On 2 September 2026, Narriman Looch, the Food Standards Agency's head of food hygiene and foodborne disease control, wrote to people heading to university. Some, she noted, might be cooking for themselves properly for the first time. Her advice began with a fridge and a deadline: meat and dairy carry use-by dates because those dates are about safety. If the food will not be eaten in time, freeze it before the date passes2. The point is not to wait for a verdict. It is to keep the meal available before the choice narrows.
Across the kitchen, dried pasta, chocolate and tinned food have a different kind of date. Their best-before labels are about quality2. Those words create two different choices. Reading them beside the number is what tells the two jobs apart.
California tried to make the choice visible
On July 1, 2026, California changed what shoppers would see beside many dates on food. Its new rule made the split explicit: “BEST if Used by” would signal quality, “USE by” safety, and the old consumer-facing “sell by” instruction would retreat to a code for shops1.
That change gives the person holding a pack a clearer first question: is this date about safety or quality? British readers should still follow the UK wording. In the UK, “use by” is the safety date and “best before” is the quality date.
California's clean split sits inside a messier national picture. The US Food and Drug Administration says that, apart from infant formula, federal law does not require quality-based dates on packaged food, and the country still has no uniform description for open dating, meaning calendar dates printed on food5. It supports “Best if Used By” as the standard wording for peak flavour and quality, while manufacturers still apply most date labels at their discretion5.
That is why California's rule matters beyond its border: the words can separate a quality judgement from a safety deadline even where the legal systems differ1. The FDA also presents an estimate that confusion over date labels accounts for 20 percent of food wasted by US consumers5. Its use here is narrower: mistaken wording can send edible food towards waste, so getting the category right changes the decision before disposal.
The chilled pack has a deadline
This is why the student-facing advice starts early. Eat the food, cook it as directed or freeze it before the use-by date. If the date has passed, do not eat it. The Food Standards Agency says not to chance it, even when food looks and smells fine2. A date coming up can still save a meal, while a date already passed closes that route.
The choice is not hypothetical in British kitchens. The Food Standards Agency combined evidence about home food-handling practices from 2020 to 2025, including an official survey of around 6,000 adults in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in each twice-yearly wave4. The agency reports those twice-yearly waves separately from its monthly tracker4.
The twice-yearly survey
Between the October 2021 to January 2022 wave and the October 2022 to January 2023 wave, the share who said they would not eat food after its use-by date fell for four named foods. Raw meat moved from 56% to 50%, cooked meat from 42% to 36%, smoked fish from 53% to 46%, and milk from 44% to 36%4.
The monthly tracker
A separate monthly online tracker showed the opposite wording of the same behaviour between July 2020 and June 2023. It surveyed around 2,000 adults each month using an online quota sample, so its results are not nationally representative and may exclude people without internet access4.
For bagged salads it rose from 37% to 49%, and for cooked meats from 29% to 40%. Milk moved from 27% to 43%, while smoked fish moved from 16% to 23%4.
The later wave changed the picture. By the October 2024 to February 2025 wave, most answers about not consuming these foods after their use-by date were back near the October 2021 to January 2022 level, although milk showed a small sustained decrease4. The agency's own boundary is important: these are self-reported behaviours, not illness rates, and they cannot explain changes in foodborne disease across the population4.
So the evidence does not say each late meal made someone ill. It shows where clear words and an earlier decision can reduce an avoidable risk4. This turns Looch's freezer advice from a neat tip into the point where the story can change.
The cupboard pack asks for judgement
A best-before date sets a different task. The Food Standards Agency says food is still safe to eat after its best-before date, though it might not taste as good2. That leaves room to judge whether its quality remains acceptable before sending it to the bin. The date alone has not made that choice.
This investigation continues below.
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Now the two packs begin to move in opposite directions. The chilled use-by food is kept, cooked or frozen in time, with safety protected. The sound cupboard food stays in use while its quality remains acceptable. Read the wrong words and the choice flips.
If food is binned, the route matters
The cupboard food has no single fate once it is thrown away. If it reaches landfill, it decays without oxygen and releases methane, a gas with a strong warming effect3.
The US Environmental Protection Agency followed that physical change across municipal landfills from 1990 to 2020. Its estimate found that food was about 24 percent of the waste disposed there but produced 58 percent of the methane that escaped to the air. EPA says food's quick decay makes it contribute more methane than any other landfilled material3. Keeping edible food in use therefore comes before relying on waste treatment to contain the result.
The British waste route has its own evidence. A UK government methane memorandum says landfill accounted for 81 percent of methane from the country's waste sector in 20206. The remaining share came from treating wastewater and from breaking down waste biologically6. It also records that waste-sector methane emissions were 75 percent lower in 2020 than in 1990, after years of reducing biodegradable waste sent to landfill and improving gas collection from sites that already held it6.
For local-authority waste in England, the amount sent to landfill fell from 22 million tonnes in 2000–01 to 2 million tonnes in 2019–20 as recycling and energy recovery rose6. The memorandum describes methane as around 80 times more powerful per tonne than carbon dioxide over 20 years, and around 30 times over 100 years6.
Those national figures cannot tell a household where one discarded meal went. They do show that the route is not a footnote: keeping edible food out of landfill is part of the change Britain has already measured6. That returns the choice to the pack.
Bring the two packs back together
The pack still matters after its date has been understood. First, keep food useful for its full evidenced life without weakening its use-by boundary. Before choosing a waste route, open your council's food-waste collection page. Look for a separate food-waste collection that names composting or anaerobic digestion. If the council offers none, follow its listed route rather than assuming the food will be biologically treated. For packaging, keep the minimum protection the food needs. Then ask two questions: could every material return safely to earth, or could it be recycled again without quality loss? If a pack mixes materials, require its parts to separate cleanly. These are directions for better choices, not proof that any dated product complies.
The new cook in Looch's guidance can begin with one small habit: read the words beside the date before deciding what to do. Their words lead the food, and the person holding it, down very different paths.