Why, Where, and How We Waste Food

No one is quite sure about what food labels mean. But still, they seem to alarm us:

Where are we going? To our labels and our waste.

Expiration Dates

Food stores began sharing expiration dates with their customers during the 1970s. The problem though is inconsistency. Depending on the manufacturer’s intent and the consumer’s interpretation, the label could refer to food safety, freshness, or optimal taste. It could say sell by, enjoy no later than, best if used by, freeze by, and a slew of other freshness labels that no one has defined for us.  And even then, when the food reaches our homes, how we handle it will ultimately determine how long it lasts.

As a result, except for infant formula labels, the states each decide what to mandate.

These are some 2025 examples:

California:

Massachusetts:

Texas:

Iowa:

From our expiration labels, we can take the leap to food waste. Food labels are one of the many reasons we waste our food.

Wasted Food

Called our surplus by ReFED, close to one third of the food that travels from our farms to our households is wasted or lost:

In its 2025 Report, ReFED identifies the Sector and relative size of the food surplus, the Cause and relative size of the loss, and also the relative size of the Food Type. You can see that quantified (if that is possible), label concerns are just 5.8 percent of all of the causes of food waste and loss:

However, knowing about food waste can give us a new way to look at our GDP.

Our Bottom Line: Consumption Expenditures

The Gross National Product–our GDP–has four components. Together they add up to the dollar value of the goods and services we produce each year.

1. Gross Investment is mainly what businesses spend on equipment and construction but also includes residential housing and inventory changes.
2. Government Spending is just what the name says. It ranges from submarines to the President’s salary.
3. Consumption Expenditures includes the goods and services that you and I buy.
4. Net Exports: This is the foreign trade part of the GDP.

Our consumption spending is close to 70% of the GDP. Within that total, we have our spending on food at home and away:

Now, seeing our food spending, we know that it combines consumption and waste.

My sources and more: Thanks to the NY Times for inspiring our return to food labels and waste. Still, Refed  remains our best source of food labeling and waste statistics. While I wonder how much waste can be accurately quantified, we know it is massive. And this recent Harvard survey does have numbers.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were published in a past econlife post.