I grew up in the “old” days (1960s) when most non-perishable food had no “Best By” date on the label. We had to use common sense(s) to determine if an item was rotten.
www.smithsonianmag.com/....
The NRDC report details how consumers in the 1960s started to buy more processed foods, and as they got further away from the direct production of the ingredients in their meals, they got more worried about just how safe and fresh those ingredients were:
“Open dating uses a date label that includes a month, day, and year in a format clearly evident to the consumer. Out of a nationwide survey of 250,000 shoppers published in 1975, 89 percent of respondents favored this kind of dating system. According to another survey, 95 percent of respondents listed open dating as the “most useful” consumer service for addressing product freshness concerns. “Open” dating differed from the long-established industry practice of “closed” dating, in which manufacturers and retailers used symbols or numerical codes that were undecipherable to consumers to manage their inventory and stock rotation, without any intention of relaying that information directly to consumers. Throughout the 1970s, many supermarkets voluntarily adopted open dating systems in response to mounting consumer interest.”
In response, states started mandating labeling laws, many of which we still live with today. Some have tried to get rid of the unscientific labels, but when the U.K. suggested changing the sell by labels, manufacturers weren’t pleased. There's also speculation out there that manufacturers want you to use the dates because it means you wind up throwing out and buying more of their product. But it’s probably safe to say that you can ignore whatever date's printed on your food and go for a simple sniff test.
So after being criticized the other day for daring to say that too many people in America throw out too much perfectly good non-perishable food which could/should be donated to food banks and homeless shelters, it’s heartening to see this —
{snip} Most consumers assume that these labels are guidelines for the date after which it’s unwise, or potentially unsafe, to eat that particular food product. But expiration labels basically mean nothing. There are no federal standards for expiration dates, except for baby formula, and best-by or sell-by date have no basis in science — instead, they’re a manufacturer’s best guess for when the food is likely to be freshest, or at peak quality. Some food products could easily last a year or a year and a half past their “sell by” date.
A lot of American consumers don’t know that, however, which leads to confusion over expiration labels and, in turn, causes Americans to throw out a lot of perfectly good food. A recent study from the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and the National Consumers League, which surveyed over 1,000 American consumers, found that a third of consumers believe that expiration labels are federally regulated. The study also found that more than than a third of consumers consistently throw away food that is close to or past its labeled expiration date, and 84 percent do it at least occasionally. For a country that wastes 40 percent of the food produced each year — with most of that waste happening at the consumer level — that’s a huge problem, not only because it drives continued food insecurity, but because it means that perfectly good food products end up in landfills, where they decompose to release methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
Now, two members of Congress have introduced legislation aimed at combating the issue of misleading expiration dates at the federal level. Dubbed the Food Date Labeling Act, the legislation — introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) — would create a national standard for expiration dates, requiring labels to clearly distinguish between foods that reach their peak freshness by a particular date, and foods that are unsafe to eat after a certain date. The bill would also make sure that food can be donated even if it has passed its peak freshness.