The date on a food package looks like a deadline. But in the United States, it often tells you when food will taste its best—not when it becomes unsafe to eat.
You’re searching through the back of your pantry when you find an unopened package of crackers.
The packaging looks fine. Nothing seems unusual.
Then you notice the date.
Best if Used By: Last week.
Suddenly, those perfectly ordinary crackers seem questionable.
Do you eat them or throw them away?
The date makes the decision feel straightforward. Surely the manufacturer wouldn’t print it unless something important happened when it passed.
But what exactly changed at midnight?
In many cases, nothing dramatic happened at all.
Most best-by dates in the United States are about food quality, not the moment food becomes unsafe.
That means food can remain safe after its printed date.
But there’s an equally important catch: Food can become unsafe before that date, too.
Understanding why can save you from unnecessarily throwing away perfectly good food—and from trusting a date that cannot guarantee safety.
A Best-By Date Usually Isn’t an Expiration Deadline
The phrase Best if Used By sounds like a warning.
But for most conventional packaged foods, it means something much less alarming.
It’s the manufacturer’s estimate of when the product will be at its best in terms of flavor, freshness, texture, or overall quality.
It doesn’t necessarily identify the day harmful microorganisms will make the food unsafe.
Consider those crackers.
Over time, they might lose their crispness. Their flavor may become less appealing.
But if the package is intact and the crackers have been stored properly, passing the best-by date doesn’t automatically make them dangerous.
The important distinction is between quality and safety.
Quality describes whether food still has the characteristics you expect.
Safety concerns whether eating it could make you ill.
Food can become less enjoyable without becoming unsafe. And food can sometimes become unsafe without any obvious change in its appearance or flavor.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognizes this distinction.
In fact, with the exception of infant formula, federal law generally doesn’t require manufacturers to print quality-based dates on packaged foods.
The FDA encourages the phrase Best if Used By to communicate peak quality more clearly.
That’s an important detail because many shoppers understandably assume that every date represents a government-established safety deadline.
Most don’t.
And the confusion has consequences.
The FDA estimates that misunderstandings about date labels account for approximately 20% of consumer food waste.
That doesn’t mean every discarded product was necessarily safe to eat. But it illustrates how easily a quality recommendation can be mistaken for an expiration warning.
Unfortunately, the wording on food packages hasn’t always made things easy.
What Do Best By, Sell By, and Use By Actually Mean?
Walk through a grocery store, and you’ll encounter several different date labels.
They may look interchangeable, but they haven’t always served the same purpose.
Best if Used By generally identifies when a product is expected to have its best flavor or quality. Passing that date doesn’t automatically make it unsafe.
Sell By traditionally tells retailers how long to display a product for sale. It’s primarily an inventory-management date, not a consumer safety deadline.
Use By requires more attention.
Under longstanding federal guidance, this phrase has often indicated the manufacturer’s recommended date for peak quality, rather than a universal safety cutoff.
But there are important exceptions.
Infant formula is different
The FDA requires infant formula to carry a Use By date.
That date identifies the period during which the manufacturer guarantees the formula’s declared nutrient content and acceptable quality.
Infant formula should not be used after its printed Use By date.
This isn’t a date to interpret loosely as an ordinary quality suggestion.
California now distinguishes quality dates from safety dates
There’s also a significant recent change.
On July 1, 2026, California’s new food-date-labeling rules took effect under Assembly Bill 660.
For covered food products manufactured on or after that date, businesses that display quality or safety dates must use standardized wording.
Under the California system:
- Best if Used By indicates a quality date.
- Use By indicates a safety date.
The law also generally prohibits consumer-facing Sell By labels on covered products, while allowing certain exceptions and coded inventory dates.
These requirements aren’t a nationwide federal standard. And products manufactured before July 1, 2026, may still appear with older terminology.
The distinction matters because you cannot assume every Use By label on every product in the United States means exactly the same thing.
The product, the applicable labeling rules, and the purpose of the date all matter.
But even after you’ve identified a quality date correctly, one crucial question remains.
If that date doesn’t determine whether food is safe, what does?
Why Food Can Be Unsafe Before Its Date—or Safe After It
Imagine two foods sitting in your kitchen.
One is an unopened package of crackers stored in a cool, dry pantry.
The other is a package of fresh chicken in your refrigerator.
Both have dates printed on them.
But treating those dates as equivalent would be a mistake.
The crackers are shelf-stable. When properly packaged and stored, they may remain suitable after their quality date, although their taste and texture can gradually deteriorate.
