California bans sell-by dates

https://www.foodandwine.com/california-bans-sell-by-dates-8723111

by noworld • 2 years ago

203 284 2 years ago

lesuorac• 2 years ago

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 <date>" and like wtf does that even mean. Was the corn also picked on that date?

Like these dates have been on products for as long as I can remember. Might was well have some rules around them finally.

amanaplanacanal• 2 years ago

For me the one exception would be coffee. I'd much rather see a "roasted" date than some "best if used by" date.

rising-sky• 2 years ago

I don't think this law forbids producers from adding supplemental dates? So a coffee container could conceivably have both dates

kelipso• 2 years ago

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.

ykonstant• 2 years ago

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

ghaff9• 2 years ago

There’s frankly a huge variation between the OMG it was roasted two weeks ago and the OK it’s only been a few months crowd.

justin_oaks• 2 years ago

If 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.

iwontberude2• 2 years ago

I pick the older one to make sure the supply chain still works well.

lubujackson• 2 years ago

User name checks out.

derekp7• 2 years ago

In the case of buttermilk, it only starts to get a good flavor some time after the date on the carton. So I will often pick the oldest one (which is easy, be cause they put the older cartons toward the front).

akira25017• 2 years ago

It's not incumbent on you to manage the supply chain. The people who are earning profits from servicing that chain have that responsibility. The entire system is best served if you operate with your _own_ best interests in mind.

kodt• 2 years ago

Yeah, I assume if it were to be sold by that date, then you still have time after that date that the product remains fresh. Is this not common sense to people?

tivert5• 2 years ago

Yes, but it's unknown how long the product will remain fresh past the sell by date.

Personally, I think everything should be labeled with both a sell by date, a best by date, and an expiration date, all right next to each other.

delichon• 2 years ago

I 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.

Pat_Murph• 2 years ago

When I worked in a grocerie store.

The bread guy took back the unsold breads and we were only charged for the sold ones and credited the unsold.

This was in Montréal 20 years ago.

Not sure how it is today and I have no idea in California.

But since it passed I'm guessing it was thr same and now this would be an obvious advantage for the sellers since this would assuré they sell everything.

kaikai3• 2 years ago

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.

0cf8612b2e1e• 2 years ago

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.

coding123• 2 years ago

Yet another surprise. I wish CA lawmakers would stop operating in the dark.

LeFantome• 2 years ago

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.

doublerabbit2• 2 years ago

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.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

It feels like the solution to this is some sort of in app mechanism to be able to submit evidence back to the grocer that the produce or other perishable was not in condition to be sold, and for them to credit your account accordingly. This saves you a trip back to the store. If they’re selling perishables that have already gone bad, certainly, that sounds like a supply chain failure if they’re offering that for sale which should be going right into the compost waste stream.

achileas• 2 years ago

tbf I've never seen expiration dates on fresh produce in the US. Maybe some packaged salads and things (and it's never accurate, of course), but nothing fresh.

extraduder_ire• 2 years ago

I think a packaging or production date would help this without causing people to throw out unspoiled food. (once they realize it's not an expiry date)

I am not sure I buy it for fruit/vegetables though, since those are often sold unpackaged and unlabelled already.

daveoc64• 2 years ago

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.

It's great! Now the supermarkets can blame us for waste.

Fortunately, every supermarket does still have labels that show a coded date - so that their staff can remove products that are too old.

If you search for the particular store online, you should be able to find their system.

I shop in Sainsbury's usually. Their system is pretty simple. A letter shows the month (A = January, B = February etc.) and two digits show the day of the month.

petercooper• 2 years ago

I'm glad someone else has noticed this. The quality and availability of fruit and veg at mainstream supermarkets has fallen off a cliff since COVID. It all feels far "older" and less fresh than it did, even when it's new out on the shelf. Traditional greengrocers are still fine, but tend to stock more local produce, so I'm wondering if it's Brexit or shipping causing the issue rather than expiry dates.

Dalewyn6• 2 years ago

However, educating that your food isn't instantly bad when it's gone pass would encourage people to waste less food.

If there's a date then frankly I don't want to waste brain cycles thinking if something in the fridge or freezer has gone bad, unless it's so obvious I don't have to think much about it. If it's past, out it goes. I have enough crap to worry about already.

If it means I waste money, that means I'm buying too much and that can be easily resolved.

nfw2• 2 years ago

My understanding from the article is that expiry ("use by") dates will still be needed, and sell-by dates are being removed because mean something different from expiry, but consumers (myself included until now) generally misunderstand this.

add-sub-mul-div2• 2 years ago

and sell-by dates are being removed

Not removed. Reworded.

int_19h• 2 years ago

"Use by" is not an expiration date, either.

slicktux• 2 years ago

Yes, you can safely eat food after “Best of used by” date but one has to keep in mind that there are chemical processes in place; one such example is rate of oxidation of food oils…one is literally eating highly oxidative food like chips but more so if it’s been sitting for a while. Though not obvious, but the damage it’s doing to your bodies cells can be pretty bad.

