Food Waste in France

Food Labels

The discussion of food waste at retail and consumption stages becomes complicated when attempting to understand food labels. If we use U.S.A as a paradigm the inconsistencies and inefficiencies of food labels quickly become apparent. Montana for example has a legislation that requires milk to have a sell by date 12 days after pasteurization. If the sell by date is exceeded law states that the milk cannot be sold or donated and must be disposed of. To put this into perspective the average sell by date for U.S.A is 21 days. In most cases food labels have no relevance to food safety but are arrived at through taste tests or through guessing, making them unscientific and arbitrary.

Further, it is almost impossible to tell when food will spoil as there are too many variables, for instance milk will spoil before the best before date if it is not stored in the refrigerator. The older the food product is not necessarily indicative of how safe it is, rather the level containments it contains is. The deli section is said to be the highest risk section of food produce that may contain containments, however, it is treated no differently than any other section. 

There is a wide amount of food labels used contributing to the complexity of understanding them. It is believed that as many as 90% of people will throw out food past its use by date. The average American waste 20-25% of food consumed. That being said, a standardized solution is suggested to create consistency and contribute to combating food waste (Mars, 2016). For more information on food labels listen to this short podcast.

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