver the freshness they are looking for on each and every delivery. If customers aren't 100% happy with a product's freshness, they can easily arrange an immediate refund online or through our app."
A Tesco representative commented: "We work hard to select the freshest items with the longest expiry dates for all our Grocery Home Shopping delivery and Click + Collect orders and we highlight any items that have a shorter shelf life than we would like as part of our Freshness Guarantee. If customers are not happy with any items at the time of delivery or collection, they can hand them back for a full refund."
A Waitrose representative commented: "We are committed to offering the freshest and highest quality products, reflected in our growing online grocery sales. And in response to increasing customer demand for products with simpler ingredients, we have removed preservatives from some of the items in this analysis where they are common, including our houmous. Our online grocery pickers are trained to choose the longest dated products they can, and our most recent customer survey showed that the vast majority of our online customers rated the shelf life of our products as good or excellent."
