Date labels on food are unregulated opinion, not safety science, yet 84% of consumers treat them as expiration dates and throw out safe food

There is no federal regulation governing "best by", "use by", or "sell by" dates on food in the United States, except for infant formula. These dates are the manufacturer's guess at peak quality -- not safety. Yet 84% of consumers regularly throw out food because the date on the label has passed, and 37% say they do it most of the time. The USDA estimates the average family of four spends $1,500 per year on food that never gets eaten, with more recent estimates putting that figure above $3,000 as food prices have risen. This matters because it is not just individual household waste. Grocery stores are forced to pull products from shelves based on these meaningless dates, creating billions of dollars in retail shrink. Perfectly safe canned goods, condiments, and dry goods get landfilled because a store clerk sees a past date and tosses them. The downstream effect is that donated food gets rejected by food banks that misunderstand the labels, and food rescue organizations cannot redistribute products that have "expired" even though they are completely safe. More than 40 states have enacted their own conflicting date labeling laws, creating a patchwork where the same yogurt can be sold in Oregon but must be discarded in Montana. California passed AB 660 in 2024 to standardize labels to "BEST if Used By" and "USE By" and ban consumer-facing "sell by" dates, but this is one state out of fifty. The FDA and USDA published a joint Request for Information in December 2024 seeking public input, but there is still no binding federal standard. The problem persists because the food industry resists standardization (manufacturers use aggressive dates to drive repurchase), states lack the resources to harmonize laws, and no single agency has clear jurisdiction over both USDA-regulated meat and FDA-regulated everything else.