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How to Navigate ‘Sell by’, ‘Use by’, & ‘Best Before’ Dates in Order to Cut Down on Food Waste
Why ‘Sell By’, ‘Use By’, & ‘Best Before’ Dates Matter
When playing the ‘is it still good?’ game with your food and its shelf life, it’s fairly easy to jump to your own conclusions about what ‘Sell by’, ‘Use by’, and ‘Best if Used by’ mean. For example, one may fear that they will get sick and drop dead if eating something after the ‘use by’ date, but not feel the same fears about the exact same product if it had the same date on it, but was instead stamped with ‘sell by’.
But what does each guideline really mean? And is it really safe to eat the food after the use or sell by dates versus throwing it away?
Food Waste is a Huge Problem
Why does it matter? According to an 8-year University of Arizona study on U.S. Food Waste, “Americans are tossing out at least $75 billion in food each year…The average American family throws away 14 percent of their food. In terms of money, that’s almost $600 every year in meats, fruit, vegetables and grain products.” Other estimates pin U.S. food waste as high as 33 percent.
That’s a lot of money and a lot of waste. Cutting this waste would save you money, lower overall food prices, and lead to a significant reduction in carbon impact and other environmental damage. And knowing what shelf-life dates mean is the first step in cutting food waste.
Lax Federal Regulation on Food Shelf-Life Dating
Believe it or not, food dating is only required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety & Inspection Service (FSIS) in the United States for baby infant formula and some baby foods, in the form of a ‘use by’ date. Other than that, there is no uniform food shelf life dating system. Food dating, at some level, is required by 20 states. However, many states have no food dating regulations at all.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some consistencies and rules that you should follow around food shelf life.
Use By Date
A ‘use by date’ is the product manufacturers recommended date to use the product in order to still get peak quality. After that date, the product quality could decline, and if proper storage measures aren’t used, your health could be at risk. Many manufacturers voluntarily include ‘use by’ dates because they want their customers to experience their food at its highest quality, in order to grow customer loyalty. They also serve as a ‘we told you so’ warning if you consume the food or drink after the date and it has gone bad.
It is generally recommended that you use a product by its ‘use by’ date. However, products can be kept for much longer periods if refrigerated below 40 degrees F or frozen.
Best if Used By/Best Before Date
‘Best if used by’, aka ‘best before’ dates are recommended use dates as determined by the manufacturer to get the highest quality version of the product, but are not aligned to food safety dates as ‘use by’ and ‘sell by’ dates are.
Sell By Date
‘Sell by’ dates are intended to serve as a guideline for grocers to sell the manufacturers products. Foods with expired sell by dates can still be at their best quality and safe to eat if stored properly. However, as a consumer, it might be wise to buy inventory at your grocer that has a further out ‘sell by’ date versus one that has already expired.
There might also be an opportunity to bargain with grocers to get a lower price on foods that are at or past their ‘sell by’ date. Many grocers automatically mark down foods that are approaching the ‘sell by’ date, and it never hurts to ask those who do not for a discount.
Sell By Storage Guidelines
Here are some FSIS Guidelines for refrigerated products sell by dates. FSIS recommends that you follow ‘use by’ dates, and recommends freezing or cooking the fresh foods by the following timeline with ‘sell by’ or no dates.
| Product | Storage Times After Purchase |
|---|---|
| Poultry | 1 or 2 days |
| Beef, Veal, Pork and Lamb | 3 to 5 days |
| Ground Meat and Ground Poultry | 1 or 2 days |
| Fresh Variety Meats (Liver, Tongue, Brain, Kidneys, Heart, Chitterlings) | 1 or 2 days |
| Cured Ham, Cook-Before-Eating | 5 to 7 days |
| Sausage from Pork, Beef or Turkey, Uncooked | 1 or 2 days |
| Eggs | 3 to 5 weeks |
They also recommend the following storage times for processed foods packaged at a food plant.
