One of the food industry’s worst-kept secrets is how “best buy” “sell buy” and other food expiration terms don’t tell consumers what the expiration date of the food is. Those dates signify peak freshness, or tell the grocery store when to stop stocking the product.
The result? An estimated 40% food waste rate in America.
Congress took a long time to address this issue, but help may be on the way. The Food Date Labeling Act is a proposed bill that establishes national standards to clarify when a food is expected to be actually unsafe to eat.
By the way, if you want to see–visually–how much food the industry wastes, take a look at Just Eat It, a documentary about a Canadian couple who eats mostly out of dumpster diving for six months.