What Dates Don’t Tell You: How to Out-smart Food Waste
This article is part of a new series “What are we waiting for?” where we address things we can all do today to improve our well-being and help protect the environment.
BY Olive Dyrbye-Wright
August 14, 2025
Blue mold on your yogurt? A smelly bag of lettuce? Or perhaps just some milk that is past its best by date. We’ve all tossed food in the garbage. But it isn’t just food we are tossing. It’s money… and resources, like water, energy, and labor.
Despite making up less than 5% of the global population, the United States generates around 10% of the world’s total food waste—ranking just behind China and India [1]. By wasting between 30-40% of all food produced, the U.S. tosses out up to 335 billion pounds annually. The average American throws out $728 worth of edible food every year, often because of confusion over labels with a “Best By” date or simple mistakes in storage [2]. In fact, misunderstanding food labels alone leads Americans to discard an estimated three billion pounds of edible food annually [3].
This waste isn’t just hitting our wallets. It’s fueling an environmental crisis.
Food waste generates harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, depletes freshwater resources, contributes to biodiversity loss, and degrades soil and air quality. Food is the single largest component in U.S. landfills, making up nearly a quarter of all municipal waste [4]. As it decomposes, food emits methane—a GHG 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. Food waste accounts for nearly 60% of all landfill methane emissions, the equivalent of 15 coal-fired power plants. But that is only a fraction of the true environmental cost. When we include the emissions from production, transportation, and disposal of food that’s never eaten, U.S. food waste is on par with the annual emissions of 57 coal-fired power plants [1,4].
According to Project Drawdown, reducing food waste is the single most effective thing we can do to fight climate change.
While food waste is a large challenge that can’t be solved entirely by individuals, our collective actions can make a significant difference. One of the simplest places to start is to understand food date labels and learn how to store food properly. In this post, we’ll break down what food labels really mean, how to store common foods to reduce waste, and how your daily decisions can help fight one of the planet’s most urgent problems from your kitchen.
What do food labels actually mean?
In a recent survey, 44% of U.S. consumers mistakenly think the federal government regulates food labels.3 However, with the exception of baby formula, labels are NOT under federal regulation [6]. There is no uniform definition for food labels, creating a wide range of phrases with various meanings, such as:
“Best if Used By/Before”: when an item will be of best flavor/quality (not a safety date)
“Use-By”: last date recommended for using an item while at best quality (not a safety date, except with baby formula)
“Sell-By”: for grocery staff to know when to take an item off of shelves for inventory reasons (not a safety date)
“Freeze-By”: when an item should be frozen to maintain best quality (not a safety date)
Food can be perfectly safe to eat beyond the labelled date if stored properly, and until spoilage is noticeable. Nearly 9 in 10 consumers at least occasionally throw out food simply because it is close to or past the date on the package [3].
Spoiled foods have an off odor, texture, or flavor, which is generally very apparent and often visible. Trust your instincts and make discard decisions first based on your sensory cues (smell, look, taste) rather than by the date on a label.
ReFED, a nonprofit organization that provides the most comprehensive U.S. food waste data, recommends standardized date labeling as one of the most effective solutions for reducing food waste [7]. At least 425,000 tons of food waste could be diverted from landfills annually with this simple change, reducing methane emissions by 30,800 metric tons and saving 145 billion gallons of water. State policy reform efforts have seen some success, such as in California, where standardized date labels will be required on all food items (excluding eggs and infant formula) by 2026 [8].
While policy progress is slow in most states, you can still outsmart confusing food labels. It’s ok to buy items nearing their sell-by date… just monitor it closely before eating. If milk doesn’t smell bad, look curdled, or have an off color, it’s likely still safe to drink. Store your food properly for long-term freshness (see some tips below) and eat, use, or freeze perishable items first.
Are you optimizing your fridge space?
Did you know your fridge is designed to store food in specific places? For example, eggs should not be kept in the refrigerator door [9]. Although it is a convenient spot, it’s actually one of the warmest areas of the fridge due to frequent opening and closing. Eggs stay fresher longer when stored on the middle shelves, along with the rest of the dairy products, where the temperature is more consistent and cool. Instead, condiments and nonperishable drinks are better able to handle slight temperature fluctuations and are more suited to be stored in the door compartments.
Graphical representation of location recommendations for refrigerated foods to avoid cross contamination and maintain temperature for optimal storage lifetime.
Store foods by cooking temperature can prevent cross-contamination. Foods that require the lowest cooking temperatures, like ready-to-eat items and leftovers needing a simple re-heat in the microwave, belong on the top shelves, while raw meats and poultry should go on the bottom shelves [10]. This prevents juices raw meats from dripping onto foods that won’t be cooked at high enough temperatures to kill harmful bacteria.
Your refrigerator temperature should be kept at or below 40 ℉ (4℃) and your freezer at 0℉ (-18 ℃).9 Food that is stored properly in your freezer will remain safe indefinitely. Freezing food does not reduce nutrient contents, so it is a good way to preserve foods (including perishable foods, like fresh berries, that might go bad quickly in the fridge but can be kept long-term in the freezer). Additionally freezer burn does not mean that food is unsafe to consume. To consume food at peak quality, follow this chart.
Cleaning your refrigerator regularly is another helpful strategy; wipe up any spills immediately, and keep your foods covered to decrease the risk of Listeria bacteria growth and the spread of bacteria from one food to another [9].
If you have questions or concerns on how long a food item is safe to consume, consider using the FoodKeeper App.
Now what?
All this information can get overwhelming. Ultimately, meal planning, shopping with a list, and regularly checking your fridge and pantry can help you stay on top of what you already have and what needs to be used soon. This makes it a lot easier to prioritize ingredients before they spoil.
Remember that every small step counts. Set realistic goals, like taking a few minutes to understand food date labels or how to optimize your refrigerator. Not only will you prevent food waste, but you’ll save money.
It’s easy to feel guilty about throwing food out, especially when you don’t have alternatives, such as composting available. But that guilt doesn’t help you or the planet. While zero waste is an admirable goal, what truly matters is putting in the effort and making steady progress towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
References:
Jaglo K, Kenny S, Stephenson J. From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste (Part 1). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development; 2021
Kenny S. Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development; 2025.
ReFED. Confusion over food date labels has grown, according to new national survey. Published February 27, 2025.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Food Waste and Methane: What’s the Connection? Published April 2024.
Project Drawdown. Reduced food waste. 2025.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service. Food Product Dating. Updated April 23, 2025.
ReFED. Solution database: Standardized date labels. 2025.
California Department of Food and Agriculture. Food date labeling. State of California. 2025.
U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Are You Storing Food Safely? Published January 18, 2023.
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Refrigerator Storage Chart. Revised October 2023.