Date labelling uses distinct terms with distinct meanings, and the confusion between them is a documented contributor to household food waste.
This describes how the labels are generally defined. Anybody with a specific concern about a specific food should follow the guidance from their own food safety authority.
The two labels
The distinction that matters.
A use-by date is about safety. It appears on foods that can support harmful bacterial growth, and food should not be eaten after it, regardless of appearance or smell.
A best-before date is about quality. It indicates the period during which the food is at its best. Food after that date is generally safe and may be less good.
Which means the first is a limit and the second is a recommendation, and treating both as limits discards a great deal of edible food.
Why the confusion persists
Several reasons.
The terms are not intuitive and are similar in appearance on packaging.
Terminology varies between countries, and some jurisdictions use additional terms such as sell-by or display-until, which are for retailers rather than consumers.
And a general caution about food safety produces a default of discarding anything past any date.
Food safety bodies and retailers have made efforts to clarify this, including removing dates entirely from some fresh produce, which is a direct response to the waste evidence.
What the waste data shows
Household food waste is a substantial proportion of the food supply in high-income countries, with the majority avoidable.
Date label confusion is consistently identified as one contributor, alongside over-purchasing and poor storage.
The categories most wasted are generally bread, fresh produce, dairy and prepared meals, which are also the categories where date labels are most prominent.
Storage is the larger variable
Which affects actual shelf life more than the printed date.
Refrigerator temperature, which in many households runs warmer than the recommended range and which shortens the life of everything inside.
Where items are stored within the fridge, since temperature varies by shelf and the door is the warmest place.
Whether packaging is resealed properly.
And whether items are frozen before rather than after they deteriorate, which extends life substantially and is the most underused intervention.
The freezing point specifically
Worth stating because a common belief is wrong.
Food can generally be frozen up to its use-by date rather than only on the day of purchase, which is a change in official guidance in some jurisdictions from earlier advice.
Which means anything approaching its date can be frozen rather than discarded, and this alone addresses a large share of avoidable waste.
Frozen food remains safe indefinitely at a proper temperature, with quality declining over months.
Assessing food beyond a best-before date
Practically, since it is a judgement.
Appearance, smell and texture are the ordinary indicators and are reliable for most quality deterioration.
Dry goods — pasta, rice, tinned items — remain safe long past best-before dates, with texture and flavour declining slowly.
Fats and oils go rancid, which is detectable by smell.
And anything with visible mould should generally be discarded rather than trimmed, with limited exceptions for hard cheeses and certain items, which food safety bodies specify.
The retail end
Where policy has been changing.
Retailers have removed date labels from a range of fresh produce, on the reasoning that customers can assess it and that the labels drove unnecessary disposal.
Reduced-price sections for items approaching dates are genuine value, particularly for anything that will be cooked or frozen immediately.
And redistribution schemes, connecting surplus retail food with charities and with consumers through applications, have expanded considerably and are worth knowing about.
The practical routine
Check whether a label is use-by or best-before before discarding anything.
Freeze anything approaching a use-by date rather than binning it.
Check the fridge temperature, once, since it is frequently wrong.
Store items where they belong rather than where there is space.
And buy to a list, which addresses the over-purchasing that produces most of the waste in the first place.
The apps and redistribution
A development worth knowing about.
Applications connecting consumers with surplus food from shops and restaurants at the end of trading have become widespread.
The proposition is genuine — food that would otherwise be discarded, at a substantial discount, with the limitation that you do not choose what you get.
Community redistribution schemes and food-sharing networks operate similarly at a local level.
Both address the retail end of the waste problem, which is smaller than the household end but is the part with an organised response.
Portion and planning
Where the largest household saving actually sits.
Over-purchasing is the dominant cause of household food waste, ahead of date confusion.
Planning meals before shopping, buying to that plan, and checking what is already held addresses it directly.
Cooking to portion rather than to habit addresses the other half, since prepared food that is not eaten is waste at a later stage.
Neither requires any product and both are more effective than any storage technique.