AN astonishing 5.3 million tons of perfectly good food and drink is thrown out in Britain every year – because we think it's gone off.

Every day, five million potatoes, 4.4 million apples, a million loaves of bread and a million slices of ham are dumped, according to the Waste & Resources Action Programme.

Ministers are said to be considering scrapping often misleading best-before and sell-by dates in a bid to crack down on the huge amount of waste.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said: "I am dismayed so much food goes to waste and if the date labels are part of the problem it's one thing we should be able to improve."

Food safety expert Dr Slim Dinsdale said: "Many foods have a huge margin of error on their use-by dates and this leads to a lot of good food being binned."

Here, Dr Dinsdale advises on when it's safe to eat and when it's best to chuck...