The survey was carried out with 800 Portuguese participants at two different times, first in January and February and then in April, in the middle of the pandemic of Covid-19.

According to the results of the survey released in a statement from DECO, at the beginning of the year, 56 percent of respondents said that they would throw “some of the food” they consumed at home. However, in April the percentage of consumers who admitted to throwing food away dropped to 19 percent.

Deco compared homes with just one person and four or more people, and the results released revel that “It is visible the considerable variation between what was assumed to be thrown away before these times of confinement.”

In the questionnaire, the consumer protection association also asked the reasons for wasting food, with one in four responses indicating that it spoiled because it was not consumed in time. Making too much food was also one of the most frequent justifications.

Regarding the results of the survey, Deco recommends that the registration of expiration dates should be clearer, since only “26 percent of respondents” say they understand the difference between “best before date” or “consume by date”.

The survey also says that more than half of the respondents said they had difficulty understanding the date indicated on the labels, and that 47 percent said they had difficulty finding the expiration date on the packages.