Title is a little misleading, as attested to by several comments here. It's more a standardization (which, yes, does include "banning" the non-standard labels)
Relevant quote:
> The law is set to take effect in July 2026, establishing a new standard for food labeling in California. It will require the use of “Best if Used By” label to signal peak quality and “Use By” label for product safety, an approach recommended by federal agencies
No, the confusion is over the price of an item beyond its magical date. The pipelines producing milk and eggs perpetually need shelf space tomorrow, so the date is an ordinal signal. These rules are the same independent of the political persuasion of the farmers and grocers involved.
Do you think this will lead to some kind of price decay scheme based on freshness? I occasionally see something like but nothing regular enough to plan shopping around buying almost expired products.
It happens here in Switzerland. There's even an app where you reserve a "mystery" bag, you go right before the shop closes (which is usually 6 or 7pm) and you get a random assortment based on what's about to expire at a massively reduced price (like 1/3).
Of course you cannot really rely on it if you have a specific meal in mind, but it's pretty good as an add-on, and it makes you try things you wouldn't usually buy.
That already exists in California, and is entirely unrelated the new legislation.
The law is simply that you cant use various labels like "enjoy by" or "Best by" and instead, all non-safety dates must use the exact words "best if used by".
82001. (a) On and after January 1, 2025, a food manufacturer, processor, or retailer responsible for the labeling of food items for human consumption that chooses, or is otherwise required by law, to display a date label to communicate a quality or safety date on a food item manufactured on or after January 1, 2025, shall use one of the following uniform terms on the date label:
(1) “BEST if Used by” or “BEST if Used or Frozen by” to indicate the quality date of the food item.
(2) “USE by” or “USE by or Freeze by” to indicate the safety date of the food item.
(3) “BB” to indicate the quality date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (1).
(4) “UB” to indicate the safety date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (2).
I think it is confusing because I dont think that replacing the texts "enjoy by" with “BEST if Used by” will have the impact the California legislature says it will of 20% reduction in statewide food waste.
It is confusing because I'm not sure if they are just boldly lying and actually that delusional.
Maybe grocery stores should be forced to better their inventory control. My “fancy” neighborhood grocery store (upgraded from Vons to Pavilions supposedly as a mark of affluence) I have to check every item because sometimes premade foods like Mac and cheese and those “Kevin” chicken packs are 1-2 months past the best by date.
I think food should have a “made on date” in addition. I know on some items you can tell by the code, but for a lot of premade items like flatbreads, etc in the deli they just have a label of when they should be removed from the shelf.
Grocery prices are already high. If I buy a premade Mac and cheese and it is 1 month expired, how old is it really? 6 months? A year?
Sometimes I pick up one pack that is about to pass the best by date and the best by date of the one next to it is 6 months from now. That means the one that is about to pass is at least 6 months old.
How is it right that I have to pay full price for cooked items that are a year old?
Modern grocery stores are nasty since they started extending best by dates longer and longer and replaced most fresh deli items with factory made package food that you have no idea when it is made.
The proper solution is to put a sticker with the new "use by" date on top of the old one when it expires, like they do in my country. Keeps food waste and prices to a minimum. Of course, you will end up in a hospital now and again, but the last time that happened to me was ten years ago, which is a worthwhile tradeoff to keep grocery store owners happy and the government service (which is supposed to supervise all this) well greased.
Your implying the only way to keep prices down is to continue to overbuy and leave it sit on shelves.
I’m not asking them to throw out more inventory. I’m asking them to buy less to begin with.
Go work in a grocery store for a few months and see how much junk gets thrown away now.
I’m also not asking for lower prices. I’m 100% fine paying the same prices if the quality is there. That’s why now I drive much further out of my way to go to stores that have fresher inventory at the same price. Unfortunately not everyone has that privilege.
The current system of keeping shelves full and throwing away massive amounts of food anyways, while charging the same price as when it’s new is the worst of both worlds.
Your attempting to create a dichotomy in which grocery stores can’t have less inventory and keep prices the same.
> especially when consumers demand full shelves all the time
I feel like stores gave up on that post-covid supply chain issues and have never went back to being full. Due to how many options grocery stores carry, they usually have some version of what you want, but they are often sold out of specific brands/sizes still.
It's not about appearances, it's about supply. When we go to a store or supermarket we want them to have everything we want to buy, whatever the quantity we want to buy, and when they are out of stock we are very unhappy and that hits their reputation as well.
