Grab three things from your fridge right now and you'll probably find three different date labels. That's not an accident, and it's also not a safety system. It's a patchwork that food companies built for their own inventory reasons, and most of us have been misreading it for years.
The confusion is expensive. Federal data points to date-label misunderstanding as a driver of a huge share of the food waste in American kitchens, and it's a big enough problem that California just passed a law standardizing the labels, cutting "sell by" out entirely as of July 1, 2026.
Here's what the labels are actually supposed to tell you.
"Best by" or "best if used by" means quality, not safety
This is the one people panic-toss the most. "Best by" is the manufacturer's estimate of when a product stops being at its absolute peak in taste and texture. It is not a safety cutoff. A box of crackers, a jar of peanut butter, or a bag of rice past its "best by" date is almost always still perfectly fine to eat. It might just be slightly less crisp or slightly less fresh-tasting.
"Use by" is closer to an actual deadline
"Use by" is the last date a product is guaranteed to be at peak quality, and for a small number of items (infant formula being the main one) it functions as a real safety date. For most other foods it's still a quality marker, not a hard safety line, but it's a tighter window than "best by."
"Sell by" was never meant for you at all
"Sell by" was a note from the manufacturer to the store, telling them how long to keep a product on the shelf for inventory turnover. It was never a signal to shoppers about when to stop eating something, which is exactly why California eliminated it from packaging starting this month. Other states are expected to follow.
So what should you actually go by?
Your senses, mostly, plus common sense about the food category:
- Shelf-stable stuff (crackers, pasta, canned goods): trust your eyes, nose, and the general rule that "best by" is a quality guess, not a deadline.
- Dairy and eggs: give it a smell test and a look. A sour smell or visible change means toss it, even if the date says you have a few more days.
- Meat, poultry, and fish: be stricter here. These are the categories where "use by" is worth respecting closely.
- Produce: dates on packaged produce are the least reliable of all. Ripeness and visible condition tell you far more than a printed date.
The real fix isn't a better label, it's not forgetting what you have
Even with clearer labels, the root problem doesn't go away: food goes bad because it gets pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten, not because a label was confusing. Knowing what "best by" means helps you stop tossing good food too early. It doesn't help you remember that half a rotisserie chicken has been sitting behind the milk for six days.
That's the part worth solving with a system instead of a guess, and it starts with knowing what you actually have.