Fooled Into Food Waste
America has a food waste problem; that is clear. What’s not clear are the food labels and expiration dates that contribute to this problem.
Household waste makes up 40% of all food waste in the U.S., and an estimated 20% of household food waste is due to confusion over packaging labels. As consumers, we are so quick to throw anything away as soon as it reaches the labeled date. But what many people don’t know is that the labels don’t always mean what we think they do. The “sell by” and “best by” dates on food packaging indicate a peak of freshness, rather than a point in time when the food is no longer safe to consume.
Labels on food containers first began in the 1940s, when consumers started shopping at larger, multi-department supermarkets. But these labels were not originally designed for consumers. They were designed for the grocer to know how long their stock had been on the shelf. Consumers quickly realized this and saw it as a way to buy longer-lasting products. In the same way that many of us shop today, people started reaching behind the product in front, to buy the fresher product in back.
According to Alissa Wilkinson’s article on Vox, there are two important facts you should know about date labels on foods in the U.S:
They’re not standardized.
They have almost nothing to do with food safety.
Unfortunately, being overly cautious of food labels is engrained into the way we pick and choose when to throw away the items in our fridge. According to Wilkinson, there needs to be a change in how we as consumers think: “We each need to rethink how we interact with food. We need to start trusting our senses to tell us if food is edible. We need to ask for more clear labels, advocate for better legislation, and talk to one another about what labels really mean.”
Read Wilkinson’s full article here to learn about the other factors that contribute to the misunderstanding of food labels.
What does this mean for Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin?
As we approach our 40th year in the food banking industry, we have taken a look back into where our roots first began. When members of the Rotary Club came together in 1980, a main concern they wanted to address was the problem of food waste. As they studied the problem and looked at other models of food banking across the United States, Second Harvest of Wisconsin was born, which is now Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin.
Since then, rescuing food and fighting food waste has been a top priority for Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin. Many programs have been created that save perfectly healthy food from being dumped into a landfill. Read about how Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin rescues food with a metal detector, rescues food through the Direct Connect Program, and fights food waste one ‘Imperfect’ item at a time.
