Uniform Labeling System

Improved Essays
Food waste is one of those issues in the world that continues to get worse without people realizing it. They do not realize that their actions contribute to a larger problem. Regular people are throwing out large amounts of edible food every day because they do not know when it is not safe to eat anymore. A lot of this confusion comes from date labels. The sell-by dates listed on foods are incredibly misleading. Consumers believe once a food goes past its sell-by date, it cannot be eaten anymore. It then gets thrown out because it has been deemed as, “unsafe” to eat. But this is not the case at all; sell-by date labels are not related to food safety. Consumers are spending more money of food because they end up wasting so much of what they …show more content…
Creating a standardized, consistent, uniform labeling system would help create less confusion about when a food is considered bad. In an interview with Emily Broad Leib, she believes that people will make smarter decisions if we implement this change (Andrews). Based on dates alone, people can judge when they would need to buy a food in order to use it before it goes bad, and when they would need to start worrying about safety and throw out the food. Food companies would benefit from this change as well. According to Emily Broad Leib, “[food companies] struggle to comply with 50 different labelling laws and lose $1 billion each year from food that ‘expires’ before it is sold.” (Leib). The food is not actually “expired” when it gets thrown out. The label says that it is expired, so it has to be thrown away. Changing the date labeling system would keep companies from losing money. They would know roughly when a food was not safe to eat anymore, and could potentially use it for something else, like compost, instead of letting it go completely to waste. This change is definitely possible, but there are a few issues that may come up during the

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