The first thing you should know about food expiration dates is that they have nothing to do with safety, the chef and food writer J. Kenji López-Alt explains.

In this NY Times article, The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow, J. Kenji López-Alt breaks down the myths around food expiration dates, and attempts to educate the public on what expiration dates really mean. He doesn’t get into the other issue around expiration dates, and how it increases food waste in this country, which is already a huge problem. I recall one day coming into my job as a private chef, and my client had her housekeeper go through her pantry and throw out anything past the expiration date. That was basically all of her spices! Spices don’t go bad! They may get less potent, which only means you may need to add more of a spice than you normally would, but to throw it all out is ridiculous!

Food waste in this country needs to be reigned in. We currently waste about 40% of all the food we produce, approximately 146 million tons per year. If you take into consideration all of the resources that goes into producing that food, like water, transportation, labor etc, it costs us about $408 billion dollars a year. Think of all of the people who don’t have enough to eat, and think about climate change, and how the decomposing food is giving off methane gas, adding to greenhouse gas emissions. We need to put an end to food waste, and getting rid of the bogus expiration dates would be a start!

We can do better! We must do better!

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