If you're like me and you live and die by the expiration date on your yogurt, milk, cheese, and other dairy products, then it's likely (like me) that you waste a lot of food. In fact, Americans throw out about 34 million tons of food waste per year and expiration/use-by dates are largely to blame.
Let's face it: Eating food that has gone past its expiration date is a scary business, and few of us are willing to take that risk. With salmonella outbreaks, deaths from E. coli poisoning, and the rantings of friends who have had food poisoning on Facebook, more of us are too scared to eat yogurt, milk, or eggs past their "use-by" date. We throw out 14 percent of the food we buy.
And when we do so, it all just sits in a landfill, rotting. Now experts are saying "use-by" dates are almost arbitrarily assigned by the FDA and that actually they're a best guess as opposed to an exact science.
How many times have you opened your fridge only to find the yogurt you wanted a week past its date, but the yogurt looks fine?
I can't tell you the number of fights I have had with my parents over the years about sell-by versus use-by versus expiration dates. They travel a lot and shuttle between two homes. As a result, much of the food in their fridge is old. I have always refused to eat it. Turns out they've been right all along.
Scott Hurd, director of the Food Risk Modeling and Policy Lab at Iowa State University