Date Labels Confuse Consumers: Comprehension Research

“Use By” vs. “Best Before”: Consumers Can’t Tell the Difference

The study: Neff RA, Spiker M, Rice C, Schklair A, Greenberg S, Leib EB. 2019. “Misunderstood food date labels and reported food discards: A survey of U.S. consumer attitudes and behaviors.” Waste Management 86:123–132. DOI 10.1016/j.wasman.2019.01.023. Researchers from Johns Hopkins, Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, and the National Consumers League surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,029 U.S. adults about what they think date labels mean — and what they throw away because of them.

“Sell by.” “Use by.” “Best before.” “Best if used by.” “Expires on.” Consumers face a jumble of date phrases with no consistent, federally defined meaning — and this survey shows the confusion isn’t a minor annoyance. It drives enormous quantities of safe food into the trash while, perversely, some genuinely risky foods get a pass.

What the survey found

The headline: 84% of consumers discard food near the package date at least occasionally. But the pattern of what gets discarded reveals the misunderstanding. “Best if used by” was the phrase most often correctly perceived as communicating quality — yet huge numbers of people treat it as a safety deadline. “Use by” and “expires on” were perceived as safety signals, which is closer to correct, but consumers applied safety-date thinking to quality-date labels across the board.

The misdirected caution is striking. Raw chicken was the most frequently discarded food based on labels — 69% of participants said they “always” or “most of the time” discard it by the date — even though raw chicken gets cooked before eating and isn’t the biggest risk on the list. Meanwhile soft cheeses, which can harbor Listeria growing happily at refrigeration temperatures and are eaten without any kill step, were near the bottom: only 49% discarded them by the date. Consumers were throwing away the food they’d cook and keeping the food they’d eat cold. The safety logic was exactly backwards — and the Listeria risk in those kept cheeses is precisely the hazard that hospitalizes people.

Over a third of participants incorrectly believed date labeling is federally regulated, and another 26% were unsure — meaning roughly six in ten Americans either hold a false belief or no belief about who, if anyone, stands behind the dates they use to judge their food. That misplaced trust matters: if people think a government agency set the date as a safety deadline, they treat it as one. Misunderstanding the labels was strongly associated with more frequent discards, and younger adults (18–34) discarded most frequently of all — the generation that will be setting household food habits for decades.

The double failure

Date-label confusion fails in both directions at once. Perfectly safe food gets wasted — canned goods and breakfast cereals, which pose essentially no time-since-packaging risk, were discarded by the date by just under half of respondents. And genuinely risky food gets eaten, because the same consumers who religiously discard raw chicken past its date happily eat soft cheese past its date. One confused mental model produces waste and risk simultaneously.

The fix the researchers point to is standardization plus communication: two phrases with defined meanings, backed by a campaign explaining them — especially aimed at the 18–34 group. Until that happens, the most useful thing any consumer can know is the distinction the survey shows most people miss: quality dates are the manufacturer’s freshness estimate, not a safety deadline, and the only date with hard safety meaning is on infant formula. Everything else is a suggestion wearing a uniform.

Source: Neff RA et al. 2019. Misunderstood food date labels and reported food discards: A survey of U.S. consumer attitudes and behaviors. Waste Management 86:123–132.