Article from The Wall Street Journal discusses something I’ve been saying for decades. Although I will also say that what it demonstrates is just one example of how wealthy this country is and what most people can afford to do with their money.
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Food Expiration Dates? What a Waste
This misunderstanding is one reason Americans waste a colossal amount of food.

Some numbers are bad because they mislead. Expiration dates on our food are worse: They’re downright destructive.

Food experts broadly agree that the expiration dates on every box of crackers, can of beans and bag of apples waste money, squander perfectly good food, needlessly clog landfills, spew methane and contribute to climate change.

Ah, but food-safety regulations keep us safe, you might say. Yet in almost all cases, there’s no regulation, and the dates do nothing to keep us safe.

Contrary to a common perception, “those dates are not about safety, that’s not why they’re there, that’s not what they’re doing” says Martin Wiedmann, a professor of food safety and food science at Cornell University. “For many foods, we could completely do away with it.”

Although we call them expiration dates, most don’t actually claim anything is expiring or unsafe. Instead, the labels say “fresh until,” “display until,” “best when used by,” “better if used by,” “sell by,” “best by,” “enjoy by,” “best before” or—perhaps worst—provide a date with no explanation at all.

The dates originated as a coded system for manufacturers to communicate to retailers when to rotate stock. Consumers clamored for information on the freshness of food, and in the 1970s and 1980s consumer-facing dates became widespread, though never standardized.

Food manufacturers have tried, largely in vain, to explain that these are mostly general indicators of when food is at its peak quality. Most foods, properly stored, remain edible and safe long after their peak.

“It’s intended as a sort of consumer guide to be helpful,” said Andrew Harig, vice president at FMI—the Food Industry Association (formerly the Food Marketing Institute), a Washington trade group for food retailers and producers. “It’s just that it morphed into less of a guide and more of a rule…Food technologists and food-safety people, they absolutely hate these labels.”

Since 2017, FMI has encouraged members to coalesce around just two labels: “Best if used by,” which indicates the product might not taste quite as good after that date, and “Use by” for those cases where food may actually be unsafe, such as meat from the deli counter.

U.S. consumers are wildly confused about the labels’ intent. In a 2019 paper, researchers at Johns Hopkins and Harvard found 84% of consumers threw out food at the package date “at least occasionally” while 37% did so always or usually, though that wasn’t what most labels recommended. More than half thought date labeling was federally regulated, or they were unsure. An earlier study found that 54% of people thought eating food past a sell-by date was unsafe.

In fact, with the exception of infant formula, the labels aren’t federally mandated and the food isn’t unsafe. Safety concerns usually arise from food that’s contaminated or improperly stored. If you care about food safety, Wiedmann advises you to ignore “best by” dates and just set your refrigerator no higher than 37 degrees. Keeping food too warm is a real safety risk.

While old food eventually tastes bad, it’s unlikely to be dangerous, especially if cooked. But date labels that sometimes conflate quality and safety leave many consumers with no idea how to assess whether food is safe.

The U.S. Agriculture Department has estimated 31% of the available food supply goes uneaten: Retailers discard 43 billion pounds of food annually, consumers 90 billion. That’s 387 billion calories of lost food, which the USDA says works out to 1,249 calories per American per day.

It’s hard to determine exactly how much of that waste owes to labels, but probably more than most people think. ReFED, a nonprofit that works to reduce food waste, has used data from kitchen diaries to estimate annual U.S. food waste because of labeling concerns as nearly 7 billion pounds. There’s reason to think this is an undercount. In a grotesquely amusing study, households that kept such diaries reported tossing 8.7 pounds of food a week, usually saying it was inedible or spoiled. Then researchers literally dug through their trash and determined that 68% of the food was probably edible. Consumers might not even realize that they’re junking good food.

Haters of the expiration date take hope from the U.K., where a concerted effort to cut back on food waste has involved standardizing date labels, as well as consumer education. This culminated in the U.K.’s largest supermarket chains dumping expiration dates on hundreds of items.

There’s some evidence it’s paid off. The Waste & Resources Action Programme, a U.K. charity, looked at the composition of landfills and found that household food waste was 18% lower in 2018 than in 2007.

Caroline Conroy, a specialist at WRAP, has a favorite study. Consumers were shown a slightly less-than-perfect apple that was perfectly safe to eat and asked whether they would toss it. Only 7% said they would. Except for those also shown an expiration date, of which 46% said they would toss it.

“An astonishing number of people will throw away a perfectly good apple,” Conroy said, as they blindly follow dates rather than their own eyes and nose.

THE NUMBERS | By Josh Zumbrun

LINK

Iowa food banks aren't allowed to accept or give away anything with a past 'expiration' date. That also applies to 'best used by' dates as they are interpreted as the same thing.

When helping close down a restaurant and give away the canned foods, local food banks were scared to accept anything without a date on it as well. They said the state would shut them down if they had stuff against the rules.

It made the priorities of the state clear.

I volunteered at a food bank for a while . They would not keep any donations that were outdated . It wasn't a State law or anything like that . Just a policy they had . A lot of food was wasted .

Expiration/Sell-by/Best-used-by dates do have their place.

One month ago, I was at Kroger looking to get some jerky, and one package looked “odd”. Upon close inspection, the beef jerky inside the plastic package had turned GREEN!

I looked at the expiration date and it was over 4 months old. I brought it to the attention of store management and every package in that box had the same expiration date.

Obviously someone stocking the shelves wasn’t doing his/her job.

We save a ton buying food that’s marked down because it’s about to go past expiration dates. Buy meat like that, freeze it, win. My wife makes “dog food” from drastically reduced price ground chicken and turkey. It’s cheaper than buying kibble. And those filets we eat all the time…taste every bit as good as “fresh.”

quote:

Originally posted by 2BobTanner:

the beef jerky inside the plastic package had turned GREEN!

