If you've ever stood in front of the refrigerator wondering whether "sell by," "best by," and "use by" all mean the same thing, you're certainly not alone. Food packages have used so many different date phrases over the years that figuring out whether something is actually unsafe or simply past its peak quality can be unnecessarily confusing.

California is now trying to simplify that. As of July 2026, new food-date labeling requirements under Assembly Bill 660 are in effect, standardizing the language manufacturers use and eliminating consumer-facing "sell by" dates on most foods sold in the state.

One of the biggest changes is something shoppers will probably notice fairly quickly: "sell by" dates are no longer allowed as consumer-facing dates on covered foods.

That's because "sell by" was primarily useful to stores for managing inventory, yet shoppers could easily interpret it as a warning that food should be thrown away after that date. Retailers can still use coded information behind the scenes for stock rotation, but it won't appear as a traditional "sell by" date intended for shoppers to read.

Some exceptions to the new requirements include eggs and infant formula.

Instead of encountering a mix of phrases, California is separating food dates into two basic categories: quality and safety.

For quality, shoppers will see:

"BEST if Used by" or "BEST if Used or Frozen by."

These dates refer to when a product is expected to be at its best in terms of freshness or quality. In other words, this isn't meant to tell you that the food suddenly becomes unsafe the following day.

For food safety, the wording is different:

"USE by" or "USE by or Freeze by."

These dates are intended to communicate that the date relates to food safety rather than simply freshness or quality.

That distinction may sound small, but it's arguably the most useful part of the change. Instead of shoppers having to guess what a date means, the wording itself is supposed to tell them why the date is there.

The bigger issue behind the new law is food waste. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, more than 50 different date-label phrases have been used on food products in the United States. With that many variations floating around, it's easy to understand how shoppers could mistake a quality recommendation for an expiration or safety warning.

And throwing something away a few days too early may not seem significant when you're cleaning out your own refrigerator, but multiply that behavior across millions of households, and it becomes a much bigger problem.

California officials report that the equivalent of 2.5 billion meals worth of unspoiled food is discarded each year. Organic waste also makes up about 48% of what Californians send to landfills.

There's a financial side to it, too. Tossing perfectly usable food means households are essentially throwing away part of their grocery budget, while food that could potentially have been recovered is also lost.

For shoppers, this may be the easiest way to remember the new system:

If you see "BEST if Used by," think about freshness and quality. If you see "USE by," pay attention because that date is communicating food-safety information.

Smaller packages may not always spell everything out, either. The law permits abbreviated versions of the standardized terminology when there isn't enough room for the full wording.

Most of us have probably thrown something away because we weren't quite sure what the date meant. When the choice is between eating questionable food and tossing it, throwing it away can feel like the safest option.

The new system is meant to remove some of that guesswork. A clearly identified quality date gives shoppers more useful information than a vague date that could be mistaken for an expiration deadline.