Changing the wording about expiration dates on perishable food items — which is currently unregulated and widely variable — could help reduce food waste, according to a new Cornell University-led study.

A survey of consumers found that certain wording — “best by,” as opposed to “best if used by,” for example — had the potential to reduce food waste, but that results varied depending on the type of food in question. Predictably, the more perishable a food item, the greater the likelihood of discarding it.

This work has implications for both policy proposals regarding date labels and the market impacts of reducing food waste.

“Some consumers might do a sniff test to see if food is still good, while others might just look at the date label and throw it away,” said Brad Rickard, professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and senior author of “Date Labels, Food Waste and Supply Chain Implications,” which published in the European Review of Agricultural Economics.

“And the truth is, with very few exceptions, these date labels that are used in the United States are not regulated,” Rickard said. “And they’re not food safety dates; they’re just food quality dates.”

Co-authors were Shuay-Tsyr Ho, assistant professor of agricultural economics at National Taiwan University; Florine Livat, associate professor of economics at the Kedge Business School in Talence, France, and a former visiting scholar at Dyson; and Abigail Okrent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

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