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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: 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.