Spring Ahead! Give Your Kitchen Area And Your Diet Plan A Makeover!
A kitchen makeover does not need new cupboards. It needs a thermometer, a marker pen and a careful look at the labels. Once the kitchen is sorted, the diet plan has somewhere to start. This page takes both jobs in that order, using the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) guide on chilling and freezing food and the NHS Eatwell Guide.
Start with the fridge thermometer
The FSA puts one number first: “your fridge should be between 0 and 5°C and your freezer should be around -18°C”. It recommends a fridge thermometer as the best way to check, and suggests checking once a week. If the reading is off, the built-in dial or gauge changes the power setting, and the manufacturer’s instructions say how to do it.
While the shelves are out for cleaning, put them back in a working order. Raw meat, poultry and fish go on the bottom shelf, in their packaging or in clean sealed containers, so they cannot touch or drip onto other food. Eggs are stored away from other foods, and the FSA suggests the fridge’s egg tray if there is one. Food with a use-by date belongs in the fridge, as do cooked dishes, salads and dairy products.
Look for opened tins at the back. The FSA says not to store food in an opened tin can. Empty what is left into a storage container, cover it and refrigerate it.
Clear the freezer of unidentified frozen objects
The FSA has a name for unlabelled freezer bags: “Unidentified Frozen Objects (UFOs)”. Its fix is simple. Label what you freeze.
Freezer burn gets its own explanation in the same guide. It happens when food is exposed to cold, dry air, and it affects quality rather than safety. Air-tight containers and well-wrapped freezer bags stop it. As a rough guide, the FSA says meats are usually best eaten within 2 to 3 months, and baked goods, fruit and veg are best between 3 and 4 months. The FSA labelling guide asks for the same thing: label frozen food so you know what it is and when it was frozen.
Read the cupboard labels the right way
Dry cupboards collect packets that look past it. The FSA labelling guide separates two kinds of date. Use-by dates “relate to the safety of food”, while best before dates “relate to quality”. Its examples of best before foods include dried foods such as pasta and rice, and tinned foods such as baked beans and canned tomatoes.
After the best before date, the guide says, the food “is usually safe to eat but may not be of the same quality”. Sight, taste or smell can then decide: looking for visible mould on bread, tasting biscuits or crisps to see if they are stale. Food past its use-by date is a different matter. The guide says eating it could make you ill, unless it was cooked or frozen on or before that date.
A box of dates goes wherever its own label sends it. The FSA notes that some types of food might need to be kept in the fridge once opened and says to follow the storage instructions on the label. Some date varieties need the fridge anyway. Mazafati, a dark, very soft date from Bam in Kerman province, Iran, needs refrigeration, and it is cold-stored and sold year-round.
Then the diet plan
The Eatwell Guide shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group. It does not ask for that balance at every meal: “try to get the balance right over a day or even a week”.
Fruit and vegetables should make up just over a third of the food we eat each day. Starchy foods should make up just over a third as well, with higher fibre or wholegrain choices such as wholewheat pasta and brown rice. Beans, pulses, fish, eggs and meat supply protein, and the guide asks for at least 2 portions of fish every week, 1 of which should be oily. Dairy or alternatives come next, in lower-fat and lower-sugar versions where possible. Unsaturated oils and spreads are eaten in small amounts.
Chocolate, cakes, biscuits, sugary soft drinks, butter, ghee and ice cream sit outside the main groups. The guide says they are not needed in our diet, so they should be eaten less often and in smaller amounts. The cupboard clear-out is the moment to decide how many of them come back in.
For drinks, the guide gives 6 to 8 cups or glasses a day. Water, lower-fat milks, lower-sugar or sugar-free drinks and tea and coffee all count, and fruit juice and smoothies are limited to a combined total of 150ml a day.
Where dates fit once the plan is set
The NHS 5 A Day page names dates directly: “a 30g portion of dried fruit, such as currants, dates, sultanas and figs, counts as 1 of your 5 A Day”. The same line says it “should be eaten at mealtimes, not as a snack between meals, to reduce the impact on teeth”.
For a sense of scale, USDA FoodData Central lists Deglet Noor dates (SR Legacy record 171726) at 282 kcal, 63.4 g of total sugars and 8.0 g of fibre per 100 g, with one pitted date weighing 7.1 g. Four of those dates come to 28.4 g, which is about 80 kcal and 18 g of sugars. That is a portion to stir into breakfast oats or eat as part of the evening meal, not one to leave on the counter for grazing.
Another page on this site sets the same NHS guide against research papers on why alkaline food is recommended. More about this site is on the About Us page and the contact page.