If consumers have evolved a practice of treating printed “best before” dates as “unsafe after” dates, should the food industry instead be encouraged to print dates that more closely correspond to that evolved expectation?Food product date labeling that is intelligible to consumers emerged in the United States in the 1970s amid concerns about food safety and freshness. That history is important because food safety and freshness continue to be the lens through which consumers interpret any date printed on food packaging, whether or not its significance is safety or freshness related. One of the fallouts of this is that date labels whose significance is mainly commercial (e.g., “sell by”) encourage consumers to throw away and waste food that is edible and poses no inherent safety risk.