Those "use by" and "sell by" dates on food items seem like helpful guides, but they actually don't mean much. That's because they are not standardized or regulated, says the study "The Dating Game," produced by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The harm is that reasonable consumers take the dates seriously, fearing the food is unsafe. They trash it after the expiration date has passed, wasting perfectly fine food and wasting money on replacing it, according to the study.
The average household of four could be spending $275 to $450 per year on discarded good food, just because consumers misinterpret the label date, said Dana Gunders, a Natural Resources Defense Council staff scientist with the food and agriculture program.
"The U.S. food dating system is not a system at all. It's a mess," Gunders wrote in a blog post about the study.