Best Before, Use By, Sell By: What Do Food Date Labels Actually Mean?
Here is a finding that should change how you shop: in Hong Kong, a YouGov poll found that 25% of residents either believe food is unsafe after its "Best Before" date — or aren't sure. That means roughly one in four people in this city is routinely throwing away perfectly edible food based on a label that has nothing to do with safety.
In a city that generates 3,001 tonnes of food waste every single day (2026 figures from Hong Kong's Environmental Protection Department), and where 68% of that waste comes from households, date label confusion is not a minor issue. It is one of the most fixable drivers of the problem — and fixing it starts with understanding what three small words on a packet actually mean.
The three labels, decoded
Best Before
"Best Before" is a quality date, not a safety date. It tells you when a manufacturer estimates the product will be at its peak — best texture, flavour, colour, or nutritional profile. After that date, the food may lose some of those qualities. It will not, in most cases, make you sick.
Common products with "Best Before" dates: dried pasta, tinned goods, cereals, biscuits, frozen food, condiments, chocolate, and most shelf-stable items.
A tin of tomatoes a week past its Best Before date is not dangerous. It is a tin of tomatoes.
Use By
"Use By" is a safety date, and it is the one you should take seriously. It appears on products where bacteria can grow to harmful levels if the food is stored too long — fresh meat, fish, ready-to-eat salads, soft cheese, and similar items.
After a "Use By" date, you should not eat the product, even if it looks and smells fine. Some of the bacteria that cause food poisoning — Listeria, Campylobacter, E. coli — are odourless and invisible.
The rule of thumb: Best Before = quality. Use By = safety. One is a suggestion. The other is a boundary.
Sell By (and Display Until)
"Sell By" is a stock management date aimed at retailers, not consumers. It tells a shop how long to keep a product on the shelf for visual freshness. It is not a signal of when the food becomes unsafe or even noticeably lower quality.
If you buy something on its Sell By date, you typically have several more days of safe eating ahead of you — just store it properly and check it with your senses before eating.
"Display Until" works the same way. Both of these labels are instructions to the supermarket, not to you.
Why this matters in Hong Kong
Hong Kong's labelling regulations do not yet require a standardised format across product categories, which means shoppers encounter a patchwork of terms — sometimes in English and Chinese, sometimes with different formats from different brands — and default to the safest interpretation: when in doubt, bin it.
The Loop HK reported in early 2026 that date label confusion is now considered one of the primary behavioural drivers of household food waste, alongside over-purchasing and poor fridge organisation. A YouGov poll of over 1,000 Hong Kong residents found that half agreed standardising date labels would help them reduce waste.
Feeding Hong Kong, which redistributes surplus food to charities across the city, notes that one of the most common reasons donated food cannot be accepted is that it has passed its "Best Before" date — even though it is still safe to eat. The confusion costs food banks usable food and costs households usable money.
A practical guide: what's actually fine past its date
These are general guidelines — always use your senses and common sense.
Usually fine well past the Best Before date (if stored correctly):
Dried pasta and rice: months to a year or more
Tinned goods: years, assuming the tin is undamaged
Dried pulses and lentils: indefinitely (texture may soften over time)
Hard cheese: cut off any surface mould, eat the rest
Eggs: test in water — if they sink and lay flat, they're fresh; if they float, bin them
Biscuits and crackers: may go soft, but are not dangerous
Vinegar, salt, sugar, honey: essentially indefinite
Eat within a day or two of Best Before, or freeze before:
Bread (freezes well — slice before freezing)
Yoghurt and sour cream (often fine several days past date; check for mould)
Soft drinks and juices (safe but may lose carbonation or taste flat)
Respect the Use By date:
Raw meat and fish
Ready-to-eat salads and pre-cut fruit
Soft cheeses (brie, ricotta, fresh mozzarella)
Ready meals and chilled prepared foods
The sense-check method
Before throwing anything out, run the three-second test: look, smell, taste a small amount. This is the method professional chefs and food safety educators recommend for Best Before products. If it looks normal, smells fine, and tastes as expected, it is almost certainly safe to eat.
Your senses evolved for exactly this purpose. A tin of chickpeas that smells and looks perfectly normal three days after its Best Before date is a tin of chickpeas. Eat it.
What near-expiry food looks like at the commercial level
While households wrestle with date label confusion, restaurants, bakeries, and retailers are dealing with the same issue at scale — except their margins mean they tend to act earlier. A bakery that baked 80 croissants for a Monday morning rush and sold 60 by 3 pm doesn't wait for a Use By date. The 20 remaining croissants are pulled from display regardless.
This is where food rescue comes in. CHOMP works with partner cafes, bakeries, restaurants, and retailers across Hong Kong to redirect that end-of-day surplus — food that is fresh, safe, and fully at its best — before it reaches the bin. Subscribers to the Rescued Feast by CHOMP newsletter get first look at pop-up events, exclusive menus from Rescued Feast chefs, and behind-the-scenes stories from the partners making it work.
The bottom line
"Best Before" means the manufacturer thinks it tastes best before that date. "Use By" means don't eat it after that date. "Sell By" is for the shop, not you.
Understanding this difference will not transform Hong Kong's food waste problem on its own. But it is one of the clearest, most immediate things a household can do to stop throwing away food — and money — that was never a risk to begin with.
Get closer to rescued food
The Rescued Feast transforms surplus ingredients into memorable catering for businesses and events across Hong Kong. Follow along on Instagram to see the latest menus, events and collaborations.
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