It's not about confusion/clarification it's about legal definition. Currently, because there's no legal definition around it, companies can throw any arbitrary date on a "best by" label on a product. And what we've found is that it's being abused as an artificially short faux expiration date to drive consumers to discard the still-fine-to-consume product and buy another one. This is good for the company who increase their sales but bad for pretty much everybody else because it increases food waste and the energy/resources that were consumed to create it.
They still can. There is no definition and it is at the manufacturers discretion. The law changed absolutely nothing about how best by dates are determined, just the wording.
>Who are these people that were confused by "Best by" but understand "best if used by"?
Probably the people who have noticed that they aren't used consistently to mean the same thing between brands or even between skus within the same brand.
>Now the words are the same, but still determined completely arbitrarily.
That's the point it's not arbitrary under the new law. 'Best by' will mean peak quality and 'use by' will mean the last date safety is guaranteed. Previously 'best by' had no relationship to quality and was just a made up date to convince people their items were spoiling faster than they were. I suppose 'peak quality' for the best by date might feel arbitrary, but at least will need to be somewhat justified now.
I understand that the linked article is paywalled, but it's pretty easy to find other sources that aren't by googling words from the headline.
My information comes from reading the law. It is shorter than the article. Companies can put a Best by date of whatever they want on the product. They can pull it out of their butt, absolutely no justification required. They don't have to include a safety used by date, unless they already did.
Literally the only thing that changed is the wording allowed if you choose to label with a Best by date.
I link the actual law ab660 elsewhere in this thread if you want to look at it.
I think it's wild how much misinformation and confusion there is about this minor change. I blame this on the legislature trying to hype up their nothing law into some major achievement, and news agencies shamelessly trying to make a story out of it.
I doubt it'll lead to to difference in food waste reduction. People often forget different dates are not going to change that.
It's an inventory problem, at home and in the grocery store. Barcodes should include all embedded information about the food.
It's abit ridiculous, but imagine checking out at the grocery store. A barcode should be embedded with information on the receipt. A the barcode that allows you to ingest your entire shopping cart in one go. It could contain price, nutritional information, serving size, band and so on. Scan one bar coat with your phone and update your home inventory. It's all a matter of infrastructure.
We basically already have this in the UK, and is is helpful. But we still waste too much! One of the local groups that I work with (ish) saves huge amounts of stuff from supermarkets regularly that would otherwise be discarded.
As a person who grew up (and currently live) in India and who spent a decade-and-half in the US, to see the amount of perfectly good food thrown away in the developed world is infuriating and morally inexcusable.
Food waste isn't a problem. If the US threw out 20% less food all the same countries would struggle with food security and hunger. If the US consumed less food, less would be grown. It wouldn't change the price of rice or wheat in India.
Almost all the food imported from the US to India for instance is consumed by the middle class such as tree nuts (almonds) and are not staple foods consumed by those struggling to eat. There isn't that much rice or wheat that's imported. In addition India has lots of tariffs to drive up the price of imported food from the US to protect local farmers. None of the cause of food insecurity is Susie throwing out a mayonnaise container that might be perfectly fine but past the best by date.
You can't comment on what sovereign individuals, who have no voluntary contractual obligation to you, do with their private property. That's because you have no ownership over their physical flesh. They own 100% of their body.
I guess the question I’ve always had with the “sell by” label is, how much longer is the food good for after that date?
A “best before” date would at least give me a chance at not messing that up.
However it’s all just a shot in the dark anyway isn’t it ?
I noticed that the wording on my raw chicken from Whole Foods changed to "best if used by" from "use or freeze by." I worry because they aren't equivalent. Is Amazon just weaseling so they can sell older food?
Why can't we just use expiration dates? How long is this safe to eat?
Will it be replaced with a "Produced on XXXX" date?
If you don't know when a product is considered unsafe, then at least you should know when it was produced to know if it is fresh enough for "YOUR"your consumption.
It shouldn't be up to the govt to decide what is or isn't fresh enough for you. That is your choice.
Confusing use by labels only benefit corps by allowing them to over buy and then let their inventory spoil on the shelf while they charge full price for year old garbage.
If customers knew when their food was made, people would be grossed out and not buy rice cooked 8 months ago from the refrigerated section. it would force corps to have more sales to rotate inventory more often.
>If customers knew when their food was made, people would be grossed out .... it would force corps to have more sales to rotate inventory more often.
That sounds like it would increase food waste because consumers have no idea how long things commercially prepared should be allowed to be sold for and would be basing it on flawed assumption from their own cooking.
