Very interesting fact that the average person doesn’t know. From #FactuallyInteresting#, the date printed on your food is not a law. It is not a safety standard. In most cases, it is not based on any standardized scientific method. In the United States, date labels like "sell by," "best by," and "use by" are unregulated for virtually every product you buy. The FDA does not require manufacturers to get approval before printing a date and does not require them to explain how they arrived at it. The USDA acknowledges there are no universally accepted definitions for what these phrases even mean. Over ten different variations currently exist across grocery shelves nationwide. These labels emerged in the 1970s as consumer demand pushed stores to move from internal coded stock systems to readable shelf labels. But the goal was always inventory management, not consumer safety. No one standardized the science behind them because there was no science behind them. Retailers simply started printing dates, and the practice spread. A 2013 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Harvard Law School found that more than 90 percent of Americans throw out food prematurely because they misread these labels as safety indicators. The total cost of uneaten food in the U.S. runs to approximately $218 billion a year. A family of four loses around $1,800 annually. Up to 40 percent of the entire U.S. food supply goes uneaten. The only federally regulated date in an American grocery store is on infant formula. Everything else is the manufacturer's choice. If you want an actual guide, the free USDA FoodKeeper app gives storage timelines for hundreds of specific foods based on real data. That is the tool that was always missing from the label. Save this before your next grocery run.