Dispatches news and views from the natural resources defense council
good enough to eat?
An NRDC/Harvard report calls for a better system of dating food.
those edibles are fresher than you think A new study reveals that a deeply flawed system of labeling results in millions of tons of wasted food
T
he next time you decide not to take
home your restaurant leftovers or feel like throwing out those uneaten containers of Greek yogurt, you may want to reflect on the 160 billion pounds of food discarded annually by U.S. households, supermarkets, restaurants, and cafeterias. The retail value of all that tossed food: $165 billion. The average American family tosses out 15 percent to 25 percent of the food it purchases—several thousand dollars’ worth per year. A major cause of all this waste is an epidemic misunderstanding of food labels exacerbated by a lack of federal regulation, according to a recent NRDC report, The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America. Produced in conjunction with the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, the new report builds upon
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NRDC’s 2012 study Wasted, which detailed the inefficiencies of the U.S. food system. The Dating Game goes further, providing a history of food labeling and a summary of current laws, as well as offering recommendations to decrease food loss. Because federal labeling laws are loose, states and even cities can create their own regulations: Baltimore’s laws, for example, differ from those of the state of Maryland. Businesses around the country label packages with such phrases as “sell by,” “use by,” “best by,” and “enjoy by,” with little consistency as to their meaning. Consumers frequently interpret the labels as expiration dates, but typically that’s not the case; often they indicate peak quality or—as with “sell by” dates—convey recommendations to retailers about keeping their shelves freshly stocked. “It’s hard to educate consumers about what labels mean when they don’t have a consistent meaning,” says Dana