California is finally doing something about the tiny fridge panic caused by “sell by,” “best by,” “use by,” and whatever other cryptic prophecy your yogurt cup is trying to deliver.
Food labels have been doing haunted-house work for years. You open the fridge, see a date, and suddenly the almond milk is a moral question. California is trying to fix that by making “use by” mean safety and “best if used by” mean quality, instead of letting every brand invent its own little expiration dialect. The law went into effect July 1st.
RASCOE: So these labels are meant to help, but why are they so confusing for people?
LAPIS: Yeah. It’s funny you say that. I think it’s an experience all of us have at home every time we open the fridge or we’re looking in the pantry, and, you know, we’re looking at that yogurt, trying to decide if we can still eat it or not. And I actually didn’t realize how common of an experience it is until a study came out about 2013 or so that said that 20% of all food waste comes from people being confused about expiration dates.
And as we started talking to folks about it, this was clearly a very, very common occurrence. And every time I’ve talked about it with anybody, they’ve said one of two things – either they’ve related it to a personal experience of, man, I was just looking at my milk this morning, and I couldn’t figure out if I could drink it or not, or they blame a household member. It’s always a spouse or a child who’s doing the wrong thing when they’re doing the right thing.
Use your nose, not the haunted retail code on the carton.