SoftTalker3• 2 years ago

Just avoid those types of foods altogether.

dawnerd2• 2 years ago

And varies by brand. For example stuff from Aldi (their house brands) don’t really last past the best but dates. Often will be spoiling before the date.

ghaff9• 2 years ago

I will throw out old dried herbs in particular and store replacement stock in the freezer. Also will replace spices when they get old and you can’t smell them any longer. Most shelf stable food is still good for a decent time past its use by date. Though not forever.

But, yes, I have relatives who will consider use by a hard deadline.

dotnet00• 2 years ago

While it's good to have an understanding of which things the date does and does not matter for, when it comes to judging these things, I prefer to lean towards caution. It isn't worth getting sick over a little food.

elzbardico• 2 years ago

In 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.

bombcar2• 2 years ago

Packaged/Manufactured date is the way to go; you can then even have "valid until" be implicit on most goods (that don't expire) and only physically labelled on things that go bad, like raw meat or vegetables.

bko2• 2 years ago

You 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.

ihumanable• 2 years ago

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.

bko2• 2 years ago

I think you can come up with a lot of scenarios in which any one person is happy or not happy. But in complicated systems, it's impossible to know exactly and you have to rely on market forces to work these things out. The problem is people coming in without any humility and trying to tinker with the system and getting shocked when there is unexpected consequences.

ntlk2• 2 years ago

Not sure whether it was the removal of best before dates or Brexit, but fresh food and veg in Britain is often already rotting in supermarkets. So now instead of the store throwing out loads of produce past its best, I have to do it when I get home and realise that yet again one in each pack of 3 onions is rotted.

Tempest1981• 2 years ago

How were they labeling the produce before? Individually? Or by the box?

I haven't seen dated produce, but maybe it's hidden.

dawnerd2• 2 years ago

Been seeing that in the states too. A lot of old produce, but I blame high prices not moving it fast enough.

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 years ago

I have to do it when I get home and realise that yet again one in each pack of 3 onions is rotted.

I have always been under the impression that the entire point of pre-packaging produce like avocados, apples, and garlic is to mix items that are bad which no one would buy in with some good items so you can still sell the bad ones.

This seems to have always been the case in California - where you can generally get good produce.

rsynnott2• 2 years ago

The UK hasn't banned them, though some supermarkets did voluntarily remove them. Brexit's a relatively likely culprit for imported stuff; the extra paperwork really disincentivises JIT delivery (and in particular _really_ disincentivises mixed contents containers).

Though it'll get worse. The regime for imported fruit and veg is still in transition, with a lot of stuff that the UK was supposed to bring in in 2021 recently delayed til 2025.

skybrian3• 2 years ago

You’re right that the dates serve other purposes. The incentives aren’t as simple as avoiding wasted product.

Shelf space is valuable. Food that expires is inventory that’s not selling for some reason, or it wouldn’t be on the shelf long enough to expire. It’s taking up space that could instead be used for other inventory that does sell well. So even inventory that doesn’t expire at all will get put on the discount rack to get rid of it, or finally thrown out if doesn’t sell even at a cheap price.

The best way to avoid waste is to only buy food that actually sells, the quicker the better. Easier said than done, though.

Also, even greedy supermarket execs need to worry about their store’s reputation if they sell people food that doesn’t taste right too often.

akira25017• 2 years ago

The grocery industry is heavily monopolized. No where more so than on the west coast. They don't care about their reputation because there mostly is nowhere else for you to legitimately go to.

mywittyname• 2 years ago

Especially when their profit margins are often in the low single digits.

This is a little misleading, since a lot of their product on their shelve isn't paid for until 60/90/180/365 days after receiving it, and generally suppliers set aside money to help cover shrinkage. And they'll often agree to take back unsold goods.

There's a reason that so many of the largest companies in the USA are/were retailers. Borrowing something worth $100, then selling it for $103 may be low margin, but it scales incredibly well.

guelo2• 2 years ago

Why do you assume the legislators didn’t talk to industry executives? I’m sure they did and all these issues were discussed

ewoodrich• 2 years ago

The law prohibits the use of consumer-facing sell-by dates, and also requires standardized language for date labels.

It appears that it does not preclude tracking sell-by for internal inventory management purposes (such as with a handheld scanner already used in grocery stores for various purposes, or possibly some kind of opaque but human readable code), just to avoid customer confusion including it explicitly on the package.

hnpolicestate• 2 years ago

I 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?

brudgers• 2 years ago

If you seek an informed opinion, ask your lawyer.

JohnFen• 2 years ago

Let's hope this catches on elsewhere!

bigstrat20032• 2 years ago

It likely will. Unfortunately, California laws tend to be de facto national laws for consumer goods, because manufacturers don't want to make one version for Cali and one for the rest of the US.

Dalewyn6• 2 years ago

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Meanwhile in Maine, you're questioning the sanity of Californians.

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

Why ban such dates? I would want this data if I am a consumer. Sure the food may not be expired yet, but it may go bad sooner. I don’t understand why California feels the need to continuously pass hundreds of bills and impose so much control.

add-sub-mul-div2• 2 years ago

Why ban such dates?

They're not being banned. The wording must change to "best if used by" if it's not about food safety.

tivert5• 2 years ago

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.

