Use-by and best-before dates: what they actually mean and which one matters
One label warns of food poisoning and the other merely protects flavour, yet millions of shoppers treat them as identical deadlines.
UK households routinely discard edible groceries because of confusion between use-by and best-before labels. Food safety authorities emphasize that use-by is an inflexible deadline for perishable foods, whereas best-before denotes peak quality and can be safely exceeded.
