Americans throw away roughly 40% of the food supply. A significant chunk of that waste is food that was perfectly safe to eat, tossed because the date on the package said so. The dates on your yogurt, your bread, your canned beans—they're mostly manufacturer estimates about when the food will hit peak quality. They have almost nothing to do with food safety in most cases.
This confusion is costing money and creating waste. Understanding what these dates actually mean is one of the fastest ways to eat better and spend less.
Best By, Best Before, Best When Used By
These are all variations of the same thing: the manufacturer's estimate of when the food will taste or perform best. Best by March 15th means the yogurt will still be safe to eat on March 16th. It probably won't taste quite as good. The texture might change. But it's not unsafe.
This is a quality date, not a safety date. The FDA doesn't require it. Food companies add these dates voluntarily to help consumers know when they're getting peak flavor. But the date is a guess. A batch of yogurt made on January 15th might maintain perfect quality until April 1st. Another batch from the same company, same production line, made the next day, might start separating by March 25th. The dates you see are conservative estimates that apply to the entire product category, not to each individual container.
Use By (and Why This One Actually Matters)
Use by is the one to actually pay attention to. This is the manufacturer's recommendation for when the food should be consumed for both quality and safety. It's most important for perishable products: raw meat, fish, deli meat, soft cheeses, dairy. These foods spoil. Once bacteria start growing, the quality and safety decline in tandem.
If your ground beef has a use by date of Tuesday and you're cooking it on Wednesday, you're introducing genuine food safety risk. Pathogenic bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella can be present without changing how the food looks or smells. This is the one date you should respect.
Everything else—bread, canned goods, pasta, frozen items—much more forgiving. The dates on these are quality dates, not safety dates.
Sell By (Which Is Really None of Your Business)
Sell by dates exist for the store's inventory management. They tell the store staff when to take the product off the shelf. This date has nothing to do with when you should eat the food. If you buy something on the sell by date, you're not buying bad food. You're buying food the store is ready to stop selling.
Most consumers interpret sell by as if it were use by. It's not. Stores stop selling things based on how long they've had them, not based on when they'll spoil. A loaf of bread with a sell by date today is still perfectly fine to eat for days. A rotisserie chicken with a sell by date today should be eaten today or tomorrow, but not because of the label—because it's a perishable protein.
The Sensory Test That Actually Works
Your senses are more reliable than dates for most foods. Mold on bread means it's done. Sour smell on milk means it's sour (the bacteria creating the sour taste also indicates spoilage). Odd texture, funky smell, visible slime on meat—these are actual safety signals. A date on a package is a guess made months ago.
One legitimate exception: you can't smell or see pathogens. Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli don't announce themselves with bad smells or discoloration. This is why respect for use by dates on high-risk perishables matters. And why baby formula dates matter—it's the one food where nutritional composition actually changes and we don't have a sensory way to detect it.
The Waste Problem This Creates
The system is broken by design. Manufacturers set conservative dates to cover their liability. Stores throw away food before the sell by date to avoid risk. Consumers throw away food when they cross any date. Nobody's goal is waste, but the system incentivizes throwing food away over using judgment.
A can of beans from three years ago is still safe. It's probably still tasty. The label says to use by 2023. And we waste it.
Smart shopping prevents waste. Orelo helps you understand product dates and make informed decisions about what's actually safe and what's safe-but-past-prime.
What You Actually Should Do
For high-risk perishables (raw meat, fish, dairy, deli meat, soft cheese): respect the use by date. These are genuine safety guidelines. For everything else: use the best by date as a quality estimate, not a safety deadline. Smell the milk. Look at the bread. Taste the yogurt a day or two past the date. Understanding serving size information alongside dates helps with planning too.
For shelf-stable goods (canned food, pasta, crackers, frozen items): dates are even less relevant. A can of tomatoes from 2024 is fine in 2026. Pasta doesn't spoil. Frozen food stays frozen indefinitely. These dates exist for inventory management, not safety. Smart grocery shopping means ignoring these dates entirely for non-perishables.
The exception to all of this: baby formula. This is the one food where you should follow the date strictly. The nutritional composition actually does change, and infants are extremely vulnerable to inadequate nutrition. Don't take chances here.
Everything else? Use your judgment. Food has spoiled for millions of years before we invented date labels. Your senses—combined with basic knowledge of which foods are actually risky—are better guides than the dates on packages.