Most consumers in Canada have the wrong understanding about best-before dates and this could be a contributing factor to the increasing percentage of food waste and of future environmental problems, according to CBC News.
Kate Parizeau, an assistant professor at the University of Guelph, shared that in a research they recently did they found out that 80% of people use the best-before dates to decide whether or not they should be throwing out their food. So if consumers have the wrong understanding of these dates, they could be throwing out still good and safe to eat food.
And this case is not even exclusive to Canada. Even in the UK, consumers also largely base their decision whether or not to throw their food with the best-before dates. This has come to a point where research showed that if the dates were extended to 1 more day, this could largely affect the percentage of food waste reducing it to up to 5%.
So the crucial point here is to educate the public on the real deal about best-before dates.
Parizeau explains that the misconception starts with people thinking that the dates are an indicator of food safety when in most of them it's only an indicator of quality.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency mandates only five types of products to have an expiration date: baby formula, nutritional supplements, meal replacements, pharmacist-sold foods, formulated liquid diets to give the public an idea when they are still safe to eat or not. Ellie Topp, a professional home economist shared that aside from these five, the dates on other types of food sold to the public only indicate how long the food will keep its flavor and nutritional value.
With 30 percent of the total food produced annually in Canada being wasted, a changed understanding of the real reason of the best-before dates that are seen on food products sold in the market can greatly prevent food being wasted.
