Those Dates Stamped on Your Groceries Are Basically Made Up — Here's What They Actually Mean

You've done it. Most people have. You pull a carton of yogurt from the fridge, check the date, notice it passed two days ago, and toss it — even though it smells fine and looks perfectly normal. Better safe than sorry, right?

Except here's the thing: that date on the package almost certainly wasn't telling you anything about safety. It was telling you something about quality — and even that was largely a judgment call made by the manufacturer, not a figure derived from any standardized federal testing or regulation.

The United States throws away an estimated 30 to 40 percent of its food supply. A significant portion of that waste traces directly back to misunderstood date labels. Understanding what those stamps actually mean — and don't mean — is one of the simplest, most practical ways to stop wasting money and food.

The Label Landscape Is a Mess

Walk through a grocery store and you'll find a remarkable variety of date-related language on packaging: Best By, Best If Used By, Use By, Sell By, Freeze By, Enjoy By. Most shoppers treat these as interchangeable — all of them read as "throw this away after this date." In reality, they mean different things, and almost none of them mean what people think.

Best By / Best If Used By: This is the most common label and the most misunderstood. It indicates the date through which the manufacturer expects the product to be at its peak quality — optimal flavor, texture, appearance. It is explicitly not a safety date. A box of crackers past its "Best By" date might be slightly less crisp. It is not going to make you sick.

Sell By: This label is primarily aimed at retailers, not consumers. It tells the store how long to display the product. Food is typically still perfectly fine for days or weeks after a "Sell By" date passes — the date is meant to ensure stock rotation, not to signal the edge of edibility.

Use By: This one is slightly different and worth paying more attention to. "Use By" is the closest thing to a safety-relevant date in common use, and it appears most often on perishable items like deli meats and some dairy products. Even here, though, proper storage matters enormously. The FDA has moved toward recommending that consumers follow "Use By" dates more carefully than other label types, but it's still not a hard cliff.

Freeze By: Simply indicates when a product should be frozen to maintain quality — not a safety cutoff.

Who Actually Sets These Dates?

Here's where the curtain really gets pulled back. With the exception of infant formula — which is the only product federally required to carry a use-by date — food date labels in the United States are almost entirely unregulated at the federal level.

Manufacturers set their own dates, using their own internal criteria, which vary widely. Some companies use conservative estimates to protect their brand reputation — they'd rather you throw away a product before it degrades than associate their name with something stale. Some use dates as a soft marketing nudge to encourage repurchase. Some conduct internal shelf-life testing; others use industry averages or simple formulas.

A handful of states have their own date-labeling regulations, but they're inconsistent and patchwork. The result is a system where the numbers on your food packaging look authoritative and scientific but are, in practice, estimates made by the same companies selling you the product.

What You Should Actually Be Doing

Your senses are more reliable than most people give them credit for. The human nose is particularly good at detecting spoilage — the bacterial processes that make food unsafe to eat produce compounds that smell distinctly off. If something smells wrong, trust that. If it looks wrong — unusual mold, unexpected color changes, strange texture — trust that too.

Here's a rough practical guide by category:

Dry goods (pasta, rice, cereal, crackers): These can last months or even years past their printed dates when stored properly. Staleness is a quality issue, not a safety one.

Canned goods: The USDA notes that commercially canned goods are safe indefinitely if the can is undamaged and has been stored correctly. Quality degrades over years, but safety is not the concern. Bulging or rusted cans are a different story — those you should discard.

Dairy: Milk, yogurt, and hard cheeses are often fine well past their dates if they've been kept consistently cold and the container hasn't been repeatedly opened. Use your nose. Yogurt in particular can last one to three weeks past its printed date without any safety concern.

Eggs: The float test is your friend. Fresh eggs sink and lie flat; older eggs tilt or float as the air cell inside expands. A floating egg should be discarded. A slightly tilted one is still fine to cook thoroughly.

Deli meats and soft cheeses: These are where you should be more careful. Listeria can grow in refrigerated, ready-to-eat products, and "Use By" dates on these items are worth respecting more closely.

Why the Confusion Persists

The date-label system as it currently exists serves manufacturers reasonably well — it protects them from complaints about quality while also encouraging consumption turnover. It doesn't serve consumers particularly well, and it certainly doesn't serve the environment or household budgets.

The FDA and USDA have both acknowledged the problem and have pushed for voluntary standardization around the phrase "Best If Used By" for quality dates. Progress has been slow. The food industry has little financial incentive to rush a change that might reduce how often consumers repurchase products.

In the meantime, the gap between what date labels say and what they mean costs American households an estimated $1,500 per year in wasted food, according to some estimates.

The Takeaway

Those dates on your food are quality estimates made by manufacturers, not federally mandated safety cutoffs. With a few exceptions — particularly ready-to-eat deli products and infant formula — your senses and basic food knowledge will serve you better than a printed number. Look at it, smell it, and think about how it's been stored. Odds are, it's fine.