- The Plate
‘Sell By’ Date Labels Confuse Consumers, Increase Food Waste
Experts estimate that standardizing date labels and educating consumers could save eight million pounds of food a year.
Quick quiz:After reading the above date label, do you:
a) Check out the first few sentences to see if it’s any good
b) Read without hesitation because you don’t trust date labels
c) Click away very, very quickly
If you answered a), you’re hopefully now learning that, of course it is! If b), good for you. If you chose c), then you’re in the majority, as a recent national survey found that 84 percent of Americans throw away food based on the date stamped on packages.
Yet, despite that mess, 91 percent of Americans say they pay attention to date labels in making decisions on whether to eat something, according to a 2015 study out of Johns Hopkins. And a a recent Food and Health