> There are more than 50 different date labels on packaged food sold in stores, but the information is largely unregulated and does not relate to food safety.
WTF? How is this not regulated? It feels like one of the very first things you'd stick some regulation on…
It's regulated on products where it matters. For many foodstuffs though, they don't really become unsafe, at least not on reasonable timescales. You probably don't want to drink a soda you found from 1996 but even if you did it would probably just be flat and maybe taste a little funky.
Title is a little misleading, as attested to by several comments here. It's more a standardization (which, yes, does include "banning" the non-standard labels)
Relevant quote:
> The law is set to take effect in July 2026, establishing a new standard for food labeling in California. It will require the use of “Best if Used By” label to signal peak quality and “Use By” label for product safety, an approach recommended by federal agencies
[flagged]
No, the confusion is over the price of an item beyond its magical date. The pipelines producing milk and eggs perpetually need shelf space tomorrow, so the date is an ordinal signal. These rules are the same independent of the political persuasion of the farmers and grocers involved.
Do you think this will lead to some kind of price decay scheme based on freshness? I occasionally see something like but nothing regular enough to plan shopping around buying almost expired products.
It happens here in Switzerland. There's even an app where you reserve a "mystery" bag, you go right before the shop closes (which is usually 6 or 7pm) and you get a random assortment based on what's about to expire at a massively reduced price (like 1/3).
Of course you cannot really rely on it if you have a specific meal in mind, but it's pretty good as an add-on, and it makes you try things you wouldn't usually buy.
That already exists in California, and is entirely unrelated the new legislation.
The law is simply that you cant use various labels like "enjoy by" or "Best by" and instead, all non-safety dates must use the exact words "best if used by".
82001. (a) On and after January 1, 2025, a food manufacturer, processor, or retailer responsible for the labeling of food items for human consumption that chooses, or is otherwise required by law, to display a date label to communicate a quality or safety date on a food item manufactured on or after January 1, 2025, shall use one of the following uniform terms on the date label:
(1) “BEST if Used by” or “BEST if Used or Frozen by” to indicate the quality date of the food item.
(2) “USE by” or “USE by or Freeze by” to indicate the safety date of the food item.
(3) “BB” to indicate the quality date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (1).
(4) “UB” to indicate the safety date of the food item if the food item is too small to include the uniform term described in paragraph (2).
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB660/id/2837671
Our local shop has a section for goods expiring that day, which are cheaper. It's good.
This law makes no change to which products must be labeled. It bans consumer readable "sell by" dates voluntarily used for inventory management.
The only consumer readable dates allowed now are 1) "BEST if Used by” and 2) “USE by” for safety expiry.
Edit: For the skeptics, read the law
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB660/id/2837671
Why does that framing confuse you?
I think it is confusing because I dont think that replacing the texts "enjoy by" with “BEST if Used by” will have the impact the California legislature says it will of 20% reduction in statewide food waste.
It is confusing because I'm not sure if they are just boldly lying and actually that delusional.
Maybe grocery stores should be forced to better their inventory control. My “fancy” neighborhood grocery store (upgraded from Vons to Pavilions supposedly as a mark of affluence) I have to check every item because sometimes premade foods like Mac and cheese and those “Kevin” chicken packs are 1-2 months past the best by date.
I think food should have a “made on date” in addition. I know on some items you can tell by the code, but for a lot of premade items like flatbreads, etc in the deli they just have a label of when they should be removed from the shelf.
Grocery prices are already high. If I buy a premade Mac and cheese and it is 1 month expired, how old is it really? 6 months? A year?
Sometimes I pick up one pack that is about to pass the best by date and the best by date of the one next to it is 6 months from now. That means the one that is about to pass is at least 6 months old.
How is it right that I have to pay full price for cooked items that are a year old?
Modern grocery stores are nasty since they started extending best by dates longer and longer and replaced most fresh deli items with factory made package food that you have no idea when it is made.
The proper solution is to put a sticker with the new "use by" date on top of the old one when it expires, like they do in my country. Keeps food waste and prices to a minimum. Of course, you will end up in a hospital now and again, but the last time that happened to me was ten years ago, which is a worthwhile tradeoff to keep grocery store owners happy and the government service (which is supposed to supervise all this) well greased.
Totally agree on the packing date.
Why not just have three dates: “Packaged”, “Best by”, and “Expiration”
I feel like that would be extremely clear for people
You complain that prices are high, then propose that groceries have inventory restrictions to drive prices up further.
