Those Dates Printed on Your Food Were Never About Safety — Here's What They Actually Mean
The Label That Looks Like a Law
Pull almost any packaged food out of your kitchen cabinet and you'll find a date printed somewhere on it. Maybe it says "Best By." Maybe "Use By" or "Sell By" or just "Best If Used By." Whatever the wording, most Americans read that date the same way: as a safety deadline. Eat this before the date, and you're fine. After the date, something bad might happen.
This is one of the most widespread and costly food misconceptions in the country — and the federal government has spent years trying to correct it with limited success.
Here's the reality: with one narrow exception, food date labels in the United States are not federally regulated safety standards. They are voluntary, manufacturer-generated estimates of peak quality. They do not indicate when food becomes unsafe to eat. And no federal agency requires most food companies to put them on products at all.
What the Labels Actually Mean
The terminology matters here, because different phrases mean different things — though most consumers treat them all identically.
"Best By" or "Best If Used By" is a quality indicator. The manufacturer is estimating when the product will taste, smell, or perform at its best. After that date, quality may gradually decline, but the food doesn't suddenly become dangerous. A bag of chips that's a week past its "Best By" date might be slightly less crispy. It's not going to make you sick.
"Sell By" is a retail inventory instruction directed at stores, not consumers. It's guidance for how long a product should remain on shelves, giving buyers time to use it after purchase. The USDA has noted that food is often still perfectly fine for days or weeks after a "Sell By" date, depending on the product.
"Use By" is the closest thing to a safety-relevant date — but only for certain products. Infant formula is the one category where the FDA actually requires a "Use By" date, because nutritional content can degrade in ways that matter for infants' development. For most other products, "Use By" is still a manufacturer quality estimate.
The critical point: none of these labels are standardized across manufacturers or required by federal law for most foods. Two companies making the same type of product can use completely different labeling systems and different methodologies for determining their dates. One might be conservative. Another might be generous. There's no consistent standard consumers can rely on.
How This Situation Came to Be
Food date labeling in the U.S. evolved organically rather than through deliberate policy — which is a large part of why it's such a mess.
In the early 20th century, date labeling was rare and inconsistent. As packaged food manufacturing expanded through the mid-century, some manufacturers began adding dates voluntarily, partly as quality control and partly as a consumer trust signal. By the 1970s, consumer advocacy groups were pushing for more transparency about food freshness, and date labeling became more widespread — but without federal standardization.
Congress and federal agencies have repeatedly discussed creating a uniform national system, but the food industry has historically resisted strict regulation, and the political will to mandate a standardized approach has never fully materialized. What resulted is the current patchwork: dozens of different phrases, inconsistent methodologies, and a public that has reasonably — but incorrectly — concluded that these dates carry legal safety authority.
The FDA has published guidance encouraging manufacturers to use "Best If Used By" as a standardized quality phrase, and the USDA has issued similar recommendations. But these are voluntary guidelines, not requirements. And in the absence of a clear mandate, the labels remain confusing and inconsistent.
The Scale of the Waste Problem
This confusion has consequences that go well beyond individual kitchens. The Natural Resources Defense Council and Harvard Law School's Food Law and Policy Clinic published a widely cited report estimating that Americans throw away roughly 160 billion dollars worth of food every year, and date label confusion is a significant driver.
People discard food that is completely safe and often still at or near peak quality because a printed date suggests they've crossed some kind of threshold. Dairy products get poured down the drain. Canned goods get tossed. Perfectly edible bread gets bagged for trash. All because a date printed by a manufacturer — using no standardized methodology and carrying no federal safety authority — got interpreted as a hard deadline.
Food banks have documented turning away donations of products past their printed dates, even when the food is entirely safe, because volunteers and donors don't understand what those dates actually represent.
What Actually Indicates Food Safety
If printed dates aren't reliable safety indicators for most products, what should consumers actually pay attention to?
The answer is sensory evaluation — the same approach humans used for thousands of years before date labels existed. Smell the food. Look at it. If dairy has curdled, if meat smells off, if visible mold has developed, those are genuine signals. Your senses are reasonably well-calibrated for detecting spoilage.
For specific categories, storage conditions matter far more than printed dates. Properly refrigerated meat is a different story from meat left out for hours. Canned goods stored in a cool, dry pantry last far longer than the date suggests — sometimes years longer. The USDA notes that commercially canned foods are generally safe indefinitely if the can is undamaged and has been stored properly, though quality may eventually decline.
High-acid canned foods like tomatoes and citrus products typically maintain quality for 12 to 18 months. Low-acid canned goods like vegetables and meats can maintain quality for two to five years or more. Dry goods like pasta and rice, stored properly, last well beyond any printed date.
Why the Confusion Won't Go Away
Food companies have little incentive to clarify the situation aggressively. A consumer who throws food away and buys more is, from a purely commercial standpoint, a better customer than one who stretches every purchase to its actual limit. The dates also function as a liability shield — if a customer claims illness from a product consumed after its printed date, the manufacturer has a documented basis for questioning the claim.
Meanwhile, the authoritative appearance of a printed date is hard to mentally override. It looks like a regulation. It's printed in the same official-seeming font as the nutrition facts panel. The psychological association with safety is deeply embedded.
The Takeaway
The dates on your food are manufacturer estimates of peak quality, not federally mandated safety deadlines — and for most products, they carry no regulatory authority whatsoever. The United States does not have a standardized, legally required food date labeling system for the vast majority of packaged goods. What you have instead is a patchwork of voluntary labels that have been widely misread as something they were never designed to be. Use your senses, understand your storage conditions, and stop letting a printed date make that decision for you.