What is the difference between use-by and best-before?
One is a safety instruction and the other is an opinion about quality — and confusing them causes both illness and waste.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 10 min
- Read
- 2 min
- Safety
- warning
Short answer
Use-by is about safety: do not eat it after that date, whatever it looks like. Best-before is about quality: it is usually fine afterwards, and judging it yourself is entirely reasonable.
These two labels look similar and mean completely different things. Treating best-before as a safety date wastes an enormous amount of food; treating use-by as an opinion is how people make themselves ill.
Safety
Step by step
- Treat use-by as an instruction.It appears on things that go off dangerously — meat, fish, dairy, ready meals, prepared salads. After that date the food may be unsafe even though it looks and smells completely normal.
- Understand why looking and smelling does not work.The bacteria that cause food poisoning do not produce off smells or visible changes. Spoilage bacteria do, and they are largely harmless. Your senses detect the wrong thing.
- Follow the storage instructions that go with it.A use-by date assumes correct storage. "Use within three days of opening" overrides the printed date, and a product left out of the fridge is not covered by it at all.
- Treat best-before as a quality guide.It appears on things that go stale rather than dangerous — biscuits, tinned goods, dried pasta, flour. Past it, food is generally safe and may simply be less good.
- Judge best-before items yourself.Look, smell and taste are entirely appropriate here, because the failure mode is quality rather than safety. Tinned and dried goods often last long past the date.
- Know the eggs exception.Eggs carry a best-before date, but they are also a salmonella risk. The float test — a fresh egg sinks, a stale one floats — is a useful quality check, and cooking thoroughly is the safety measure.
- Freeze before the use-by date, not after.Freezing stops the clock but does not reverse it. Freeze on or before the use-by date, and use within a day of defrosting.
- When it is a use-by and you are unsure, throw it out.The cost of the food is small against a few days of illness. This is the one category where caution is straightforwardly correct.
Tips
- Best-before waste is enormous and entirely avoidable. Tins, dried pasta, rice and flour are usually good long past the date if stored dry.
- Move things approaching their use-by date to the front of the fridge. A shelf for "eat first" prevents most household food waste.
- "Display until" and "sell by" are for shop staff and mean nothing to you. Ignore them entirely.
Questions people ask
Can I eat food after the best-before date?
Usually yes — it is a quality date, not a safety one. Judge it by look, smell and taste, which is appropriate for this category.
Can I eat food after the use-by date?
No. It is a safety date and the bacteria involved do not change how food looks or smells. If it is past its use-by, throw it away.