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When it comes to labels on food, there's no agreed upon wording to let consumers know when to toss packaged grocery items. Public confusion over how long they can keep and safely eat products is part of the reason Americans throw away roughly a third of their food -- about $161 billion worth -- each year.
Compounding the uncertainty for consumers about when to toss food is the array of descriptions producers use to signal a product's shelf life. Those include "use by," "sell by," "freeze by," "best if used before" and "expires on," leaving the public unclear on the safety of products and causing lots of perfectly fine food to get tossed.
[...] Looking to stem the tide of still-edible food that ends of in landfills, the FDA is backing a voluntary industry effort to standardize the "best if used by" wording on packaged food, saying it should curb consumer confusion thought to contribute to about 20% of food wasted in U.S. homes.
[...] Still, the FDA's guidance may not go far in clearing up the public's misunderstanding about labels, observers said. For one, the labeling only applies to food quality, not its safety.
[...] The [Grocery Manufacturers Association] and the Food Marketing Institute in January 2017 recommended making the phrase uniform, along with use of the "use by" phrase to indicate when food should no longer be eaten for safety reasons. In a letter to the food industry, the FDA said it would not address the latter phrase "at this time."
Predicting when food is past its prime is an inexact science, according to Kevin Smith, senior advisor for food safety in the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. He said consumers should regularly examine food in their kitchen cabinets or pantries that have passed their "best if used by" dates, and throw out if they've noticeably changed in color, consistency or texture.
"Food is much safer than it was a few decades ago, largely because of refrigeration and dramatically improved manufacturing processes. But to really address the problem with food waste, the FDA should tell people something more meaningful than open it, look at it, smell it, and if it seems OK, eat away, otherwise, toss," Steinzor added.
The FDA should instead define when foods become risky to eat based on shelf life and require those dates be disclosed, she said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @02:20PM (11 children)
This approach isn't going to work because by the time the shelf life is confirmed people will be eating something else. Also, stuff that goes bad relatively quickly like raw meat and vegetables is already well known.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:42PM (9 children)
This approach (or a very similar one) is already in use in the UK:
See https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/best-before-and-use-by-dates [food.gov.uk]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:46PM (3 children)
I should add that, even with this firm advice on "Use By" dates, I still use my own judgement on things. My fridge is cold enough that milk can still be fine a week after its Use By date.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @09:34PM
Where I live there is a lot of particulate matter in the air. For us sealed food kept refrigerated will last to its use by date, but anythintg opened, even if it is immediately put back in the fridge will have mold within a few weeks (varies by food and handling.)
The real issues are threefold: chemical/enzymatic decomposition of the food, biological decomposition of the food, and proper storage of the food (which affects the first two, but can be a separate issue.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @09:46AM (1 child)
What do you think about the bunch doing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:38AM
Well, I'm sort of a kindred spirit, in that I can't walk past a refuse skip without peering in to it on the off chance that there'll be something useful. But of the food front, I've stuck to trawling the reduced aisles of supermarkets before closing time until now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:19AM (3 children)
I meant how are they going to set a date for food that doesn't go bad for years? By the time they figure it out the recipe/formulation will have changed.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:17AM (2 children)
The food that doesn't go bad for years isn't given a "safety" use by date, it's given a "quality" best before date instead.
Quality is subjective, so manufacturers can stick a pin in the calendar and decide that their product will have X months shelf life. The food that's a real safety risk (and would carry a use by date) becomes unsafe quickly enough that it can be measured or calculated during product development.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:36PM (1 child)
I was working as a school janitor over the summer years ago and found a decade old can of pepsi in a desk. I opened it and it was totally bad, like battery acid bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @05:30PM
Well, you did say it was Pepsi...
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday May 29 2019, @02:53PM
Perhaps in the UK, but in the US, the USDA's own site says (with the exception of dates on infant formula) that NONE of the dates are SAFETY dates [usda.gov]:
Also:
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:19AM
Well that at least explains the multi-year gap between Holidays and whenever the Jay and Silent Bob reboot comes out. Seems a bit of a waste of his talents to be side-jobbing at the FDA though.