What to Know:
- Most food date labels are about quality, not safety.
- Confusion over date labels contributes to billions of dollars in food waste each year.
- California just became the first state to standardize food date labels.
Stop me if this sounds familiar.
You’re back from a vacation and open your fridge to grab a glass of milk. You pause for a second because it’s been a while since you bought the carton. Just to make sure it’s still OK, you glance at the date on the label.
The date on the carton had passed five days earlier.
The milk smells fine. It looks OK. But five days old? You don’t want to take the chance and pour it down the drain. You may have just thrown away perfectly good milk, mostly because you didn’t completely understand what you were looking at.
And you’re not alone. Was it a “Use By” date or a “Sell By” date? Is there a difference?
The USDA estimates that about 30 to 40% of the U.S. food supply goes uneaten – as much as 20 pounds of food per person per month. What’s that worth? About $165 billion in food each year.
Most shoppers talk about “expiration dates” as if every date means the same thing.
They don’t. In fact, most aren’t expiration dates at all.
Here’s the first thing to understand: most food date labels are about quality, not safety. Manufacturers use many of these dates to tell you when a product is expected to have its best flavor, texture or freshness. Consumers, however, often assume the date means the food has become dangerous.
Manufacturers care about quality. Consumers care about safety. Those are two very different things.
And can the average shopper really tell the difference?
The biggest misconception of food labels is that they tell you when your food has expired and is dangerous to consume. Generally – no. While some labels will tell you when food expires, most, believe it or not, don’t.
Before expiration dates, there was Budweiser
Believe it or not, one of the best-known early examples of freshness tracking didn’t come from a dairy company – it came from a brewery.
In the 1970s, Anheuser-Busch printed coded markings on the sides of its beer labels. On the left side of the label were six dashes (representing January through June) and on the right side, six more (July through December).
A notch on the upper half of a dash meant the beer was brewed during the first half of the month. A notch on the bottom half meant it had been brewed in the second half. The year was encoded too: a single notch represented an odd-numbered year, while a double notch represented an even-numbered year.
Most consumers had no idea those notches were there, but retailers knew exactly what they meant. The codes told retailers how fresh the beer was and when it should be pulled from the shelf.
A close friend of mine had this very job in the 1990s.
If he found beer that had exceeded the company’s freshness standards, he would replace it with a same-day delivery of fresh inventory. In some cases, if it was only a small amount that didn’t warrant a delivery truck restock, my friend would buy the beer on the spot, head to a kitchen or bathroom, and pour it down the sink.
All that wasted beer…
Consumers never saw those codes because they weren’t meant for consumers – they were meant for retailers. The system worked, but food freshness was communicated behind the scenes, using codes that only stores and manufacturers understood.
As supermarkets expanded and packaged foods became more common during the 1970s, manufacturers gradually began supplementing retailer-only codes with what the USDA calls “open dating” – calendar dates printed directly on packages for consumers to read.
Budweiser itself embraced that idea when it launched its 1996 “Born On Date” consumer campaign.
The idea was simple: give consumers more information. But the problem wasn’t the dates – it was that every manufacturer seemed to use different ways to label them.
Why are there so many different labels?
According to one research paper, there are roughly 50 different date-label phrases used to communicate freshness, quality, or recommended use. The source: Sielicka-Różyńska and Samotyja, “Confusion of food-date label with food safety,” 2022.
Sell by. Use by. Best before. Enjoy by. Freshest before. Pull date. Pack date. Freeze by. Guaranteed fresh date.
The list goes on and on because the United States has never adopted a single national standard for food date labels. Here are four of the most common:
- Best if Used By: Also known as a “Best By” label, this date generally indicates when the manufacturer believes the product will be at its best flavor, texture, or quality.
- Sell By: This date has more to do with retailers than with you, the consumer. Sell By dates help retailers know how long to display a product for sale. Depending on the retailer, products that reach or pass their Sell By date may be marked down, removed from shelves, donated if still wholesome, or discarded. Yes – the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service says it is OK to donate food after a Sell By date if it doesn’t show any signs of spoilage.
- Use By: This is the manufacturer’s recommended last date for using the product while it is still at peak quality. For most foods, federal law does not require an expiration date at all. The major exception is infant formula. The FDA requires a “Use By” date on infant formula because the nutrients must remain at the levels listed on the label.
- Freeze By: Tells you when to freeze a product if you don’t plan to use it before then. Freezing by this date helps preserve flavor and texture. Food frozen by this date can often be safely stored for much longer. And like “Best By,” it is a quality date, not an expiration date.
The one exception: Infant formula
By now, you’ve probably noticed one word keeps appearing throughout this story: most.
Most food date labels are about quality. Most aren’t expiration dates. Most foods can safely be consumed beyond the printed date if they’ve been properly stored and show no signs of spoilage.
Infant formula is the exception.
Unlike almost every other food sold in the United States, federal law requires infant formula to carry a “Use By” date. Why? It’s because the date isn’t just about taste or freshness. Federal law requires manufacturers to guarantee that infant formula contains the nutrient levels listed on the label through the “Use By” date.
In other words, if you’re looking for a true federally regulated food expiration date, infant formula is it. For everything else, understanding the label matters just as much as understanding the date.
California has chosen clarity over confusion
If all of this sounds confusing, California lawmakers thought so, too. In an effort to reduce consumer confusion and food waste, beginning July 1, 2026, California became the first state in the nation to standardize consumer-facing food date labels.
Assembly Bill 660 (AB 660) was introduced in 2023 by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D–Thousand Oaks). The measure was approved by both chambers of the California Legislature in 2024, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law on September 28, 2024.
California lawmakers concluded consumers didn’t need dozens of different date labels to answer a simple question: “Is this food past its best quality, or is it no longer safe to eat?” Instead of trying to standardize dozens of phrases, lawmakers reduced them to two simple categories: one for quality and one for safety.
So, under California’s new law, most consumer-facing food date labels now fall into two simple categories:
- Best if Used By: A quality date. The food is expected to have its best flavor and texture before this date.
- Use By: A safety date. This label is intended for foods that should not be consumed after the date has passed.
One important point: California’s new law doesn’t require manufacturers to place date labels on food. Instead, it simply standardizes the language if manufacturers choose to use date labels. The goal isn’t to tell people to ignore food labels – it’s to make those labels easier to understand.
California’s law only applies within the state, but because California is one of the nation’s largest consumer markets, manufacturers may decide it’s easier to use the same simplified labels nationwide rather than produce different packaging for different states.
New York state lawmakers recently approved a similar law that is awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature. And legislation addressing food labeling also has been proposed in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South Carolina.
California has already started a national conversation about whether food labels should be easier to understand. If more companies adopt California’s simplified system, shoppers across the country may eventually see fewer confusing labels – and throw away less perfectly good food.
So the next time you open your refrigerator, don’t just look at the date.
Read the label.
More often than not, it’s telling you about quality – not whether the food is suddenly unsafe to eat. That small distinction could save you money, reduce food waste and keep perfectly good food out of the trash.
And one more thing – you can download a free infographic we’ve created to help you keep track of different kinds of food date labels.
Once downloaded, print it out and keep it near your refrigerator.