Wasting Money and Food

New findings from a 2025 national survey reveal that U.S. consumers are discarding food near or past the printed date even more frequently than in 2016.

According to ReFed, U.S.-based nonprofit working to catalyze the food system toward evidence-based action to stop wasting food, this is concerning since the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service maintains that most food remains safe beyond the printed date.

ReFED estimates that nearly 35 million tons of food, costing almost $800 per person, are wasted annually, with misinterpretation of date labels alone accounting for about 3 billion pounds of food worth $7 billion in waste.

“The message for consumers is also striking: You might be throwing out food when you don’t need to,” says Roni Neff, professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and co-author of the report. “We found that across labels, on average 39% of respondents thought they knew the label meanings but were incorrect.

For more: https://refed.org/articles/confusion-over-food-date-labels-has-grown-according-to-new-national-survey/