NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Nick Lapis of Californians Against Waste about the new law that standardizes food label “use by” dates and how that reduces consumer confusion and tons of food waste.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Sell by, best by, use by. If you’re like me, then you’re confused by all the different food labeling. Can you still eat it if it’s past sell by? Is it really best by? And what if you’re a day later than use by? Then is it still OK, or will it kill you? You never know. Without standardized or clear labeling, tons of food can be unnecessarily thrown away every year. A new law in California aims to reduce the amount of food waste by making use of two clear labels – use by and best if used by. Nick Lapis is the director of advocacy for Californians against Waste, which co-sponsored this bill, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
NICK LAPIS: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So these labels are meant to help, but why are they so confusing for people?
LAPIS: Yeah. It’s funny you say that. I think it’s an experience all of us have at home every time we open the fridge or we’re looking in the pantry, and, you know, we’re looking at that yogurt, trying to decide if we can still eat it or not. And I actually didn’t realize how common of an experience it is until a study came out about 2013 or so that said that 20% of all food waste comes from people being confused about expiration dates.
And as we started talking to folks about it, this was clearly a very, very common occurrence. And every time I’ve talked about it with anybody, they’ve said one of two things – either they’ve related it to a personal experience of, man, I was just looking at my milk this morning, and I couldn’t figure out if I could drink it or not, or they blame a household member. It’s always a spouse or a child who’s doing the wrong thing when they’re doing the right thing.
RASCOE: ‘Cause if it’s, like, sell by or something like that, you’re like, OK, they had to sell it by this date, but then when am I supposed to use it by? Talk to me about, like, how much food is wasted each year in California and how the poor labeling makes it worse.
LAPIS: Yeah. We have a state agency that tracks disposal and what gets thrown away, and they estimate that 6 million tons of food get thrown away in California every year, which is about 18% of our overall garbage.
RASCOE: Now, the Department of Agriculture recommended this clarification for food labeling a decade ago, and California is the first state to actually do it. New York and a few other states are in the process of doing it. But what specifically do you think this change that you’re making will do to help reduce food waste, which is important not just because you don’t want to waste the food. You also don’t want to waste the money.
LAPIS: Right. Exactly. So the law basically does two things. First, it says that manufacturers can’t put sell-by dates on the package anymore. And sell-by dates were really never meant to be for consumers. They are incredibly confusing. They’re meant to communicate to stores when to pull something off the shelf. But people see a date on the package, and they think the food has gone bad.
And, you know, it sort of led to a domino effect where the stores don’t want to be selling food that people think is about to go bad. So they’re actually pulling stuff weeks before the sell-by date. A lot of times when they donate the food that they pull from the shelves, even the food banks can’t give it away for free because nobody wants to eat food that’s gone bad.
And really, the sell-by dates were never about communicating anything to consumers. They say nothing about quality. They say nothing about safety. They’re purely supposed to be one business communicating to another business.
RASCOE: OK. And what’s the second thing the law does?
LAPIS: It requires companies to use the same terms across brands. So we know that every company that puts use by means, hey, we think you should throw this away after this date. And every company that puts best if used by is basically saying, you know, this is the peak freshness. We’re guaranteeing it’ll be at its peak of its quality until this date, but it’s still safe to eat after that. Before this, there was no standardization, so you really couldn’t trust what the terms meant because one company might mean one thing, and another company might mean a different thing with the exact same words.
RASCOE: But with that best if used by, how far can we go out after that (laughter)? You can’t tell us what’s safe or not, but, like, I know somebody might be wondering. Have you looked into this? Have you asked an expert (laughter)?
LAPIS: Yeah. It’s funny. All the experts pretty much come back to the same advice of use your nose.
RASCOE: OK.
LAPIS: So smell it. You know, smell to see if it’s still good. If it smells not fresh, don’t eat it. If anything is bulging, don’t eat it.
RASCOE: OK. So look at it. Smell it. Use your senses to figure out whether this is something you should eat or not.
LAPIS: Exactly.
RASCOE: Yeah. That was Nick Lapis of Californians Against Waste. Thanks so much for being with us.
LAPIS: Thanks for having me.
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