"Use by" is dumb, it's too close to "Best if Used By." If there's a safety issue, the term should be "expires", "expires on", or something like that.

brightball• 2 years ago

I remember seeing a sell by date on salt. It was at that moment that I started questioning the process.

etrautmann• 2 years ago

As another poster mentioned, it likely refers to the packaging - either degredation of materials used or the effect that has on the contents (moisture ingress, oxidation, etc).

For salt, that seems somewhat silly, but not enough to make me fundamentally distrust the rationale

Maximus9000• 2 years ago

I've seen it on vinegar too.

alwa2• 2 years ago

Have you ever bought an old cardboard tube of salt? The last time I did was in a tropical location. Somehow over the years it had acquired the scent of wet rot, and the relentless cycles of humidity had effectively recrystalized the contents into a rock.

Luckily the packaging had started to biodegrade, too, so it was easy enough to scrape off the fiber fuzz and hammer down the inner salt rocks into something useful. Better than nothing! But I wish I’d been able to buy it by its sell-by.

(Spoken as a skeptic of deadlines of all sorts, and one who routinely ignores food safety. I still think the dates are mostly silly, but that type of instance reminds me why it’s a hard problem: even if you’re not a dastardly wastemonger, choosing the “right” date depends heavily on handling and climate and factors beyond your control—unknowable at production time.)

Simulacra• 2 years ago

I think people will adjust to the new language but not update their schemas, which means their behavior will not change.

nsxwolf• 2 years ago

"UNSAFE TO USE AFTER"

engineer_22• 2 years ago

"DO NOT CONSUME AFTER"

thomastjeffery2• 2 years ago

It's bad if you're a search engine. It's not as bad if you're a human who is capable of parsing natural language semantics.

tivert5• 2 years ago

It's bad if you're a search engine. It's not as bad if you're a human who is capable of parsing natural language semantics.

I am a human capable of parsing natural language semantics, and "use by" is terrible. It's one of those completely unexplained commands you often find in instructions. Why should I use it by that date? If you're not a mindless drone who just unquestioningly follows instructions, the total lack of reason creates a lot of space to decide to do something else. For instance: without consulting California food labeling legislation (which, I admit, Californians all carry around the statute book those regulations several times a day), it's reasonable to interpret "use by" as "best if used by," for instance.

They should use clearer language because they can and have no excuse not to.

hentrep• 2 years ago

Here’s the actual USDA article describing the difference between “sell by, “use by”, and “best by” terms: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-...

I don’t have time to find a source that supports this, but I understand that these dates also refer to the durability of the “food safe” container/packaging. Ever drink water from an unopened plastic bottle that has been stored for awhile? That taste is not from the water decaying or otherwise breaking down.

guelo2• 2 years ago

Those cheap plastic water bottles should be banned. They’re one of the greatest sources of micro plastics in our bodies. (Not to mention unstudied nano plastics)

lupusreal6• 2 years ago

They can't be anywhere even close to synthetic textiles.

ghaff9• 2 years ago

I don’t personally normally buy bottled water but the alternative is probably to go back to glass which means higher consumer prices, increased fossil fuel consumption for transportation, etc.

gruez2• 2 years ago

They’re one of the greatest sources of micro plastics in our bodies.

Source?

sureIy2• 2 years ago

I wish regulators stopped trying to be poetic and just use clear English.

What's "best by?" You need to write "do not eat after." Nobody needs to be explained what that means.

_visgean• 2 years ago

But thats the point, none of these actually mean that you cant eat it after te cutoff date.

Dalewyn6• 2 years ago

"Clear English" is using as few words as possible.

ensignavenger2• 2 years ago

"best buy" is pretty plain English. It means the manufacturer beleives the product will be at its best up to that date.

EasyMark3• 2 years ago

"best by" and "do not eat after" are not the same thing. Best by just means optimal freshness. Maybe you're thinking of "use by". "Sell by" is the thing giving people issues, as the food is still good but it's time for the -store- to rotate it out of inventory because it's not going to be as fresh after that date, and that leads to complainy customers.

OJFord• 2 years ago

None of them means 'do not eat after'.

robertlagrant• 2 years ago

I wonder if Best Buy use best by dates.

SoftTalker3• 2 years ago

I don't pay dates much mind. If it looks good, smells good, and tastes good I eat it. We are pretty adept at smelling and tasting spoiled food.

bombcar2• 2 years ago

The real danger is leeching packaging materials, which is pretty minor.

causal• 2 years ago

Botulism can be present without any smell or taste

SoftTalker3• 2 years ago

Pretty low risk though. It requires a low-oxygen environment so mainly canned foods are the risk and overwhelmingly home-canned food that isn't heated properly/long enough.

But yeah, don't eat food from damaged cans.

anon291• 2 years ago

Botulism is a concern with canned food which have no real sell by date. Moreover, if botulism was in there during canning it's there on day one and day 1000.

Lev1a• 2 years ago

Over the last few years here in Germany many, many food products have gained a little note next to the "MHD" (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum, [1]) which says something like "oft länger gut" ("often viable for longer") or "ansehen, riechen, probieren" ("Look, smell, try").

