Confusion over food date labels is causing Canadians to discard billions of dollars in edible food every year.

This widespread misunderstanding creates a significant economic and environmental burden by inflating the volume of avoidable waste sent to landfills. When consumers mistake quality indicators for safety warnings, they throw away food that is still safe to eat.

A report released Nov. 18, 2025, by Too Good To Go and Dalhousie's Agri-Food Analytics Lab highlights the scale of the problem. According to the findings, food waste linked to best-before date confusion totals $12 billion annually [1].

The study indicates that this specific confusion accounts for 23% of all avoidable food waste across Canada [2]. This suggests that nearly a quarter of the food discarded by households could have been consumed if labels were better understood.

Best-before dates are intended to indicate when a product may begin to lose its peak quality, such as flavor or texture. However, many consumers treat these dates as hard expiry deadlines, the point at which food becomes unsafe. This behavioral pattern leads to the disposal of items that remain perfectly edible long after the printed date.

Industry analysts and researchers said that the resulting waste is not only a financial loss for households but also a systemic failure in food resource management. The data shows that billions of dollars of food are wasted each year due to this specific labeling misunderstanding [3].

“Food waste linked to best-before date confusion totals $12 billion annually”

The findings highlight a critical gap in consumer literacy regarding food safety versus food quality. Because 'best-before' is a manufacturer's estimate of peak quality rather than a safety deadline, the $12 billion loss represents a systemic inefficiency. Reducing this waste would require a shift in national labeling standards or a large-scale public education campaign to decouple the concept of freshness from the concept of safety.