Best by? Use by? Sell by? Expiration date labels cause confusion, contribute to waste

Expiration dates aren't expiration dates.

That's what Andrea Collins, a sustainable food system specialist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said about the dozens of differently phrased date labels that appear on packaged food.

Between "best by," "sell by," "use by" and numerous other terminology, unregulated labels contribute to confusion among consumers - and eventually, food waste - Collins said.

"Food date labels, often called expiration dates, are responsible for about 10% of food waste across the country. People are confused about them and are tossing good food prematurely," she said. "One of the key interventions we can do is to just help people understand what the date labels mean, and really have more standardization. Because people think that they are federally regulated, when, really, that's a fix we still need to make."

Indeed, with the exception of infant formula, product dating is not subject to federal regulation. Even for meat, poultry and egg products, dates may be only voluntarily applied as long as they are "truthful and not misleading."

Rather than indicating a level of safety, food dates typically mean one of two things.

Calendar dates are meant for the consumer, and they represent an estimated period of best quality. In other words, a product literally is "best" by that date.

The other type of date, represented by a code that consists of letters or numbers, is applied by manufacturers so they can keep track of when their goods are produced.

"Manufacturers provide dating to help consumers and retailers decide when food is of best quality. Except for infant formula, dates are not an indicator of the product's safety and are not required by federal law," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "The quality of perishable products may deteriorate after the date passes; however, such products should still be safe if handled properly. Consumers must evaluate the quality of the product prior to its consumption to determine if the product shows signs of spoilage."

The leading concern with confusion over the dates is food waste, which is estimated at 30% to 40% of the nation's food supply, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Based on estimates from the USDA's Economic Research Service, that percentage corresponded to about 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010.

While food waste hurts our wallets and squanders resources, it also hurts our environment, Collin said. That's because organic matter doesn't break down naturally in the landfill. Instead, it sits and creates methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Nationally, methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills in 2020 were equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from about 20.3 million passenger vehicles driven for one year - or the CO2 emissions from nearly 11.9 million homes' energy use for one year - according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"If you care about climate change, this is one of the main areas where we have a potential to improve climate change quite dramatically," Collins said. "Twenty-four percent of all the things that are in our landfills are food, so this is really a big place for us to move them out. Instead, we should be composting them, we should be using anaerobic digestion, we should be finding alternatives to putting them in landfill."

There is movement in Congress to address food waste by standardizing date labels. A bipartisan bill introduced in 2021 - and co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, a Downers Grove Democrat - would set one phrase for quality and one phrase for safety. They would be "best if used by" and "use by," respectively.

Until then, Collins said, consumers don't have to wait on manufacturers, and they can move the food waste needle in their own homes by trusting their noses, rather than the labels.

"We can start using our senses and start trusting ourselves more when it comes to the quality of our food. It's an opportunity for each of us to make a difference in our own homes that then will trickle up to make a big difference to the whole picture in terms of food waste," she said. "Each of us at home is wasting small amounts of food, and it doesn't feel like it's a big deal, but when you add it all up, that turns out to make for a big pile of food waste. This is one of the places that there actually can be some personal accountability."

• Jenny Whidden is a climate change and environment writer working with the Daily Herald through a partnership with Report For America supported by The Nature Conservancy. To help support her work with a tax-deductible donation, see dailyherald.com/rfa.