I think that the show Kim's Convenience said it perfectly, myself. "See this date? It say 'best by'. After date - not best, but still pretty good."

I was buying eggs recently when I, as my mother taught me, opened the case and checked to see if any had cracked. The person beside me said "I hope you are buying those" as if me touching them somehow made them unsellable. People need to learn more about food.

I said, "oh, you have a Costco membership?"

"No," she said, "my ex used to."

"The guy you broke up with 2 years ago?"

I looked at the date on the mayonnaise. Expired 5 years earlier. She didn't use it very often.

Not wanting to offend her, hesitantly, I ate the tuna melt. And nothing happened. It was fine.

Aren’t safety restrictions the “use by” date?

> Switching to language that either says “Best if Used By” or “Use By” will also help minimize ambiguity. The former will establish consistent wording for advising when an item is less fresh (but still okay to eat), while the latter designates food that should no longer be consumed due to safety concerns.

dairy

There will typically only be one date and it will have text specifying whether it is "Best Before End" for things that simply decline in quality such as milk and vegetables and "Use By" for things that go bad in ways that will be harmful such as meat.

From a company-who-abuses-best-by-dates-to-sell-more-product standpoint it's very controversial.

If I’m making a food product for sale at retail and I can mark it “sell by” some date, consumers get confused and think it’s no good after that date, the store that buys my food product will not want to keep it on the shelf because consumers won’t buy it.

The retailer has to discard the perfectly fine item and reorder from… me the food product producer and then I make more money.

I imagine the food retailers are happy about this and the food manufacturers are probably unhappy.

Shelf space is valuable. Food that expires is inventory that’s not selling for some reason, or it wouldn’t be on the shelf long enough to expire. It’s taking up space that could instead be used for other inventory that does sell well. So even inventory that doesn’t expire at all will get put on the discount rack to get rid of it, or finally thrown out if doesn’t sell even at a cheap price.

The best way to avoid waste is to only buy food that actually sells, the quicker the better. Easier said than done, though.

Also, even greedy supermarket execs need to worry about their store’s reputation if they sell people food that doesn’t taste right too often.

This is a little misleading, since a lot of their product on their shelve isn't paid for until 60/90/180/365 days after receiving it, and generally suppliers set aside money to help cover shrinkage. And they'll often agree to take back unsold goods.

There's a reason that so many of the largest companies in the USA are/were retailers. Borrowing something worth $100, then selling it for $103 may be low margin, but it scales incredibly well.

It appears that it does not preclude tracking sell-by for internal inventory management purposes (such as with a handheld scanner already used in grocery stores for various purposes, or possibly some kind of opaque but human readable code), just to avoid customer confusion including it explicitly on the package.

Not only frustrating this then wastes my time and my money. Items do need expiry dates, sugar does not, fresh produce and vegetables do.

However, educating that your food isn't instantly bad when it's gone pass would encourage people to waste less food.

But, yes, I have relatives who will consider use by a hard deadline.

What's "best by?" You need to write "do not eat after." Nobody needs to be explained what that means.

Why should it? It won't do you any harm. Just don't buy from suppliers who lie to you. But surely if it went sour before the Best before Date then the supplier has supplied goods that were not of merchantable quality and not in accordance with the implied contract and has failed to uphold their side of the contract.

But surely your complaint should be directed against the shop that sold it to you? I would expect the shop to either refund or replace the goods.

I scored once with an imported (Belgian) craft beer at the local supermarket, heavily marked down price because the sell-by date was approaching. Some days later, marked down by half again because the date had passed. Needless to say, I bought all I could carry.

Maybe a different regulatory regime applies? That's the case at the federal level. For instance: alcohol often doesn't have the typical food labels because it's regulated by the ATF [1] not the FDA, and food labels are an FDA thing:

https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/w...:

> TTB regulations do not require nutrient content labeling for alcohol beverages.

https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...:

> Food labeling is required for most prepared foods, such as breads, cereals, canned and frozen foods, snacks, desserts, drinks, etc. Nutrition labeling for raw produce (fruits and vegetables) and fish is voluntary.

[1] apparently now split into the ATF and TTB

Very fair question. Anecdotally, when I was just graduating university I drank a few 4+ year past expiration macro-brewed beers that were sitting in the fridge that entire time. The results were not good compared to similar consumption of non-expired beer.

I wonder though if local brewery's or more artigianale brewing processes are different and maybe could be a bit riskier ?

Here in Sweden (and I assume the rest of the EU) when I buy eggs they are not refrigerated and I keep them in the pantry at room temp for weeks or months without issues. The price I pay is that they sometimes come with a little bird poop on them from the store.

That seems plausible. Figures vary a bit, but generally you're looking at 20-30% of food in supermarkets ultimately being wasted. An average person eats something like 1.5kg a day, so a pound seems about right. (Of course it's not as simple as that, because there's also wastage at home, and that's very hard to measure.)

That said, there's also a lot of wastage by restaurants and other catering operations, and this won't really help there, so the impact may not be as great as people hope.

And IIRC the EU is also debating the removal of MHD from staple foods that are shelf-stable for years, like dried pasta, uncooked rice etc. Normal sugar already doesn't have an MHD, although jam sugar is marked with the year of manufacture since they have other compounds in them as well beside the sugar itself.

Where i work all all the food that's simply past its MHD gets collected every morning by the Red Cross for food banks ("Die Tafel"). Obviously if a foods container is damaged or it's rotted fruits/veg or it would be unsafe to consume for another reason [2], that stuff gets thrown out (into bins collected for biomass processing).

[1]: pretty sure it's the same as "best (if used) by date" since products from abroad are sometimes marked "BBD <date>" instead of "MHD <date>" (at least on the transport packaging).

[2]: like lazy customers not putting frozen or cooled foods back but leaving them elsewhere in the warm store, something which REALLY aggravates me.

Ah.. so you have not experienced an injury or enough aging to compromise your ability to do this?

Instead you will be able to decide how close you want to cut it to either date.

The bread guy took back the unsold breads and we were only charged for the sold ones and credited the unsold.

This was in Montréal 20 years ago.

Not sure how it is today and I have no idea in California.

But since it passed I'm guessing it was thr same and now this would be an obvious advantage for the sellers since this would assuré they sell everything.

The Mindeshaltbarkeitsdatum is exactly what it says: a "best before" (MINDEST, minimum). It does not say anything about it not potentially remaining the same quality or taste after this date, and definitely not that it is dangerous to consume after. It may for example simply lose some of its taste over time, but up until that date it is "guaranteed" to taste the same ("the best").

Products that should not be consumed after a certain date (like meat) use "Zu verbrauchen bis" (use before); that is not a MHD.

As the article says, many people misunderstand "sell by" to mean "only safe if used by".

They're not being banned. The wording must change to "best if used by" if it's not about food safety.

Salt? Flour? Oil? Oats? Rice? Garlic? Black pepper? Most ground spices? Nuts? Beans? Honey? Vinegar? Quinoa? All of these can reasonably sit on a shelf for weeks. I guess none of these are safe to be consumed, all just "toxins".

> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety.

The milk will say "Best if Used By <date>".

This information can be found in the fifth sentence in the article.

“must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety”

From the article:

any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety.