Are you throwing out perfectly good food? When labels mislead...

Most of us check food labels for dates to make sure it’s still good. 

But experts say Americans throw out billions of pounds of perfectly good food every year, thanks to confusing labels. “Sell-by” labels, intended for the retailers, wind up misleading a lot of us, according to the Harvard Food Law and Policy clinic. Many dates printed on the food we buy are actually meaningless when it comes to freshness. Even the “best-before” and “use-by” dates are misleading and encourage us to throw good food away before it’s time.

Food scientist Theodore Labuza agrees these labels are misleading. He says you can’t tie shelf life to a date. If the food looks rotten and smells bad, you should throw it away, but just because it's past the date on the package, it doesn't mean it's unsafe.