Fresh chicken is highly perishable.
According to FoodSafety.gov, raw chicken and turkey should generally be cooked or frozen within one to two days of refrigerated storage at 40°F (4°C) or below.
That’s a food-specific storage recommendation—not a rule you can replace with whatever date happens to appear on the package.
The difference illustrates something a printed date cannot tell you:
Everything that has happened to the food since it was packaged.
A product may have been transported, refrigerated, and stored correctly.
Or it may have spent too long at an unsafe temperature.
A refrigerated food can become unsafe before its printed date if it has been mishandled.
And even a shelf-stable product that might otherwise last beyond its quality date may be unsuitable if its packaging is damaged or its storage conditions were poor.
Opening a package adds another consideration.
A manufacturer’s date may be based on the product remaining unopened.
Once it’s opened, handling, air exposure, and storage conditions can change how long the food remains suitable.
The date cannot account for all those changes.
This is why the safest approach depends partly on what kind of food you’re dealing with.
An unopened pantry staple and a refrigerated perishable food shouldn’t be judged by the same assumptions.
And there’s another familiar shortcut that isn’t nearly as reliable as people think.
Why the Smell Test Can’t Guarantee Food Is Safe
You’ve probably heard someone say, “If it smells fine, it’s fine.”
Sometimes, your senses can certainly alert you to a problem.
Visible mold, an unpleasant odor, unusual texture, or damaged packaging can all be reasons to discard food.
But the absence of those warning signs doesn’t prove that food is safe.
The reason has to do with the difference between spoilage organisms and disease-causing microorganisms.
Some microorganisms cause obvious deterioration. They can change a food’s smell, appearance, or texture.
Others can cause foodborne illness without producing noticeable changes.
The USDA explains that harmful bacteria may be present even when food looks, smells, and tastes normal.
That’s why smelling questionable food cannot reliably confirm its safety.
And tasting it to find out is not a safe test.
This creates an important distinction.
A bad smell can be a warning.
A normal smell isn’t a guarantee.
For perishable foods especially, knowing how the product was stored and handled matters more than relying on your senses alone.
So where does that leave you when you discover something past its best-by date?
How to Decide Whether Food Past Its Best-By Date Is Still Usable
You don’t need to treat every expired-looking date as a reason to throw food away.
But you also shouldn’t assume that every product remains safe simply because its date was intended as a quality guideline.
A more useful approach is to consider three things.
First, understand what the date means.
A conventional Best if Used By date generally refers to expected quality.
That’s different from the federally required date on infant formula or a safety-designated date under applicable state labeling rules.
Second, consider the food and how it has been stored.
Is it a shelf-stable product that has remained unopened in appropriate conditions?
Or is it a perishable food that requires careful refrigeration and relatively prompt use?
Has the package been opened? Was the food kept at the required temperature?
Those details can matter much more than how many days have passed since the printed date.
Third, don’t ignore signs of damage or spoilage—but don’t rely on appearance alone.
Damaged, leaking, or bulging packaging deserves particular caution.
And when there’s reason to believe a perishable food was stored unsafely, an acceptable smell doesn’t make it safe.
If you’re uncertain about a particular product, consult food-specific storage guidance rather than guessing how long past the date it might remain usable.
The federal government’s Cold Food Storage Chart provides recommendations for refrigerated and frozen foods.
The USDA’s FoodKeeper resource offers storage guidance for hundreds of individual foods and beverages.
These resources account for differences that a printed quality date cannot.
And they help avoid two opposite mistakes.
One is discarding food automatically when a quality date passes, even though it may still be suitable.
The other is treating quality dates as meaningless and overlooking the food’s actual storage and safety requirements.
Neither approach gets the distinction right.
So Is Food Safe After Its Best-By Date?
Return to those crackers in your pantry.
Their best-by date passed last week.
That fact alone doesn’t mean they suddenly became unsafe when the calendar changed.
If they’ve remained unopened, properly stored, and free from signs of damage or deterioration, the date may simply indicate that their flavor or texture is no longer at its best.
But the same reasoning shouldn’t be applied indiscriminately to every food.
Perishable products have different storage requirements. Some date labels carry specific safety meanings. And food that’s been mishandled can become unsafe regardless of what the package says.
A best-by date can tell you when food is expected to be at its best. It cannot, by itself, tell you whether that food is safe to eat.
That’s the distinction worth remembering the next time you find a forgotten package in your kitchen.
The printed date is part of the story.
The food itself—and how it has been stored and handled—matters just as much.
