FOOD FRESHNESS LABELS INADVERTENTLY LEAD TO WASTE

“Sell-by” and “best-before” labels on food are meant to indicate when those items are at their freshest, but American consumers widely misinterpret them as indicators of food safety and unnecessarily discard billions of pounds of food each year as a result. Part of the problem is the lack of a nationwide, uniform date labeling system; manufacturers are often left to their own devices when it comes to calculating shelf life and deciding what the dates they print on packages mean. While concerned lawmakers and industry members are divided on how to address this problem, they agree that something should be done. More… Discuss