| Storage of Processed Products Sealed at Plant | ||
|---|---|---|
| Processed Product | Unopened, After Purchase | After Opening |
| Cooked Poultry | 3 to 4 days | 3 to 4 days |
| Cooked Sausage | 3 to 4 days | 3 to 4 days |
| Sausage, Hard/Dry, shelf-stable | 6 weeks/pantry | 3 weeks |
| Corned Beef, uncooked, in pouch with pickling juices | 5 to 7 days | 3 to 4 days |
| Vacuum-packed Dinners, Commercial Brand with USDA seal | 2 weeks | 3 to 4 days |
| Bacon | 2 weeks | 7 days |
| Hot dogs | 2 weeks | 1 week |
| Luncheon meat | 2 weeks | 3 to 5 days |
| Ham, fully cooked | 7 days | slices, 3 days; whole, 7 days |
| Ham, canned, labeled “keep refrigerated” | 9 months | 3 to 4 days |
| Ham, canned, shelf stable | 2 years/pantry | 3 to 5 days |
| Canned Meat and Poultry, shelf stable | 2 to 5 years/pantry | 3 to 4 days |
Using Common Sense on Shelf-Life
These are some great guidelines, but it also pays to use some common sense guidelines around food expiration:
- If you’re not going to eat something with a few days, just freeze it.
- If it smells bad, don’t eat it.
- If it looks bad, don’t eat it.
- If it has mold on it, don’t eat it.
- If it is perishable, at least refrigerate it.
- Perishable food doesn’t like air. Keep things covered and sealed.
- Wash your hands before touching perishable foods
Shelf Life Discussion
- What rules do you follow around shelf life?
- Do you ever bargain with grocers if a food is at or has passed its ‘sell by’ date. What kind of response do you get?
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My name is G.E. Miller and 
For certain things, such as medication, I won’t mess around, but for common foods, I follow the same common sense guidelines as you. You can’t always trust the date, either, since there are some foods that often spoil before their date, like most dairy products. Other products, like chips, can be eaten beyond their date, at the risk of being stale.
@Kevin – I’ve heard that drug companies are very modest on their expiration dates b/c they want you buying more (when in reality, they might be good for much longer). But I’m not a doctor.
@BIFS – You’re right. As a general rule of thumb, meats, seafood, and dairy are the ones you really need to be careful with the most.
I don’t mess around with meat or milk…any indications at all of being spoiled, and it gets thrown away. I will admit that a tiny little spot of mold on cheese will just get cut off…I mean, cheese is inherently spoiled anyway, right?
Growing up, I had 8 siblings & Mom would shop once every 2 weeks. Near the end of that two weeks, some of the foods started to get funky – milk, lunch meat, cheese. But we just used the smell test – kinda off-smelling was still OK to eat. Either that or you wait for dinner (long wait from breakfast). I still use my sniffer in conjunction with the date, but I’m no longer willing to consume “kinda off-smelling”. I can afford it now.
I am pretty cheap though when it comes to perishable foods – I do not overbuy & I buy meats on sale & freeze them.
It’s true that we as a people do waste a lot of food. That’s why we don’t feel too bad about throwing away something we’ve lost track of… to our chicken. She later gives it back to us in the form of an egg.
I’m curious most of all if OP is correct about date labeling of vitamins. I’ve always suspected they might still be good past their dates, but I never can tell for sure.
On the food waste issue. A lot of that could be avoided if they sold things in smaller quantities. If you are single or married without kids it is extremeley difficult to get through, for example, an entire loaf of bread before it goes bad. I end up throwing out about a 1/4 of a loaf most times becuase bread has such short shelf life and a loaf is to large to finish for just me and the husband.
Felicia,
Check out those “bread bags” that they have in the “as seen on tv” sections. They REALLY do work! I’ve put them in those and then inside one of the hard plastic bread containers (maybe from WalMart) and you wouldn’t believe how much longer the bread lasts.