Best used on March 17.

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
I volunteered at a food bank for a while . They would not keep any donations that were outdated . It wasn't a State law or anything like that . Just a policy they had . A lot of food was wasted .

Food bank in Orlando has a criteria based on the food type that determines how far past the "best by" date you can keep versus toss.

My wife and I have a non profit rescue for exotic Animals, peeps and créeps 501C. We have a deal with a supermarket chain and a food bank locally to get all their through away stuff. I would estimate we get close to 1000 pounds a day and sometimes 3 times that. We will not feed the animals anything we would not eat, we feed 90%. The waste is mind blowing.

Tommy

Although the concept of "expiration dates" is supposed to be "honest", that purpose is not always the case IMHO.

I get amused when I see these dates on sugar, salt, pepper, pasta and other dry goods, which if kept in a cool, dry place will almost keep indefinitely. Same applies for some canned goods. I have eaten multiple canned goods that were past their "expiration date". As long as the can still had a vacuum and the contents didn't smell or taste strange, then "game on".

However, I will pay close attention to "expiration date" on fresh meat, vegetables, and dairy products, especially if the package has been opened.

What about MREs and such? I recently ate some items from a brown MRE (Gulf War era). The M&Ms were a little dry, but the peanut butter was fine, as were the crackers, cookies, and even the powdered drink mixes. I fed the Chicken-a-la-King to the cat, and he was okay afterwards. Mind you, this was a cat who had a somewhat tender stomach, but he didn't puke it up..

Send it to me, I’ll decide, usually it’s a go. I was at our camp last spring, a little hungry. There was a survival type meal, kinda a civilian MRE that expired in 2008. I figured it was fair game, I’m still here.

We were on maneuvers at Camp Graying years ago. I found a C-Rat tin buried in the dirt, still sealed. I used my p38 opener, tasted fine.

My sister at times barters beer for favors around her house, usually to me. Another relative was there, she gave them a 6-pack. Later there was some grousing about the beer being past the ‘best by’ date. It may of even got poured out.

started in the Grocery Biz in 1980,
some things had code dates, (julian dated to show when it was made,, not expired) and some had sell by dates,

several hotdog and bologna makers had code dates as well and we only pulled and tossed them when the vacuum broke
Oscar Mayer had a Fresh up to 7 days after opening, and that was it, that I recall,

it was common practice in the meat dept and produce to pull the out of dates either the night before or that morning, and repackage it if it was fine looking,

the date thing got really tight in the 90's when a lot of news groups did 'investigative reporting' and a few chains got caught doing what they always had done, and it all got blown way out of proportion,


I remember as a Manager, getting a big ass ripping from a customer because we had out of date dog food on the shelf,
I , at that time, had no idea dog food had a shelf life on the package,


the last chain I managed stores for, would donate to Feedmore, the local foodbank,

they also ran a commercial kitchen for Meals on Wheels, and would take perishables and some canned goods for the kitchen,
we would put the out of dates in box in the freezer, and they picked it up about once a week

I suspect that merchants are just fine with people throwing away post- or short-dated foods, as long as they don't neglect to purchase replacements!

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
We save a ton buying food that’s marked down because it’s about to go past expiration dates.

My wife does a lot of that at the local Smith's (Kroger). Most of it is at least 50% off and a lot of the items are 75% off. A lot of the Deli items that didn't sell the day before are deeply discounted.

She calls it her "Easter Egg Hunt".

Both of our adult children throw any food away that is past the artificial 'maturity' date. When they visit, they criticize us when we pull out a can of something that is a year or two past the magic date. They're nuts.

Generally speaking, no fuzz and no smell and they're good to go.

It gets a little iffy with canned things as botulism has no taste or odor. My rule is if it still has a seal I'll risk it.

quote:

Originally posted by sourdough44:
We were on maneuvers at Camp Graying years ago. I found a C-Rat tin buried in the dirt, still sealed. I used my p38 opener, tasted fine.

Awesome, a fellow traveler! I thought I was the only person who had done that. Back in Basic at Ft Leonard Wood, I ran across a buried stash of C-rats while digging a fighting position. This was 1991, so they were probably buried a few years. I ate every one of them. Peanut butter along with those little tins with crackers that had chocolate on one side.

This is a topic that's easy to look past in everyday life, but it is a real problem that is worth working on.

It upsets me more than most because I've been hungry for days at a time - without wanting to be on a fast. Seeing leftovers go to waste in the fridge is a definite sore spot, and pretty much never happened when I lived alone.

Frequent conversation at my house

Me…. They are pickles (or whatever)

Her…. They expired 2 yrs ago

Me…. Show me the expiration date and read it to me

Her.. best by (pick a date)

Me.. ok it’s a best l by date, there is no expiration date is there?

My pickles are back in the fridge

I don’t pay much attention to the dates as I know how long certain types of food lasts. Canned goods slowly loose nutrients and flavor but remain safe to eat for years.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
I suspect that merchants are just fine with people throwing away post- or short-dated foods, as long as they don't neglect to purchase replacements!

Bingo.
The food industry is perfectly fine putting a date on their packaged & prepared products, maybe even using eye-catching language like, “fresh until,” “display until,” “best when used by,” “better if used by,” “sell by,” “best by,” “enjoy by,” “best before”. With all these health warnings, you're now programed to 'when in doubt, throw it out' mindset, of course you'll need to buy a replacement. The store freaks-out, pulls them off the shelf, sells it for pennies to a liquidator, meanwhile they place a replacement order.