And IIRC the EU is also debating the removal of MHD from staple foods that are shelf-stable for years, like dried pasta, uncooked rice etc. Normal sugar already doesn't have an MHD, although jam sugar is marked with the year of manufacture since they have other compounds in them as well beside the sugar itself.

Where i work all all the food that's simply past its MHD gets collected every morning by the Red Cross for food banks ("Die Tafel"). Obviously if a foods container is damaged or it's rotted fruits/veg or it would be unsafe to consume for another reason [2], that stuff gets thrown out (into bins collected for biomass processing).

[1]: pretty sure it's the same as "best (if used) by date" since products from abroad are sometimes marked "BBD <date>" instead of "MHD <date>" (at least on the transport packaging).

[2]: like lazy customers not putting frozen or cooled foods back but leaving them elsewhere in the warm store, something which REALLY aggravates me.

akira25017• 2 years ago

We are pretty adept at smelling and tasting spoiled food.

Ah.. so you have not experienced an injury or enough aging to compromise your ability to do this?

sdo724• 2 years ago

I find food in the US contains too much toxin that harms the body. They have a lot of synthetic chemicals and preservatives. Many of which have very bad long term damages to the body. Even with these labels, sometimes it doesn't really tell the whole story about the ingredients. Most of the food that sits on the shelf for weeks shouldn't be consumed.

vel0city7• 2 years ago

Most of the food that sits on the shelf for weeks shouldn't be consumed.

Salt? Flour? Oil? Oats? Rice? Garlic? Black pepper? Most ground spices? Nuts? Beans? Honey? Vinegar? Quinoa? All of these can reasonably sit on a shelf for weeks. I guess none of these are safe to be consumed, all just "toxins".

sdo724• 2 years ago

That isn't most, and I mentioned synthetic chemicals & preservatives.

Dalewyn6• 2 years ago

Depending on who you ask, flour isn't food.

I consider them crazies in the same vein as vegetarians who judge whether something is a vegetable based on how cute it looks.

autoexec• 2 years ago

Salt? Flour? Oil? Oats? Rice? Garlic? Black pepper? Most ground spices? Nuts? Beans? Honey? Vinegar? Quinoa? All of these can reasonably sit on a shelf for weeks.

They're probably full of things that are bad for you too.

Your salt is full of microplastics (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro...). Your oats are full of chlormequat. Your spices are full of heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, and lead), and the same is true for vinegar, nuts, beans, and rice. Most honey sold in stores isn't real honey but comes from China and can be filled with chloramphenicol and other illegal animal antibiotics. Almost all of the extra virgin olive oil sold in US stores is fake and can also be contaminated with phthalates. Around half the garlic sold in the US comes from china and according to some this is Communist Sewage-Garlic, and a threat to national security (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67662779) which can also be covered in chemicals (the common claim is methyl bromide is used although I haven't seen anything to back that up)

The quinoa sitting on your shelf seems the least likely to be toxic or bad for you, but you might want to avoid it for other reasons (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/25/quinoa-g...)

ghaff9• 2 years ago

Or months plus. Flour probably gives better results for yeast breads in the weeks timeline but the average household isn’t buying a new bag of flour every couple weeks.

I do keep nuts in the freezer for the most part.

kergonath3• 2 years ago

All of these can reasonably sit on a shelf for weeks

Or for years, in a proper cupboard.

torgoguys2• 2 years ago

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.

Infant formula is required federally, so OK. Eggs are an oddly specific one, but I guess I can see it (although I'd wonder why some other products like milk, or meat might not be similarly required). But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead.

mikro2nd• 2 years ago

Beer certainly is an odd one! Some (craft) craft beers will age gracefully -- improving, even -- for years. Industrial lagers... not so much.

I scored once with an imported (Belgian) craft beer at the local supermarket, heavily marked down price because the sell-by date was approaching. Some days later, marked down by half again because the date had passed. Needless to say, I bought all I could carry.

crowcroft• 2 years ago

This is a tricky one, because at some point you need to think about the integrity of the product's packaging, and how well it's been stored.

Craft beer *in a can* will not age gracefully. Even in a bottle, while it will probably be fine, how much light exposure are the bottle getting, have they been left out in the sun at any point etc.

Best before dates, hard expiry dates (if required), and ideally including a packaged on date would be a pretty ideal amount of information.

idunnoman1222• 2 years ago

Come on it has nothing to do with the industrial scale at which the beer is created it has to do with which ingredients malt, hops, etc.

bilekas2• 2 years ago

I'm actually super curious about that too, as far as I know pathogens cant live in beer, so I don't know how it can go bad.

I wonder though if local brewery's or more artigianale brewing processes are different and maybe could be a bit riskier ?

vel0city7• 2 years ago

pathogens cant live in beer

Depending on the beer there might be live yeasts in it.

Beers can still go bad. Not always from a "not safe to consume" but often at least a "not going to taste very good anymore" kind of thing. Beers will end up oxidizing, the stuff in the beer will degrade over time, etc. Not all beers age well, some need to be had within a certain period of freshness.

Generally I prefer a "born-on" date for beer.

theptip• 2 years ago

Plenty of undesirable stuff can live in beer.

