My husband and I are pretty boring eaters until the weekend comes. We are trying to clean up our eating, so during most of the week our dinners consist of chicken or tilapia and a BIG portion of vegetables, usually broccoli or sautéed mushrooms and onions. My favorite choice for chicken is rotisserie chickens. They are so incredibly moist and flavorful and it is incredible to me that I can get a delicious whole chicken at Costco (or pretty much any grocery store) for around $5! Side note--Costco has the best rotisserie chickens by far! I have tried rotisserie chickens from probably 4 different grocery stores here in Iowa and none come close to the chickens at Costco. They are bigger, cheaper, and the most delicious bar none!

That is seriously some of the best $5 you can spend to feed your family, too! I love rotisserie chickens because you can eat them fresh the first meal, then you can pull off the chicken to throw it in soups, in tacos, or on top of a healthy chicken salad. But how in the heck are these $4.99 when to buy a whole raw chicken it is about twice that?! Well after doing some research on the subject, I found out why along with some other shocking supermarket strategies.

Grocery stores are like any other type of business: their main objective is to minimize waste and make a profit on all products. Well have you ever wondered where the produce goes that doesn't get purchased before it is past its prime? Or have you ever thought it seems a little crazy that nice grocery stores like Harmon's have a big salad bar with tons of fresh food everyday just sitting there? Well it turns out that in most cases, the produce that is past its prime is chopped up and put in these salad bars or used in the sides for the deli, like macaroni salad, for instance. It is also known that meat that is overdue for sale is cooked up and sold hot. So this is what I suspect is the same for these rotisserie chickens. I imagine they are the chickens that are just past their sell-by date, so before having to throw them out, the store roasts these chickens so that they don't lose money on them. It all makes perfect sense why these super cheap rotisserie chickens and salad bars exist.

At first thought, this might make you feel a little squeamish, but this food is still perfectly safe and I think it is a good thing it is being eaten instead of just thrown away. It is important to note that sell-by, use-by and best-by dates were never intended as indicators of food safety, but rather as estimates of food quality. In fact, the USDA itself said that food product dating is intended to "help the purchaser to know the time limit to purchase or use the product at its best quality. It is not a safety date." A recent report from Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic suggests that because date labels are wildly inaccurate a lot of the time, they are pretty much directly responsible for 60 billion pounds of wasted food every year. That is insane and makes me feel even better about purchasing rotisserie chickens! They are delicious and keep good food from being thrown out. Wahoo! :)