Grocery stores overbuy product to have full shelves not to get the best deal for their customer.
Who said anything about best deal?
Either way, throwing out or returning more inventory to make you happy won't help your prices.
Your implying the only way to keep prices down is to continue to overbuy and leave it sit on shelves.
I’m not asking them to throw out more inventory. I’m asking them to buy less to begin with.
Go work in a grocery store for a few months and see how much junk gets thrown away now.
I’m also not asking for lower prices. I’m 100% fine paying the same prices if the quality is there. That’s why now I drive much further out of my way to go to stores that have fresher inventory at the same price. Unfortunately not everyone has that privilege.
The current system of keeping shelves full and throwing away massive amounts of food anyways, while charging the same price as when it’s new is the worst of both worlds.
Your attempting to create a dichotomy in which grocery stores can’t have less inventory and keep prices the same.
Do you prefer going to the store to buy something and have the shelves empty?
Do you genuinely think they keep a bunch of inventory on the shelf just for fun so they can lose money?
I agree that I'm making a dichotomy, but I don't think it is a false dichotomy.
>Maybe grocery stores should be forced to better their inventory control.
Throwing away stuff is a loss for stores. They don't want to and make a lot of efforts not to.
The thing is that it is extremely difficult to impossible, especially when consumers demand full shelves all the time.
On the other hand, expired items on shelves is just a shoddy practice.
> especially when consumers demand full shelves all the time
I feel like stores gave up on that post-covid supply chain issues and have never went back to being full. Due to how many options grocery stores carry, they usually have some version of what you want, but they are often sold out of specific brands/sizes still.
> especially when consumers demand full shelves
That’s the issue. The quality of our food is nose diving for appearances.
Make regulations that benefit the health of the consumer instead of how many boxes of the same product a corporation can leave sitting on a shelf.
If grocery stores have to change and adapt, so be it.
It's not about appearances, it's about supply. When we go to a store or supermarket we want them to have everything we want to buy, whatever the quantity we want to buy, and when they are out of stock we are very unhappy and that hits their reputation as well.
>It will require the use of “Best if Used By” label to signal peak quality and “Use By” label for product safety
Who are these people that were confused by "Best by" but understand "best if used by"?
It's not about confusion/clarification it's about legal definition. Currently, because there's no legal definition around it, companies can throw any arbitrary date on a "best by" label on a product. And what we've found is that it's being abused as an artificially short faux expiration date to drive consumers to discard the still-fine-to-consume product and buy another one. This is good for the company who increase their sales but bad for pretty much everybody else because it increases food waste and the energy/resources that were consumed to create it.
They still can. There is no definition and it is at the manufacturers discretion. The law changed absolutely nothing about how best by dates are determined, just the wording.
The law literally is about the wording.
I think they should have used the labels we’re using here in Norway. I find them very clear:
- “Last consumption date” (maybe not safe to eat after this date) - “Best before” - these days they sometimes also add “.. but often good after”
What you said is basically the law, except that the often good after part would be illegal
>Who are these people that were confused by "Best by" but understand "best if used by"?
Probably the people who have noticed that they aren't used consistently to mean the same thing between brands or even between skus within the same brand.
Which is a inconsistency that has nothing to do with this law.
Now the words are the same, but still determined completely arbitrarily.
>Now the words are the same, but still determined completely arbitrarily.
That's the point it's not arbitrary under the new law. 'Best by' will mean peak quality and 'use by' will mean the last date safety is guaranteed. Previously 'best by' had no relationship to quality and was just a made up date to convince people their items were spoiling faster than they were. I suppose 'peak quality' for the best by date might feel arbitrary, but at least will need to be somewhat justified now.
I understand that the linked article is paywalled, but it's pretty easy to find other sources that aren't by googling words from the headline.
My information comes from reading the law. It is shorter than the article. Companies can put a Best by date of whatever they want on the product. They can pull it out of their butt, absolutely no justification required. They don't have to include a safety used by date, unless they already did.
Literally the only thing that changed is the wording allowed if you choose to label with a Best by date.
I link the actual law ab660 elsewhere in this thread if you want to look at it.
I think it's wild how much misinformation and confusion there is about this minor change. I blame this on the legislature trying to hype up their nothing law into some major achievement, and news agencies shamelessly trying to make a story out of it.