Brettanomyces will make your beer taste phenolic. Lactic Acid Bacteria will sour it (Lactobacillus and Pediococcus are two common contaminants).

Oxygenation will gradually make the beer taste like cardboard.

Hop aromatics degrade rapidly, heavily hopped beers are best within a month of brewing.

Very few beers get better over time (generally sours and stouts), most are beginning to degrade immediately and fall off a cliff within a year.

maxerickson2• 2 years ago

Craft brewers that aren't doing it as a hobby are using industrial process controls and working for a highly repeatable flavor.

The flavor going off is the main concern with beer.

manwe150• 2 years ago

The text of the law seems to be specific that the beer exemption (and other alcohol) is about a permission to put the vintage (year month, etc), since alcohol are expected to change over time even after bottling (some better some worse) so consumers would desire that information even though it does not conform to the normal "use by" or "best by" relevant to other products (any other placement or use of a date on a label being what is made illegal by the law)

psunavy032• 2 years ago

Beer is pasteurized or else full of live yeast cultures. It doesn't go "bad" per se in the sense that it will hurt you, but some beers taste bad beyond a certain point. Hoppy beers lose flavor in ~90 days or so after bottling. Mass-market beers "skunk" if they are exposed to light and the UV causes certain compounds to break down. Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in a cool dark place, and it smooths the flavors out.

MisterTea• 2 years ago

Strong unpasteurized malty beers like porters and stouts can age for literally years in a cool dark place, and it smooths the flavors out.

Had a coworker who made this phenomenon into a yearly gathering. We would bring beers of our choice, bury them in his back yard, then drink and grill/smoke meats. Next year he would dig up the previous years burial and we would try to bring the same beers with us. Then we all gather around and have a tasting comparing the year long aged beer to the fresh beer. You also brought along new beers to bury. He names it Man Beer Meat because it was just guys drinking and grilling.

fmbb• 2 years ago

American eggs are incredibly sensitive due to the chlorine washing they go through before making it to the store. Not oddly specific.

Here in Sweden (and I assume the rest of the EU) when I buy eggs they are not refrigerated and I keep them in the pantry at room temp for weeks or months without issues. The price I pay is that they sometimes come with a little bird poop on them from the store.

moate4• 2 years ago

(Most of) Europe doesn't wash their eggs, allowing them to be stored at room temperature, but as you said, the standard for physical contamination is lower.

The US washes our eggs, requiring refrigeration but greatly extending shelf life and greatly reducing physical contamination.

Advantages to both (Europe wins hands down if you need to whip egg whites to stiff peaks) but very interesting how the two regions addressed the safety issues around this.

torgoguys2• 2 years ago

Not oddly specific.

When I said "oddly specific," I didn't mean that there might not be reason to label eggs with an expiration, I meant that it was oddly specific to require eggs to be labelled while not requiring some food categories that spoil quickly (mentioning milk and meat as examples). Perhaps it has to do with spoilage in eggs perhaps being harder to detect by examining them?

jjice• 2 years ago

But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead.

Very fair question. Anecdotally, when I was just graduating university I drank a few 4+ year past expiration macro-brewed beers that were sitting in the fridge that entire time. The results were not good compared to similar consumption of non-expired beer.

tivert5• 2 years ago

But why beer??? Legit question--I don't drink so maybe it's obvious and I'm just a knucklehead.

Maybe a different regulatory regime applies? That's the case at the federal level. For instance: alcohol often doesn't have the typical food labels because it's regulated by the ATF [1] not the FDA, and food labels are an FDA thing:

https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/w...:

TTB regulations do not require nutrient content labeling for alcohol beverages.

https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...:

Food labeling is required for most prepared foods, such as breads, cereals, canned and frozen foods, snacks, desserts, drinks, etc. Nutrition labeling for raw produce (fruits and vegetables) and fish is voluntary.

[1] apparently now split into the ATF and TTB

TrueSlacker05• 2 years ago

Looking at TTB's mandatory items on labeling [1] there is nothing about any dates. Some states have different requirements, and I don't know California's, but many states do not require any kind of date coding.

[1] https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/b...

anon848736285• 2 years ago

I just assumed it was due to better lobbying by the egg and beer industries ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

shtopointo• 2 years ago

Won't the producers just leave the same date in, but change the wording before it?

teraflop• 2 years ago

That's the goal -- to make the wording clearer.

As the article says, many people misunderstand "sell by" to mean "only safe if used by".

ryukoposting2• 2 years ago

When my wife and I moved in together, we had a spat about what "sell by" dates actually meant. She had been throwing away loads of perfectly good food because she misunderstood the meaning of the sell-by date. I don't remember who taught me what they actually mean, but I was able to point her to a USDA site that showed the actual meaning.

I'm pretty sure that was the only time I have ever been right when she and I disagreed about something kitchen-related, by the way.

I think the ban makes sense when you consider that CA still has a provision for a "best by" date. Some more education is still necessary, though. Certain foods can go months or years past their "best by" date and still be perfectly safe - even if they might taste a little funky.

jessriedel• 2 years ago

Some more education is still necessary, though. Certain foods can go months or years past their "best by" date and still be perfectly safe - even if they might taste a little funky.

Aren’t safety restrictions the “use by” date?

