California first state to ban 'sell by' 'best before' label to reduce food waste
fortune.com
fortune.com
Relevant quote:
> The law is set to take effect in July 2026, establishing a new standard for food labeling in California. It will require the use of “Best if Used By” label to signal peak quality and “Use By” label for product safety, an approach recommended by federal agencies
I think food should have a “made on date” in addition. I know on some items you can tell by the code, but for a lot of premade items like flatbreads, etc in the deli they just have a label of when they should be removed from the shelf.
Grocery prices are already high. If I buy a premade Mac and cheese and it is 1 month expired, how old is it really? 6 months? A year?
Sometimes I pick up one pack that is about to pass the best by date and the best by date of the one next to it is 6 months from now. That means the one that is about to pass is at least 6 months old.
How is it right that I have to pay full price for cooked items that are a year old?
Modern grocery stores are nasty since they started extending best by dates longer and longer and replaced most fresh deli items with factory made package food that you have no idea when it is made.
Why not just have three dates: “Packaged”, “Best by”, and “Expiration”
I feel like that would be extremely clear for people
Throwing away stuff is a loss for stores. They don't want to and make a lot of efforts not to.
The thing is that it is extremely difficult to impossible, especially when consumers demand full shelves all the time.
On the other hand, expired items on shelves is just a shoddy practice.
That’s the issue. The quality of our food is nose diving for appearances.
Make regulations that benefit the health of the consumer instead of how many boxes of the same product a corporation can leave sitting on a shelf.
If grocery stores have to change and adapt, so be it.
I feel like stores gave up on that post-covid supply chain issues and have never went back to being full. Due to how many options grocery stores carry, they usually have some version of what you want, but they are often sold out of specific brands/sizes still.
Either way, throwing out or returning more inventory to make you happy won't help your prices.
I’m not asking them to throw out more inventory. I’m asking them to buy less to begin with.
Go work in a grocery store for a few months and see how much junk gets thrown away now.
I’m also not asking for lower prices. I’m 100% fine paying the same prices if the quality is there. That’s why now I drive much further out of my way to go to stores that have fresher inventory at the same price. Unfortunately not everyone has that privilege.
The current system of keeping shelves full and throwing away massive amounts of food anyways, while charging the same price as when it’s new is the worst of both worlds.
Your attempting to create a dichotomy in which grocery stores can’t have less inventory and keep prices the same.
Do you genuinely think they keep a bunch of inventory on the shelf just for fun so they can lose money?
I agree that I'm making a dichotomy, but I don't think it is a false dichotomy.
Who are these people that were confused by "Best by" but understand "best if used by"?
- “Last consumption date” (maybe not safe to eat after this date) - “Best before” - these days they sometimes also add “.. but often good after”
The law literally is about the wording.
Probably the people who have noticed that they aren't used consistently to mean the same thing between brands or even between skus within the same brand.
Now the words are the same, but still determined completely arbitrarily.
That's the point it's not arbitrary under the new law. 'Best by' will mean peak quality and 'use by' will mean the last date safety is guaranteed. Previously 'best by' had no relationship to quality and was just a made up date to convince people their items were spoiling faster than they were. I suppose 'peak quality' for the best by date might feel arbitrary, but at least will need to be somewhat justified now.
I understand that the linked article is paywalled, but it's pretty easy to find other sources that aren't by googling words from the headline.
Literally the only thing that changed is the wording allowed if you choose to label with a Best by date.
I link the actual law ab660 elsewhere in this thread if you want to look at it.
I think it's wild how much misinformation and confusion there is about this minor change. I blame this on the legislature trying to hype up their nothing law into some major achievement, and news agencies shamelessly trying to make a story out of it.
As a person who grew up (and currently live) in India and who spent a decade-and-half in the US, to see the amount of perfectly good food thrown away in the developed world is infuriating and morally inexcusable.
Almost all the food imported from the US to India for instance is consumed by the middle class such as tree nuts (almonds) and are not staple foods consumed by those struggling to eat. There isn't that much rice or wheat that's imported. In addition India has lots of tariffs to drive up the price of imported food from the US to protect local farmers. None of the cause of food insecurity is Susie throwing out a mayonnaise container that might be perfectly fine but past the best by date.
I just used the US and India as examples of the developed world and developing world with which i have personal experience to assert that much much more food is wasted in the former than in the latter. It is not about sending food from one to the other but managing it more effectively when you have people desperately needing it in their own countries (eg. Charities/NGOs, Homeless Shelters, Low-Income groups, Schools etc.). It is well-known that in the developed world the economically impoverished cannot afford healthy food and thus rely on cheap junk-food with the consequence that they suffer more from Poor Health/Obesity/etc. which leads to an unmanageable pressure on the healthcare system and a downward spiral in overall economic output. Everybody suffers as a result.
The above linked documentary is pretty good about highlighting the problem in the US. Also watch this documentary Waging a Living to understand how tough life is for the economically underprivileged in the US - https://www.pbs.org/pov/films/wagingaliving/
Finally note that in 2016 France became the first country to outlaw food wastage by supermarkets which should be adopted by all other countries. See https://zerowasteeurope.eu/library/france-law-for-fighting-f... and https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/is-frances-groundbreaking-...
You have no information about how much waste they produce.
> What other people do is not your business.
We cant comment that grocery stores throw out too much food because it’s not our business?
If you don't know when a product is considered unsafe, then at least you should know when it was produced to know if it is fresh enough for "YOUR"your consumption.
It shouldn't be up to the govt to decide what is or isn't fresh enough for you. That is your choice.
Agreed that a "Produced on" date is better.
Confusing use by labels only benefit corps by allowing them to over buy and then let their inventory spoil on the shelf while they charge full price for year old garbage.
If customers knew when their food was made, people would be grossed out and not buy rice cooked 8 months ago from the refrigerated section. it would force corps to have more sales to rotate inventory more often.
That sounds like it would increase food waste because consumers have no idea how long things commercially prepared should be allowed to be sold for and would be basing it on flawed assumption from their own cooking.
Most consumers have no idea how long something is good for past it's produced date though.
>It shouldn't be up to the govt to decide what is or isn't fresh enough for you.
That's sorta what the law is addressing. They are getting rid of meaningless 'best by' type labels that have no bearing on the product quality.
Why can't we just use expiration dates? How long is this safe to eat?
However it’s all just a shot in the dark anyway isn’t it ?
It's an inventory problem, at home and in the grocery store. Barcodes should include all embedded information about the food.
It's abit ridiculous, but imagine checking out at the grocery store. A barcode should be embedded with information on the receipt. A the barcode that allows you to ingest your entire shopping cart in one go. It could contain price, nutritional information, serving size, band and so on. Scan one bar coat with your phone and update your home inventory. It's all a matter of infrastructure.
WTF? How is this not regulated? It feels like one of the very first things you'd stick some regulation on…