What the date on the package actually means

The date stamped on a carton looks like an instruction. It usually isn't one, and for most of the food in your kitchen, nobody was obligated to print it at all.

Almost none of it is required

According to USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, product dating is not required by federal regulations, with one exception: FDA requires a "use by" date on infant formula. For meat, poultry, and egg products under FSIS jurisdiction, dates can be applied voluntarily, as long as the labeling is truthful and not misleading.

So most dates on most packages are a manufacturer's judgment about quality, not a regulatory deadline. FSIS is direct about this too: except for infant formula, dates are not an indicator of a product's safety.

What the phrases mean

FSIS defines them roughly like this. "Sell by" tells the store how long to display the product, which is to say it was never addressed to you. "Best if used by" points at peak quality. "Use by" is the last date recommended for use while at peak quality, and it is not a safety date except on infant formula. "Freeze by" indicates when to freeze something to hold its quality, and it isn't a purchase or safety date either.

Four phrases, four different jobs, and no requirement that anyone use them consistently. The California Department of Food and Agriculture, citing bill co-sponsor Californians Against Waste, notes that more than 50 differently phrased date labels have been used in the United States. FSIS's own recommendation, for manufacturers and retailers that choose to apply a date, is to standardize on "Best if Used By."

The consequence is measurable. USDA estimates that 30 percent of the food supply is lost or wasted at the retail and consumer levels, and FSIS names label confusion as one source of that: food thrown out because of what a date seemed to say rather than what it said.

What changed on July 1

California's AB 660, signed in September 2024, took effect at the start of last month. It does two things.

First, packaged food that carries a quality or safety date has to use standardized wording. For quality, that's "BEST if Used By" or "BEST if Used or Frozen By." For safety, "USE By" or "USE By or Freeze By." Second, it prohibits consumer-facing "sell by" dates. Retailers can still track stock rotation, but the date has to be in a coded format that isn't easily readable by shoppers.

A few limits worth knowing. It applies to packaged food, not to food prepared for immediate consumption like restaurant meals. Eggs and infant formula are excepted. And it doesn't force a date onto products that never had one; it governs the wording when a date is used.

Two practical wrinkles. The requirement applies to food manufactured on or after July 1, so packaging produced before that can legally stay on shelves with the old wording. Expect a mix for a while. And inside California, "USE By" now carries a safety meaning, while FSIS treats "use by" as a quality date everywhere except infant formula. Same three words, different weight depending on where and when the package was made.

Why Savery calculates its own dates

This is most of the reason Savery doesn't just read the label. Even under the new rules, a printed date describes an unopened package held under the manufacturer's assumed conditions. It doesn't know how long the bag sat in a warm car, what your refrigerator actually runs at, or that the package got opened on Tuesday. Savery works from the purchase date and the category's shelf life instead, adjusted for where you put the thing.

That isn't an argument for ignoring labels, and it isn't a claim that anything past a date is fine. FSIS says a properly handled product should still be safe past a quality date, and is equally clear that you should rely on your own judgment when something seems off. The narrower point: a date is a piece of information, not a verdict, and the wording was never as precise as it looked.