Switching to language that either says “Best if Used By” or “Use By” will also help minimize ambiguity. The former will establish consistent wording for advising when an item is less fresh (but still okay to eat), while the latter designates food that should no longer be consumed due to safety concerns.

ryukoposting2• 2 years ago

Aren’t safety restrictions the “use by” date?

Exactly - people haven't been taught to actually look at the words before the date. They just look at the date, say "oh that was yesterday" and throw stuff away.

I guess I didn't make that perfectly clear in the parent comment - my wife didn't know that the difference in wording mattered, so she just ignored it.

sandworm101• 2 years ago

There is also much confusion about how food actually goes bad. There are some foods that absolutely should be avoided after a specific amount of time. But most will go bad somewhat randomly, mostly after but often before their sell/best by dates. Sometimes a jug of milk will be bad before it even arrives at a store. Sometimes mold will appear on fresh bread very suddenly. Food is more complicated than fixed dates.

I was buying eggs recently when I, as my mother taught me, opened the case and checked to see if any had cracked. The person beside me said "I hope you are buying those" as if me touching them somehow made them unsellable. People need to learn more about food.

moate4• 2 years ago

I think as a general rule, biology loathes blunt instruments. That's not to say these things aren't more useful than just guessing, but as this legislation (or rather the underlying issue that led to its passing) shows is that a lot of this stuff is very poorly understood.

freedomben• 2 years ago

Geez, that is aggravating. Do they really think that a completely unsealed cardboard box with holes in it is keeping out all the germs?

Sometimes I think we've really failed ourselves regarding basic biology and education requirements.

ghaff9• 2 years ago

To be fair, we’ve recently been through a period when infection by physical contact was at least initially widely viewed as a thing even if elbow pumps and obsessive hand washing turned out to probably not be much of a deal. But there was certainly a year so there when if you touched something in a supermarket and put it back you were inviting lots of stink eye.

bigstrat20032• 2 years ago

My wife does the same thing, and I've been unable to convince her. Not talking perishable stuff, either - she'll throw out something like a bottle of hot sauce because it is a few months past the "best by" date. No matter how much I try to tell her that these things are shelf stable and will be good for even a year or more after the date, she doesn't believe me.

I think that the show Kim's Convenience said it perfectly, myself. "See this date? It say 'best by'. After date - not best, but still pretty good."

pseudosavant• 2 years ago

My ex was like this two, but was fairly binary about it. The day before the "sell by date" = totally good, not in any way ruined. The day after = clearly dangerously unsafe food.

bee_rider• 2 years ago

Hot Sauce is kind of annoying because it lasts so long after the best by dates. Like it could just be kicking around in then fridge for a couple years and not grow anything on it, but it is probably time to toss it out eventually?

natthub• 2 years ago

Ha! I like to joke that after the 'best by' date, it's no longer the best, just better :)

potato3732842• 2 years ago

Ironically, stuff like hot sauce that never goes bad because it's so incompatible with microbial life as we know it is the stuff that needs "best by" type verbiage the most because while it never becomes hazardous to consume the chemical processes of degradation (oxidation and friends) still happen and the product becomes less good.

copperx• 2 years ago

I'm not particularly judgemental, but I wouldn't be able to cohabitate with someone with that mentality. "Best by" is a matter of faith, and it shouldn't be treated as fact.

I might seem petty about this behavior, but such things are not isolated. This way of thinking colors one's reality.

noduerme2• 2 years ago

When I first started dating my ex, I was at her place and she asked if I was hungry. I said yes, so she made me a tuna melt with mayo. As she had it in the oven I looked in the fridge. The tub of mayo was enormous and mostly empty. It was Kirkland mayonnaise.

I said, "oh, you have a Costco membership?"

"No," she said, "my ex used to."

"The guy you broke up with 2 years ago?"

I looked at the date on the mayonnaise. Expired 5 years earlier. She didn't use it very often.

Not wanting to offend her, hesitantly, I ate the tuna melt. And nothing happened. It was fine.

akira25017• 2 years ago

To me that just sounds like a good way to end up in a Chubby Emu video.

heelix• 2 years ago

I had no idea that mayo expired. I had dragged a tub of mayo through several university housing locations and two apartment moves before my new bride noticed the long expired container's date as we combined refrigerators.

I'm not a mayo fan, so was a condiment for guests. Whoops.

tiffanyh2• 2 years ago

As she had it in the oven ...

Cooking food typically kills off any bacteria.

ggreer• 2 years ago

This article claims that 12 million tons of food are wasted in California annually, and that this law will save 70,000 tons of food from going to waste. California's population is 39 million. Does that mean that every Californian is wasting a pound of food every day? That seems suspiciously high to me. I'm curious how they came up with those numbers.

I think this law is like plastic straw bans, or mandated bag fees, or prop 65 cancer warnings: a feel-good law that causes more problems than it solves. Anyone who makes food for sale in California will have to redo their labelling (or at least pay people to audit their product labelling). These costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of increased prices. Some manufacturers will choose to not sell in California, reducing consumer choice, reducing competition, and increasing prices. And for what? To reduce food waste by 0.6% in the best case.

