Use-by and best-before dates: what they actually mean and which one matters

Throwing away food because the date on the packet has passed usually comes down to a misunderstanding of two phrases: use-by and best-before. One is a firm safety warning. The other is simply a promise about flavour.

What a use-by date means

A use-by date is the only one that genuinely matters for your health. Under Food Standards Agency guidance, it applies to foods that spoil quickly and carry a risk of food poisoning, such as fresh meat, poultry, soft cheeses, smoked fish and prepared salads. Once that date passes, harmful bacteria including listeria and salmonella can multiply to dangerous levels, even if the food looks clean, smells normal and tastes entirely fine. Pathogens do not always make food stink or rot before making people ill. The advice from food microbiologists is uncompromising: eat the item, freeze it before midnight on the date specified, or throw it out.

Why best-before dates are about quality

Best-before dates have nothing to do with bacterial safety. They indicate the date until which a manufacturer guarantees an item will retain its optimum texture, flavour and colour. After that day passes, bread might turn dry, tinned beans may soften and crisps will gradually lose their crunch, but none of them become toxic. As long as packaging remains sealed, dry goods, canned produce and frozen foods remain edible well past their printed dates. The Food Standards Agency confirms that eating food after its best-before date is safe, provided it shows no signs of physical spoilage or mould.

Why households throw away edible food

Yet millions of consumers treat the two labels as interchangeable deadlines. Research by the waste reduction charity WRAP indicates that household confusion over food dating contributes heavily to millions of tonnes of edible groceries ending up in UK bins every year. People frequently discard unopened jars of condiments, packets of dry pasta and tins of tomatoes simply because the calendar ticked past a printed best-before date, driving up weekly grocery bills without preventing a single case of food poisoning.

How supermarkets are responding

To cut down on unnecessary waste, several major UK supermarket chains, including Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's and Waitrose, have removed best-before dates from hundreds of fresh fruit and vegetable items. In their place, retailers encourage shoppers to rely on their own judgment. Looking for visible rot, testing the firmness of fruit and checking for off-putting smells are practical ways to decide whether a potato, apple or bag of carrots is still good to cook.

Why the sniff test fails for use-by

The danger arises when people apply that same common-sense sniff test to use-by dates. Relying on your nose works for fruit, vegetables and bread, but it offers zero protection against the bacteria found on perishable protein. A chicken breast or slice of deli ham teeming with campylobacter can smell completely fresh. Freezing remains the simplest way to avoid waste: if an item has a use-by date you cannot meet, freezing it stops bacterial growth until you thaw and cook it thoroughly.

What to check before binning food

Checking the exact wording on the packet takes two seconds. If the label reads use-by, treat it as a hard deadline to protect against foodborne illness. If it says best-before, ignore the calendar, trust your senses and keep it in the pantry.