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The lie of “expired” food and the disastrous truth of America’s food waste problem

America has a food waste problem. But I’ve rarely been clear on how that translates to how I actually treat the food in my refrigerator. Because what can you do, right? When the date says it’s done, it’s done, right? Apparently, very wrong. Researchers have found that “expiration” dates — which rarely correspond to food actually expiring or spoiling — are mostly well-intentioned, but haphazard and confusing. Put another way, they’re not expiration dates at all. And the broader public’s misunderstanding about them is a major contributor in every single one of the factors I named above: wasted food, wasted revenue, wasted household income, and food insecurity.

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 Expiration Dates Are Meaningless

Do I dare to eat an old peach yogurt? Yes, yes I do.

 Fixing Expiration Dates Won’t Solve Food Waste

We toss food because we’re bad planners, not just because we meticulously adhere to incorrect expiration dates.

 Food expiration dates don’t have much science behind them – a food safety researcher explains another way to know what’s too old to eat

Avoiding unseen food hazards is the reason people often check the dates on food packaging. And printed with the month and year is often one of a dizzying array of phrases: “best by,” “use by,” “best if used before,” “best if used by,” “guaranteed fresh until,” “freeze by” and even a “born on” label applied to some beer. People think of them as expiration dates, or the date at which a food should go in the trash. But the dates have little to do with when food expires, or becomes less safe to eat. I am a microbiologist and public health researcher, and I have used molecular epidemiology to study the spread of bacteria in food. A more science-based product dating system could make it easier for people to differentiate foods they can safely eat from those that could be hazardous.

 The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow

The first thing you should know? The dates, as we know them, have nothing to do with safety. J. Kenji López-Alt explains.

 The truth, and strategy, of food expiration dates

When you walk into a supermarket and pick up an item — anything from milk to cereal to a can of beans — you’ll likely see a little date on the package preceded by “enjoy by,” “sell by,” or a similar phrase. You might think that date is the absolute last day that food is safe to eat. You’d be wrong. But you wouldn’t be alone in coming to that mistaken conclusion, because the system behind food label dates is an absolute mess. There’s no national standard for how those dates should be determined, or how they must be described. Instead, there’s a patchwork system — a hodgepodge of state laws, best practices and general guidelines.

 When to give up on the food in your pantry

What to eat, what to keep, and what to toss.

 Which expiration dates actually matter?

Although expired food may not be at its peak deliciousness, it should still be safe to consume. There’s no hard and fast rule, and it’s more important to pay attention to how long since the food was bought and whether it was kept in proper conditions, says Nwadike. If a product is discolored, moldy, abnormally soft, or it generally looks and/or smells bad, throw it out immediately—no matter how carefully it was stored.

 “Sell By” And “Best By” Dates on Food Are Basically Made Up—But Hard to Get Rid Of

Most of the food you buy comes with a little “sell by” or “best by” date stamped on it. But these dates are—essentially—made up. Nobody regulates how long milk or cheese or bread stays good, so companies can essentially print whatever date they want on their products. In the past few years, a bunch of food writers have explained to grocery shoppers that they should probably ignore those little numbers and just check to see if the food looks or smells bad. But, if sell-by dates are so useless, why do we even have them. In the United States, federal law requires only that infant formula be dated, but many states have similar regulations for products like milk, eggs and meat. But most food manufacturers date pretty much everything anyway.

Articles of Interest

Age Your Canned Goods

Why I now think of best-by dates as maybe-getting-interesting-by dates.

America Is Finally Getting Food Expiration Labels That Will Make Sense

If you still rely on the smell test—because arbitrary "best by" dates still leave you wondering whether you'll die from eating that three-week-old sour cream—you’re not alone.

Best by, sell by, use by

The dates stamped on our groceries have a lot of power. They convince us that our food is fresh and safe to be consumed. But for food dates there's more myth than truth. Except for baby formula, there's no central authority or federal regulation that enforces national standards for food date labeling. So a sell-by date that might force a gallon of milk off of the shelf in one state could be considered completely safe to consume in another for several more days.