The same ones that began the meat safe handling instructions (1994), maybe?
https://www.meattrack.com/labeling/history/
I doubt it'll lead to to difference in food waste reduction. People often forget different dates are not going to change that.
It's an inventory problem, at home and in the grocery store. Barcodes should include all embedded information about the food.
It's abit ridiculous, but imagine checking out at the grocery store. A barcode should be embedded with information on the receipt. A the barcode that allows you to ingest your entire shopping cart in one go. It could contain price, nutritional information, serving size, band and so on. Scan one bar coat with your phone and update your home inventory. It's all a matter of infrastructure.
We basically already have this in the UK, and is is helpful. But we still waste too much! One of the local groups that I work with (ish) saves huge amounts of stuff from supermarkets regularly that would otherwise be discarded.
You might find this documentary interesting - https://www.divethefilm.com/
As a person who grew up (and currently live) in India and who spent a decade-and-half in the US, to see the amount of perfectly good food thrown away in the developed world is infuriating and morally inexcusable.
Food waste isn't a problem. If the US threw out 20% less food all the same countries would struggle with food security and hunger. If the US consumed less food, less would be grown. It wouldn't change the price of rice or wheat in India.
Almost all the food imported from the US to India for instance is consumed by the middle class such as tree nuts (almonds) and are not staple foods consumed by those struggling to eat. There isn't that much rice or wheat that's imported. In addition India has lots of tariffs to drive up the price of imported food from the US to protect local farmers. None of the cause of food insecurity is Susie throwing out a mayonnaise container that might be perfectly fine but past the best by date.
You waste too much. What other people do is not your business.
> You waste too much.
You have no information about how much waste they produce.
> What other people do is not your business.
We cant comment that grocery stores throw out too much food because it’s not our business?
You can't comment on what sovereign individuals, who have no voluntary contractual obligation to you, do with their private property. That's because you have no ownership over their physical flesh. They own 100% of their body.
I guess the question I’ve always had with the “sell by” label is, how much longer is the food good for after that date? A “best before” date would at least give me a chance at not messing that up.
However it’s all just a shot in the dark anyway isn’t it ?
https://archive.is/2O8wZ
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41765006
I noticed that the wording on my raw chicken from Whole Foods changed to "best if used by" from "use or freeze by." I worry because they aren't equivalent. Is Amazon just weaseling so they can sell older food?
Why can't we just use expiration dates? How long is this safe to eat?
Will it be replaced with a "Produced on XXXX" date?
If you don't know when a product is considered unsafe, then at least you should know when it was produced to know if it is fresh enough for "YOUR"your consumption.
It shouldn't be up to the govt to decide what is or isn't fresh enough for you. That is your choice.
>then at least you should know when it was produced to know if it is fresh enough for "YOUR"your consumption.
Most consumers have no idea how long something is good for past it's produced date though.
>It shouldn't be up to the govt to decide what is or isn't fresh enough for you.
That's sorta what the law is addressing. They are getting rid of meaningless 'best by' type labels that have no bearing on the product quality.
I second this motion 100%
Confusing use by labels only benefit corps by allowing them to over buy and then let their inventory spoil on the shelf while they charge full price for year old garbage.
If customers knew when their food was made, people would be grossed out and not buy rice cooked 8 months ago from the refrigerated section. it would force corps to have more sales to rotate inventory more often.
>If customers knew when their food was made, people would be grossed out .... it would force corps to have more sales to rotate inventory more often.
That sounds like it would increase food waste because consumers have no idea how long things commercially prepared should be allowed to be sold for and would be basing it on flawed assumption from their own cooking.
Is the current system of "Use by" not also entirely driven by government regulation, from the requirement to the ∆T?
Agreed that a "Produced on" date is better.
No, only dairy and egg products are labelled as such based on government regulations. Everything else is a number companies pull out of their butts.
But pay attention to recalls.
> There are more than 50 different date labels on packaged food sold in stores, but the information is largely unregulated and does not relate to food safety.
WTF? How is this not regulated? It feels like one of the very first things you'd stick some regulation on…
It's regulated on products where it matters. For many foodstuffs though, they don't really become unsafe, at least not on reasonable timescales. You probably don't want to drink a soda you found from 1996 but even if you did it would probably just be flat and maybe taste a little funky.
Why?
[flagged]
Pretty sure nobody is telling you you can't do either of those things.
Spoiler alert: you can now currently ignore the dates on the things in your fridge. Nobody is going to prosecute you for it.
It's dumb, I don't like shopping without it