This all makes massive sense to me. The people in my life treat any date on food as an expiry date and throw out massive amounts of perfectly edible food. Also, people do not seem to have any concept about the rate at which different food products spoil. Some things can be used way past the dates I see. Others really are going off by then.
California bans sell-by dates
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Re: California bans sell-by dates
#12> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety. I mean, personally a big fan. I recently started seeing "Packed on " and like wtf does that even mean. Was the corn also picked on that date? Like these dates have bee…
For me the one exception would be coffee. I'd much rather see a "roasted" date than some "best if used by" date.
Same. I only buy the ones that have the roast date because most of the best if used by dates are around a year after the roast date. Cannot trust that.
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#13In Brazil products are marked with two dates:
- Manufactured/Packaged by.
- Valid until.
The valid until is related to food safety and is regulated by the federal sanitary authority for each product by a federal standard. The "freshest by" is something that consumers have to infer by themselves probably as a midpoint between those two dates.
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#14If I see a sell-by date, I only use it to compare between individual items. If there's a shelf with bread and two items have different sell-by dates, I choose the one with the later sell-by date.
I pick the older one to make sure the supply chain still works well.
User name checks out.
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#15You know who hates food waste more than Gavin Newsom? Every greedy supermarket market executive that throws away 30% of their inventory. Especially when their profit margins are often in the low single digits.
The article says there is no mandates on any types of dates. So I imagine these dates serve some purpose, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Laws like this often sound like they're helping but since no one is forcing the hand of retailers, so I would be they end up increasing costs. Maybe not food waste per-se, but some costs that originally tipped the retailers to have these dates in the first place.
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#16> To adhere with the requisite language outlined, any food products with a date label — with the exception of infant formula, eggs, beer, and malt beverages — must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety. I mean, personally a big fan. I recently started seeing "Packed on " and like wtf does that even mean. Was the corn also picked on that date? Like these dates have bee…
For me the one exception would be coffee. I'd much rather see a "roasted" date than some "best if used by" date.
Sorry for the juvenile joke, but I cannot help imagining an assembly worker picking up the bag, shouting "ur mom's FAT!" and stamping "roasted on Oct 7 2024" :D
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#17I wonder, do sell-by dates harm the bottom line of groceries due to more unsold perishable goods, or does that cost get passed back to the vendors? Either way this rule would seem to be advantageous to either the retailer or the wholesaler. Perhaps that helped to get it passed.
I worked in a grocery coop and it depended on the vendor. For some, they controlled how much stock we carried and would take back anything that didn’t sell. For things that we ordered directly and chose how much to carry, we were responsible for expired food costs.
This is something I have idly wondered. Where does the expired food go? Both “literally rotting” and “canned good safe for a decade, but we toss it after 12 months”.
Landfill? Animal feed? Some amount of charity for the salvageable items? A typical grocery store could produce an incredible amount of daily waste.
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#18This all makes massive sense to me. The people in my life treat any date on food as an expiry date and throw out massive amounts of perfectly edible food. Also, people do not seem to have any concept about the rate at which different food products spoil. Some things can be used way past the dates I see. Others really are going off by then.
Meanwhile we have gotten rid of expiry dates here in the UK. And I have bought fruits and vegetables that all look fine on the outside but inside are rotten.
Not only frustrating this then wastes my time and my money. Items do need expiry dates, sugar does not, fresh produce and vegetables do.
However, educating that your food isn't instantly bad when it's gone pass would encourage people to waste less food.
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#19I wonder, if someone purchases and eats a spoiled food item that would have had a sell by date before the ban, will they have legal standing to sue the state? I assume this is different than expiration date?
Re: California bans sell-by dates
#20You know who hates food waste more than Gavin Newsom? Every greedy supermarket market executive that throws away 30% of their inventory. Especially when their profit margins are often in the low single digits. The article says there is no mandates on any types of dates. So I imagine these dates serve some purpose, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Laws like this often sound like they're helping but since no one is fo…
Seems like the food producer would have a clear incentive to mark their products with sell by dates.
If I’m making a food product for sale at retail and I can mark it “sell by” some date, consumers get confused and think it’s no good after that date, the store that buys my food product will not want to keep it on the shelf because consumers won’t buy it.
The retailer has to discard the perfectly fine item and reorder from… me the food product producer and then I make more money.
I imagine the food retailers are happy about this and the food manufacturers are probably unhappy.