Although I'm very wary with both meat and fish, I still FREEZE them on their sell by date, which I'm sure is not recommended practice!
However, as a 'chuck out queen' we ALWAYS have other overdated products, ranging from bread, to yogurts, cottage cheese, quark (how would you KNOW if that was off!!), to almost all varieties of fruit and vegetables, even ready prepared salad bags!
It does entail keeping copious lists to ensure that we use everything in the most appropriate order, but providing that it passes the 'sniff test', we've never had a problem, and rarely even throw a lettuce leaf away in this house! I've even been asked at the checkout 'whatever are you going to DO with all that!!!'.
Of course, it does mean making batches of soup to freeze, or stewing fruit also to freeze, and we have several boxes of sliced bananas and grapes frozen as well...
I wouldn't worry at all with DRIED goods. They may not taste as good as they might have done, but I'm sure that they wouldn't do any harm, likewise canned items.
Anyway, I think that I heard that, to cut down on waste, the Government are going to ABOLISH use by dates - NOT a good idea in my opinion...
