Use by, best before: what the dates on food actually mean

In the EU and the UK, food law recognises two dates with different meanings.

Use by is a safety date. It appears on perishable foods — fresh meat, fish, ready-to-eat salads, soft dairy. The European Food Safety Authority is unambiguous: foods with this label “should not be eaten after that specific date, even if they look or smell fine”, because the microorganisms that cause illness are often invisible and odourless. ¹

Best before is a quality date. After it, the food “is still safe to eat if stored correctly but may lose some of its taste, texture, or freshness.” ¹ Food Standards Scotland puts it plainly: it is safe to use smell and appearance to judge food that has passed its best-before date. ²

In short: use by — trust the date. Best before — trust your senses.

In the United States, the dates on most food are not required by federal law at all. The USDA states that “except for infant formula, product dating is not required by Federal regulations.” ³

The phrases you see — Best if Used By, Sell-By, Use-By — are manufacturers’ quality indicators, not safety limits. The USDA describes each of them as “not a safety date”, with one exception: Use-By on infant formula. Its guidance is that if a date passes during home storage, “a product should still be safe and wholesome if handled properly until the time spoilage is evident.” ³

So an American Use-By and a European use by are not the same thing. The European one is a legal safety limit; the American one is a quality suggestion.

The European Commission estimates that up to 10% of food waste generated annually in the EU is linked to date marking — food discarded because a date was misread or misunderstood. ⁴

The scale behind that percentage is large. In 2023, the EU generated 58.2 million tonnes of food waste, around 130 kg per person. Households were responsible for more than half of it — 53%, or 69 kg per inhabitant. ⁵

The UK, which measures household waste in unusual detail, found that households threw away 6 million tonnes of food in 2022, of which 4.4 million tonnes was edible. Nearly 40% of that waste happened because food “wasn’t used in time”. The cost: around £1,000 a year for a household of four. ⁶

1. Find the words, not just the number. Use by means safety. Best before means quality. In the US, assume quality unless it is infant formula.
2. Check the storage instruction next to the date. A use-by date is only valid if the food was kept as instructed — EFSA gives the example of keeping it below 5 °C. ¹ A date on chicken that spent an afternoon on the counter no longer applies.
3. Freeze before, not after. Food can be frozen up to and including its use-by date, which effectively pauses the clock. ² Once the date has passed, it is too late.
4. For best-before food, look and smell. Best-before dates are typical of shelf-stable food — dry pasta, rice, tinned goods, chocolate — where the date marks a decline in quality, not safety. ¹² Eggs, according to Food Standards Scotland, can be eaten a day or two after their best-before date if cooked thoroughly. ²

Knowing what a date means solves half the problem. The other half is remembering that the food exists.

Nearly 40% of UK household food waste is food that simply wasn’t used in time ⁶ — not misunderstood, just forgotten at the back of a shelf. The households that waste least are not the ones with the most knowledge. They are the ones who know what they have and when it needs eating.

That can be a notebook, a whiteboard on the fridge door, or an app that keeps the list for you. What matters is that the list exists and is looked at before shopping and before cooking.