Decoding Expiration Dates

Even though the F.D.A. doesn't mandate the use of them, it does offer some advice to decoding the terms. None of them, not even the "use by" date are considered safety dates. The food might not be at peak quality after the date, but it can still be eaten safely. Even the "use by" dates on baby food are related to nutrient retention and texture rather than safety. I had always suspected that the printed expiration dates on food were more about protecting the companies than the consumers.

Don’t Buy This: Bogus Food Expiration Dates Make You Waste Food

Throwing away food because of a sell by date is wasteful and expensive.

Expiration dates lead to lots of food waste, though these dates vary widely by state

In Idaho, milk can be sold more than 20 days after it's pasteurized. In Montana, it's just 12 days. The science is the same. But food dates are all over the place, and it leads to a lot of food waste.

Has this food actually expired? Why label dates don’t mean what you think

“Food date labels are really like the wild west – there are no standards,” said Jeffrey Costantino, a spokesperson at ReFed, a non-profit advocacy organization working to reduce food waste.

Healthy Eating: When to Toss Ketchup, Salad Dressing and Other Foods Lurking in Your Fridge

Do you ever get confused about when a certain food item is past its prime? Most things come with expiration dates, but jarred foods and condiments sometimes don't--leaving us to wonder how long is too long? Here's how to tell...

Here’s How Long Shelf-Stable Pantry Items Actually Last

They keep for a long time, but nothing is forever.

How Bad is it to Eat Expired Food if it Still Smells Okay?

That expiration date isn't the boss of you.

How do food manufacturers pick those dates on their product packaging – and what do they mean?

No one wants to serve spoiled food to their families. Conversely, consumers don’t want to throw food away unnecessarily – but we certainly do. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates Americans toss out the equivalent of US$162 billion in food every year, at the retail and consumer levels. Plenty of that food is discarded while still safe to eat.

Ignore Expiration Dates

“Best by,’ “Sell by,’ and all those other labels mean very little.

In Battle Against Food Waste, Rethinking "Use By" Labels

Could changing food labels save millions of tons of good food from being thrown away?

Is It Safe to Eat Expired Protein Powder?

But try as you might, if you're not one to reach for a scoop of whey protein (or soy, brown rice, or casein protein) every time you make a post-workout protein shake, it can be hard to use up those huge tubs of protein powder before the sell-by date. And while you might admit to using things like milk a few days after the carton says it's expired, do the same iffy "rules" apply to protein powder?

Is Your Food Expired? Don’t Be So Quick to Toss It

Most consumers mistakenly believe that expiration dates on food indicate how safe the food is to consume, when these dates actually aren’t related to the risk of food poisoning or foodborne illness.

Op-Ed: Ignore Your Food's Expiration Dates

Some people keep milk until it fails the sniff test, while others pitch it the minute it hits the use-by date. Do those expiration dates really mean anything? In a piece for Slate, "Ignore Expiration Dates," Nadia Arumugam says no. She believes it's the food supply chain, not the sell-by date, we should care about.

Overcoming the Confusion: Rethinking Food Expiration Dates to Tackle Waste

At consumer levels, the perplexity over food expiration dates, laden with a dizzying array of phrases like “use by,” “sell by,” and “best before,” is extensively contributing to this issue. More than 80 percent of Americans discard perfectly good, consumable food simply because they misunderstand expiration labels.

The FDA knows expiration dates are confusing, so they’re changing them

Who among us really knows what “best if sold by” means?

What 'Sell By,' 'Best Before' And 'Use By' Dates Really Mean

I find the dates on food labels highly confusing. Why are there “sell by,” “display until,” “best before” and “use by” dates? What’s the difference between each? In particular, with “display until” date sounding more relevant to vendors, how do all these dates ultimately affect me?