It seems to me that the problem with food wastage isn't the extra food, it's the externalities created by food production, distribution, and disposal. It would be much more effective to tax these externalities than to make ineffective laws about product labelling.

rsynnott2• 2 years ago

Does that mean that every Californian is wasting a pound of food every day? That seems suspiciously high to me.

That seems plausible. Figures vary a bit, but generally you're looking at 20-30% of food in supermarkets ultimately being wasted. An average person eats something like 1.5kg a day, so a pound seems about right. (Of course it's not as simple as that, because there's also wastage at home, and that's very hard to measure.)

That said, there's also a lot of wastage by restaurants and other catering operations, and this won't really help there, so the impact may not be as great as people hope.

akira25017• 2 years ago

My suspicion is that most of the waste is from the commercial sector and not from the residential. Even to the extent that it is just make food garbage separate from other garbage and then compost it directly. There's no reason to see discarded food as "wasted" other than for the fact our processes for managing the obvious consequence of home kitchens are either incomplete or totally missing.

anon848736285• 2 years ago

The results of plastic bag & straw bans seem quite good to me.

paxys• 2 years ago

No date printed on a food item is ever going to be accurate to the day. Unless something is wildly out of date, just use your senses. If it looks, smells and feels fine, it is fine. You’d be surprised by how much longer everything in your friend (and outside) can last.

gandalfian• 2 years ago

This sounds perfectly sensible and uncontroversial?

devonbleak• 2 years ago

From a consumer standpoint, yes.

From a company-who-abuses-best-by-dates-to-sell-more-product standpoint it's very controversial.

spease• 2 years ago

They would already just put “best by” on the product, so it’s not making things any worse that I can see.

ensignavenger2• 2 years ago

It seems to me like a quibe about verbage. I suppose "sell by" could be interpreted as a supplier telling a store what to do with their own goods. But on the other hand, the supplier has a brand on those goods and has a significant interest in protecting the brand.

ninalanyon2• 2 years ago

That's how it has been here in Norway for years. And recently producers have started adding phrases like "ofte gode etter", "and often good after" together with See, Smell, Taste.

There will typically only be one date and it will have text specifying whether it is "Best Before End" for things that simply decline in quality such as milk and vegetables and "Use By" for things that go bad in ways that will be harmful such as meat.

404mm• 2 years ago

I’d prefer just one date: “Use By”. If something is still safe to eat but doesn’t taste great anymore, then that’s past the Use By mark for me.

heavensteeth• 2 years ago

Some people don't have the liberty of throwing out food because the clock struck 00:00. Similarly, some people don't want to.

lupusreal6• 2 years ago

Do you go by how it tastes, or by the printed use-by date? They're unrelated...

tiffanyh2• 2 years ago

Montana uses Sell-By dates to artificially ban out-of-state milk.

They want to promote in-state business (dairy farmers).

Montana purposefully has short Sell-by diary dates, because it makes it prohibitive for an out-of-state dairy to transport their milk into Montana.

https://www.nrdc.org/bio/dana-gunders/how-montanas-sell-date...

anigbrowl• 2 years ago

I hate this kind of mendacity. Wanting to protect their dairy industry is understandable, but perpetuating a fraud upon consumers is not the way to do it.

seanw4442• 2 years ago

If you can't beat the competition, change the rules.

lupire3• 2 years ago

It's not a fraud. It's a higher standard of quality, that is protectionist and arguably unnecessary and wasteful.

karlzt• 2 years ago

> Sell-by diary dates

dairy

hbarka• 2 years ago

The headline would be better served if it said something to the effect that sell-by dates will be replaced with another date suggestion. Instead they chose this misleading headline. The whole thing is also a great example of politics pretending to advocate for the consumer. It’s really a ploy to keep the product sellable for as long as possible. Who gets to decide what best-by date means? If you really want to serve the customer put a made-on date and let me decide if this one-year old can of tomatoes is really something I want to use by day 366. Now, we’re still at a race to the bottom by a combination of gaming the best-by date and putting preservatives to the maximum allowable extent possible. Packaged food industry.

Thuggery• 2 years ago

Sensible change. But I wonder if it will encourage retailers to treat the secondary now more food safety related "use by" date as the real "best if used by" date.

If you're like me and slightly paranoid about food expiration dates and sometimes checks things in corner stores, you might notice they like to sell items that can be razor thin on the "sell by" date.

anon848736285• 2 years ago

That's exactly the problem attempting to be solved. There should be no problem with a retailer selling a product up to the sell by date, but you are still not keen to buy it because we don't know how much longer after that we have.

Instead you will be able to decide how close you want to cut it to either date.

kjhughes• 2 years ago

A requirement that the "best by" or "use by" date be clearly visible would also help.

I've spent way too much time spinning packages scanning for any date, sometimes having to give up, sometimes having to whip out my phone's camera to try to discern tiny black print on dark blue background, in small font, partly malformed, ...

lgleason• 2 years ago

I'm glad I don't live in California. How are you supposed to know if you have milk that will quickly go bad etc.? While some of this can cause waste, many food items do start to go bad after they sit on the shelves too long. That said I'm sure the people behind this would prefer that you don't buy dairy and that you pick the mold off your bread and eat the rest. Thanks, but no thanks.

jamiek88• 2 years ago

From the first paragraph:

“must state “Best if Used By” to indicate peak quality, and “Use By” to designate food safety”

snozolli• 2 years ago

How are you supposed to know if you have milk that will quickly go bad etc.?

