Americans throw out billions of pounds of food every year because they falsely believe "sell-by" and "best-before" dates on package labels indicate food safety, researchers have found.
A study published Wednesday by Harvard Law School and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that dates printed on packaged foods, which help retailers cycle through stocked products and allow manufacturers to indicate when a product is at its peak freshness, are inconsistent. They confuse consumers, leading many to throw out food before it actually goes bad.
"The labeling system is aimed at helping consumers understand freshness, but it fails - they think it's about safety. And (consumers) are wasting money and wasting food because of this misunderstanding," said co-author Emily Broad Lieb, who led the report from the Harvard Law School's Food Law and Policy Clinic.
Broad Lieb and NRDC scientist Dana Gunders said that, while labels "appear to be a rational system," they are essentially meaningless to consumers. Manufacturers often decide on their own how to calculate shelf life and what the dates mean.
As a result, huge amounts of food, not to mention considerable natural resources and labor, go to waste in landfill and taxes, and harm the environment. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_140806.html
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