What date labels on food actually mean

By The Pantry Pro team · 6 September 2026 · Updated 8 September 2026 · 8 min read

The date stamped on a package of food in an American grocery store is, with narrow exceptions, neither a legal requirement nor a safety instruction. It is the manufacturer's estimate of how long the product will taste the way the manufacturer intends. Most people read it as a deadline, and throw out food that is fine.

Nearly all of it is voluntary

The Congressional Research Service reviewed the law in its briefing Uniform Date Labeling of Food May Address Food Waste, updated in September 2023. Its summary: except for infant formula, federal law does not require the food safety agencies to implement a national food dating system. The statutes governing the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture do not give either agency explicit authority to impose date labeling requirements. The decision belongs to the manufacturer.

Two narrow federal rules survive that. The Food Safety and Inspection Service, which regulates meat, poultry and eggs, requires a pack date on poultry products, meaning the date the product was packaged. And a date that does appear on a meat or poultry label has a prescribed form: 9 CFR 381.129(c) and its counterpart for meat require the month and the day of the month on every product, the year as well on products hermetically sealed in metal or glass, dried or frozen, and immediately next to the date a phrase explaining what it means. A dated tray of fresh chicken therefore needs no year; a dated can does.

State law fills the gap unevenly. CRS reports that 41 states and the District of Columbia require date labels on some foods, while nine states require them on none. Where states do regulate, 27 of them have at least one product where their rules conflict with the food industry's own voluntary standard, most commonly shellfish, eggs, and milk and dairy.

The result is what you see in the aisle. The Food Marketing Institute counts more than ten different explanatory phrases in use, including sell by, use by, best by, fresh until, enjoy before and expires on.

What each phrase means

Sell by

A date for the store, not for you. CRS defines it as the date by which the retailer should sell the product, and notes that roughly one-third of the product's shelf life typically remains after it for use at home. Buying something on its sell by date is not buying something that has gone off.

Use by

The date the manufacturer picked as the one by which the product should be consumed. The University of Maine Cooperative Extension describes it as the last date recommended for peak quality, and says it does not indicate food safety except on infant formula. The narrow exception CRS names is reduced-oxygen packaging, where certain retail packs are required to carry a use by date and a refrigerated shelf-life limit.

Best if used by, best before

The clearest of the phrases, because it says what it is doing. UMaine Extension puts it as a recommendation for best flavor and quality, and not an indication of food safety.

Freeze by

When to move it to the freezer to hold quality, not when to throw it away. CRS notes that freeze by statements are increasingly paired with a best if used by date on poultry and fish, in the form of a shelf date plus a number of days once it comes out of the freezer.

Anything reading as an expiration

Some manufacturers print a phrase that sounds absolute. UConn Extension's guidance is to treat a true expiration date as the one date to respect and to read the rest as quality dates, since food past a sell by or best by date is generally safe though it may have deteriorated in flavor, texture or appearance.

Infant formula is the one real exception

CRS and UMaine Extension both carve out the same exception, and an FDA rule is the reason. 21 CFR 107.20 requires the label of an infant formula to bear a use by date, with the month and year chosen from tests or other information showing that, until that date and if the formula is handled and prepared as the label directs, it will still contain no less than the quantity of each nutrient listed on its label and be of acceptable quality. That is a guarantee about the contents of the can rather than a prediction about flavor: the one aisle where the printed date is an instruction rather than an opinion.

The printed date and the kitchen date are two different facts

Every phrase above describes the package as it left the factory. None of them knows the jar was opened on a Tuesday, or that half of it went into the freezer. The label has no way to carry any of it.

Both facts fit on one line. An inventory row in Pantry Pro carries a Notes field, and the habit worth forming is to put the two side by side, unedited: the label's own wording as it reads, "best if used by 10/14", and then what happened here, "opened 10/2". Nothing read the package for you — there is no date recognition, and the app does not know that "best if used by" is a quality phrase while a use by date on formula is not. It keeps what you typed and shows it to whoever opens the row next, which matters when one person opens the jar and somebody else finds it at the back of the shelf.

What the confusion costs

CRS cites a USDA estimate that 30 to 40 percent of the food produced in the United States goes unsold and uneaten. It puts the share attributable to date-label confusion specifically at about 7 percent of all US food waste, and reports research finding that more than 80 percent of consumers discard food near the package date at least occasionally. Estimates of that share vary and larger ones circulate; 7 percent is the figure the congressional briefing settled on, and it is a great deal of food thrown out on the strength of a misread word.

How to judge food when the date will not

Both extension services give the same method, which is older than the labels.

Look at it. Color changes, surface moisture where there should be none, mold, a swollen or leaking package. Smell it. Sour where it should be neutral, or the flat cardboard smell of oxidized fat in nuts and oils. UConn's phrasing is to use your eyes and nose regardless of the date on the package.

Neither test is complete, for the reason how long food really keeps sets out: food held too long can look and smell normal, because the organisms that spoil food and the ones that make people ill are not the same. A clean smell is a second opinion, not a clearance.

Then apply the storage history, which the label knows nothing about. A date assumes the product was kept at the temperature it was designed for and never opened: milk that spent forty minutes in a warm car has a shorter real life than its printed date, and an unopened jar in a cool cupboard often has a longer one.

Where the two disagree, UMaine Extension's rule for the perishable categories is that doubt settles it: fresh meat, poultry and fish are not worth a coin flip.

For a can of beans, a box of pasta or a bag of rice, the date is a note about flavor.

The date is one input

A printed date is a manufacturer's forecast about a package that had not yet been bought, driven home, opened halfway and pushed to the back of a shelf. What the food looks like, what it smells like and how long it has been in your house are the other three inputs, and the last is the only one nobody writes down.

One package is enough to change that. A carton of half-and-half goes in as a single row — Purchased 28 September, Kitchen Refrigerator — and the row is then opened and given Expires 14 October, read off the carton and typed in, and the note that keeps the printed wording beside the opened-on date. What the app does with that date is count days. Once 14 October is inside the next seven, or already behind, the row appears under Use these soon on the home screen — which says the recorded date wants attention and nothing else. No safe-by deadline was calculated, nothing arrives on a phone, and the carton is still judged the way this article describes. What the list gives you is an order to work in, which is where planning meals around what expires starts.

The label describes every package of its kind. The date that matters is the one attached to yours.

Keep the date and the context together

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