From the article:

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.

ottumm• 2 years ago

The beginning of the article should put your mind at ease:

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.

rolph• 2 years ago

date of manufacture, or date of processing is far more practical to the consumer

a13o• 2 years ago

How are you supposed to know if you have milk that will quickly go bad etc.?

The milk will say "Best if Used By <date>".

This information can be found in the fifth sentence in the article.

nikolay3• 2 years ago

Many foods are unregulated. It's strange that milk, for example, doesn't have any requirements for its expiration date. One brand widened their "best buy" date and I noticed their milk was souring 3 days before the "best buy" date. After contacting them several times, I told them that they gave me no option but to escalate this to authorities, they didn't seem concerned a bit, and after doing my research, I found out that they can put anything on the label without repercussions. The manufacturer even recommended the record stupid stuff like using the milk in smoothies and other odor and taste masking means to make it "best." So, even "best buy" for foods that can make you sick is meaningless!

TrueSlacker05• 2 years ago

All the grocery stores in my area will full refund the purchase if it goes bad before the best by date. By returning it to the store you purchased it from, it gets marked as a defective return. When that rate hits a certain percentage they will stop carrying the product.

nikolay3• 2 years ago

I think that's why they made this gimmick, because they had a lot of unsold milk. People buy their milk by half gallon as smaller packaging is extremely expensive. They have a pretty stupid policy - instead of having honest and reciprocal pricing, they make only 1/2-gallon best-price per volume, which leads to lots of unsold milk as who would be such big quantity a couple of days before expiration when it's probably already soured and unsuitable as fluid milk. And I suggested all these ina very friendly manner, but they didn't change. So, I switched to a more honest product, plus, I'd rather not us have raw milk when the bird flu is gaining grounds pretty quickly.

ninalanyon2• 2 years ago

It's strange that milk, for example, doesn't have any requirements for its expiration date.

Why should it? It won't do you any harm. Just don't buy from suppliers who lie to you. But surely if it went sour before the Best before Date then the supplier has supplied goods that were not of merchantable quality and not in accordance with the implied contract and has failed to uphold their side of the contract.

But surely your complaint should be directed against the shop that sold it to you? I would expect the shop to either refund or replace the goods.

nikolay3• 2 years ago

I agree. It's a dishonest practice, which was a misguided reaction to their having a lot of unsold milk. I didn't mention it, but this is raw milk. Honestly, I never had their milk go bad, unlike pasteurized milk, but it just gets extremely smelly and sour, so it's far from "best"!

zargon2• 2 years ago

I prefer "packed on" dates. With "best by" dates you have no idea what the actual age of the product is. Either for comparing freshness when buying it or for deciding whether to consume it later.

slenk• 2 years ago

Food can sit around before being packed. I don't think packed on is any more useful in 99% of situations

zargon2• 2 years ago

The "best by" period is arbitrary, so a packed on date removes ambiguity that varies from producer to producer.

dang• 2 years ago

Recent and related:

California first state to ban 'sell by' 'best before' label to reduce food waste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41775298 - Oct 2024 (61 comments)

s1artibartfast• 2 years ago

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 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". It wont reduce food waste by 20% as claimed.

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

sharpshadow• 2 years ago

Europe has the MHD (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum)[0] but I think I never saw it exceeding 2 years which for some products is misleading since they would be good for very much longer like seeds or marmalade for example.

It will probably help to prolong certain products shelf life but it isn’t a perfect system.

0. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum

rendx• 2 years ago

which for some products is misleading since they would be good for very much longer

The Mindeshaltbarkeitsdatum is exactly what it says: a "best before" (MINDEST, minimum). It does not say anything about it not potentially remaining the same quality or taste after this date, and definitely not that it is dangerous to consume after. It may for example simply lose some of its taste over time, but up until that date it is "guaranteed" to taste the same ("the best").

Products that should not be consumed after a certain date (like meat) use "Zu verbrauchen bis" (use before); that is not a MHD.

mensetmanusman• 2 years ago

I realized food waste was a good thing during Covid. We had a 50% buffer on food supply during a global crisis. Had we been ultra efficient we would have been experiencing mass starvation due to the lack of automation in many parts of the local supply chains.

shikon7• 2 years ago

This was introduced a few years ago in the Swiss retailer chain Migros. The span between the sell-by date and the use-by date (typically around 1/10-1/5 of the entire lifespan of the product) would give the consumer the safety that the product was usable for a few days without checking the dates.

Without it, you need to check the date of every perishable product you buy if you want to consume it even the next day. If the store forgot to remove the product for a day (which happens regularly), you would buy a potentially harmful product if you don't always check the date.

On the positive side, the food can be sold regularly just until its expiry date, preventing food waste.

Eddy_Viscosity2• 2 years ago

I had a friend who always said "Best-before doesn't mean bad-after"

California bans sell-by dates

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