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Best before is not expired

Sources.Aug 13, 2026

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A lot of food leaves the kitchen because a number on the pack has passed, not because the food has actually gone bad. That habit is expensive, and it is a climate problem dressed up as caution. Use-by and best-before look like the same kind of warning. They are not.

Households, shops, and restaurants wasted 1.05 billion tonnes of food in 2022, according to UNEP’s Food Waste Index. That is about a fifth of all food available to consumers, or more than a billion meals a day, while hundreds of millions of people go hungry. Households account for about 60% of that waste, around 79 kilograms per person. Count the food lost earlier in the supply chain as well, and the long-standing FAO estimate behind our food waste counter still stands at roughly a third of everything grown for people.

Much of what hits the bin at home was still edible. Date-label confusion is one of the reasons it never gets eaten. An EU study put up to 10% of the bloc’s food waste down to date marking. In the United States, a Harvard and NRDC review found that more than 90% of people may throw food out early because they read quality dates as safety deadlines.

Use-by versus best-before Use-by is a food-safety deadline. Best-before is a quality guide. Food past its use-by date should not be eaten. Food past its best-before date can often still be eaten if it looks, smells, and tastes fine. Two labels, two jobs USE BY Safety deadline Do not eat after this date Can be unsafe even if it looks fine A hard stop, not a hint Meat, seafood, some chilled foods, infant formula BEST BEFORE Quality guide Often still fine after this date Check look, smell, then taste Past peak, not past edible Pantry goods, bread, yoghurt, most everyday packaged food
In the EU, UK, and similar systems, use-by is about whether food can make you sick. Best-before is about quality. Source: EU Food Information to Consumers rules; WRAP.

The mix-up that fills the bin

The labels were meant to be simple. In the European Union and the United Kingdom, most packaged food must carry either a use-by date (safety) or a best-before date (quality). The United States has no equivalent national system: packs can say sell by, best if used by, use by, or expires on, and except for infant formula those phrases are largely unregulated. Shoppers are left to guess which number is a warning and which is a manufacturer’s guess at peak freshness.

That guess usually runs in one direction. People treat every date as an expiry stamp and bin food that is still good. Nutrition scientist Dr Emma Beckett has described the quality drop in plain terms: it is not “Cinderella and the carriage turning into a pumpkin.” Texture, colour, or taste can shift without the food suddenly becoming empty of nutrition, or unsafe.

The reverse mistake is dangerous too. A use-by date on meat, seafood, or some ready-to-eat chilled foods is not a suggestion. Harmful bacteria do not always announce themselves with a smell.

Why this waste is worse than it looks

Throwing out a yoghurt pot or a loaf of bread does not only waste the item. It wastes the water, land, labour, and fuel used to produce it, then adds a methane problem when that food rots in a landfill. UNEP puts food loss and waste at roughly 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The waste hierarchy is unforgiving here. Composting is better than landfill, but it is still a last-ditch recovery of something that should have been eaten. Prevention sits at the top of the ladder for a reason: the cleanest food waste is the meal that gets eaten.

How to decide without guessing

The rule is not “ignore dates.” It is “read the right date, then use your senses on the quality one.”

  • Use-by means stop. Do not eat food past this date, even if it looks fine. In EU-style systems this mark is reserved for highly perishable food. Infant formula is a hard stop almost everywhere.
  • Best-before means check. Packaging intact, stored as the label asks, and no mould, slime, odd colour, or off smell? A small taste will usually tell you the rest. Never taste food that already looks or smells wrong.
  • Ignore shop-only dates. “Display until” and “sell by” are for stock control, not for your bin.
  • Freeze before the line, not after. You can freeze food up to and including its use-by date. Once thawed in the fridge, cook and eat it promptly.

On-pack reminders such as Nestlé’s “Sniff, Look, Taste” pilot are one attempt to put that distinction on the shelf. The more useful version is already in food-safety guidance from WRAP, EU rules, and national agencies: learn the two labels, then pause before the bin.

Habits that beat the date

Date literacy only helps if the food was going to be used in the first place. The rest is ordinary kitchen practice:

  • Plan meals around what you already have, and buy less of the things you routinely throw out.
  • Store food where it actually lasts: fridge at or below 4°C, freezer at or below -18°C, and produce in the right drawer or cupboard.
  • Pair fresh produce with pantry staples so neither sits waiting for a date to pass.
  • Use leftovers on purpose, not as an afterthought. Stale bread, soft fruit, and near-date yoghurt are ingredients, not failures.

None of this asks anyone to take a food-safety risk. It asks people to stop treating a quality date as a death sentence. The number on the pack is information. The waste starts when we read it as an order.

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