It turns out that the dates on our food labels do not have much to do with food safety. In many cases, expiration dates do not indicate when the food stops being safe to eat — rather, they tell you when the manufacturer thinks that product will stop looking and tasting its best. Some foods, such as deli meats, unpasteurized milk and cheese, and prepared foods such as potato salad that you do not reheat, probably should be tossed after their use-by dates for safety reasons.

Tossing out a perfectly edible cup of yogurt every once in a while does not seem that bad. But it adds up. According to a survey by the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and the National Consumers League, 84 percent of consumers at least occasionally throw out food because it is close to or past its package date, and over one third (37 percent) say they always or usually do so. That food waste in landfills generates carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas 28 to 36 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. And you are not just wasting calories and money. You are wasting all the resources that went into growing, packaging and transporting that food.

The FDA, researchers and the grocery manufacturing industry largely agree on an initial solution to this particular part of the food waste problem: clearer package-date labels. In 2017, the grocery industry, led by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute, announced a voluntary standard on food-date labeling. They narrowed the plethora of date-label terms down to two: “best if used by” and “use by.” “Best if used by” describes product quality, meaning the product might not taste as good past the date but is safe to eat. “Use by” is for products that are highly perishable and should be used or tossed by that date. The FDA announced in May 2019 that it “strongly supports” the GMA and FMI efforts to use the “best if used by” label to designate food quality. When it comes to food safety, the FDA said manufacturers can put whatever terminology they want to convey health risk. But while the FDA is encouraging manufacturers to use “best if used by” as a best practice, it is still not required by law. There is no federal law that requires dates on food, except for infant formula.

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Emily Broad Leib, of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, says that to have an effect, these changes need to be federally mandated.

“We’re going to need the main government agencies that regulate food to be able to say: These are what these labels mean. When you see these on products, here’s what you should do, here’s how you should interpret them,” she said.

Others who advocate replacing current food date labels suggest using language that indicates shelf life after opening or the date on which the product was packed. Nash, of Mom’s Organic Market, argues for something more unambiguous.