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Print the food expiration date above the label barcode. Black ink on white background.
Honestly ANY standard would be an improvement over the current reality.
Expiration date see:
the back of your own head
Seriously, I feel like one of those Rubik's cube champions looking at my yoghurt from all possible dimensions trying to find out if it turned to cheese or not.
I would go with: Remove expiration dates entirely. Because it's not an expiration date, it's a "best before" date. Which when you think about it, it's true that food is "best before" literally any future date you put on the label.
Most of the factors that will cause food to spoil are things not under the control of the companies that package the food. How cold do you keep your fridge at? How long did it take for you to transport the food from the store to your fridge? What was the temperature that day? How long did you have it before you break the seal and start using it? How long was the food outside of your fridge? etc. etc.
Those things are just invented by a marketing department to encourage people to throw out food so they have to buy more. There are no regulations on it, they just put whatever date they think will maximize their profits.
You buy fresh fruit and vegetables (the things that will spoil faster than anything else you buy) there is no expiration date. How do you manage? Look at it, and maybe give it a smell test. The same applies for all food really.
"Best before" dates are a scam that results in food being thrown out prematurely. Grocery prices are too high, we shouldn't allow these kinds of shenanigans to drive prices higher.
Please don't die from this advice.
First: Yes, best before dates are sometimes arbitrary depending on the product and where you live. However, basically anything with a package sold commercially has been tested for taste/feel/look over time to determine when quality degrades. If you make cookies you don't want people only buying up 1+ yr old boxes and thinking your cookies are just supposed to taste like solidified disks of keyboard powder. Having a best before date tells people when your product tastes as intended and when it's only worth buying from the discount bin.
It's fair to say sometimes marketing bullshit influences that date.
Second: Expiry dates are a real thing, at least where I'm from. Fridge/freezer temperatures are meant to be within specific ranges and there are food safety regulations around how long certains items can be outside of those ranges - like for transport or during prep.
Expiry dates are based on testing the development of bacteria colonies/degradation of the ingredients in an average of settings one would expect those products to go through.
Just because something says it's expired doesn't necessarily mean it's unsafe, though. Except: in a commercial kitchen it is illegal to sell expired ingredients because of the testing that goes into determining that date.
I've worked as a chef, have taken multiple food safety courses, had good relationships with food inspectors. And I've worked in a production kitchen where the products were sent to testing facilities for determining the dates we put on the labels.
The expiration date isn't for the customer. It's for the grocer. They should not be allowed to sell expired food.
They should be allowed and required to give away or offer for donation any food that is still edible after its expiration date.
By all means, eat all the expired food you want. I certainly do. Just don't try to sell it to anyone and we're golden.
Even if the best before dates are removed, you need to have A DATE to reference the age of the product. Maybe it wont spoil in one week, but if its been 2 or 3 I would really like to know.
Most food has a Julien Code to tell you when it was manufactured/packaged.
I'm gonna fucking get sick from every milk yogurt and ayran in existence, DO NOT DO THIS
I think it would be better to replace it with "fabricated on" date
In the UK they have two categories. One is Best Before and the other is Use By. A product will have one or the other but not both. One is a recommendation and the other is a command. And out of date cracker is different to out of date raw chicken. (eggs have a Display Until and a Use By date on the same pack).