Dating on food products is confusing, and how to go about what’s on the label is often not obvious.

That’s where this article comes in. In it, we go through the most popular terms and phrases and explain how to interpret various date formats.

Let’s start with the terms you can find on food labels.

Common Date Labeling Phrases and Terms

The most common terms used on food labels are:

• Best Before (or Best if Used By). This date indicates how long the product is supposed to retain the best flavor or quality. It’s not a safety date, and most products sold with a best-by date keep quality way past that date.
• Use-By. This is the date by when you should eat the food, as suggested by its manufacturer. It doesn’t mean the food is necessarily bad or unsafe to eat after that date, but you should be more cautious. Use-by dates are usually found on products with a fairly short storage time, like most dairy products. One caveat here: you should treat the Use-By date on infant formula as a safety date.
• Sell-By. This date informs the store how long to keep the food product on the shelves (or when to remove it). It’s aimed at retailers, not consumers. What’s more important to you as a buyer is that “typically one-third of a product’s shelf-life remains after the sell-by date for the consumer to use at home,” as explained by the Institute of Food Technologists.
• Freeze-By. This date informs you by when you should freeze the product to maintain peak quality. It’s way less popular than the other three.
• Expiration Date (or EXP). This date isn’t widely used, but if it’s on your product, you should discard it after that date. While the terms above are vague guidelines, this one is absolute.

If you’re interested in learning more about these phrases, here’s a piece explaining the differences between food dates in more detail.

Now that we’ve covered the different terms and phrases you can find on food labels, let’s talk about date formats.

Date Formats

There are a couple of formats used for dating food products, and most of them are pretty easy to decipher. But there are also a few that are not.

Let’s go through all of them one by one.

(Need help decoding the date format? Check out our date code converter.)

MMDDYY (Standard US Format)

The standard US date format is MMDDYY. In this format, “MM” refers to the month, “DD” refers to the day of the month, and “YY” stands for the last two digits in the year. For example, 032927 means March 29, 2027.

Sometimes, the manufacturers put the “/” sign between parts for ease of reading so that that same date might look like 03/29/27.

DDMMYY (Standard European Format)

The standard date format in Europe is DDMMYY. In this format, “DD” refers to the day of the month, “MM” refers to the month, and “YY” stands for the last two digits in the year. For example, 120526 means May 12, 2026.

Oftentimes, the manufacturers put the “/” or “.” sign between parts for ease of reading so that that same date might look like this: 12.05.2026.

As you can tell, it’s pretty much the same format as the standard US one, except the month and day numbers are switched. That means in some rare cases that 120525 might not mean December 5 (if you interpret it using the standard US format), but May 12 (using the European format).

Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell which is which unless one of the value pairs (MM or DD) is higher than 12. That’s when you know that part refers to the day of the month, and the other pair refers to the month. But if you’re in the US, chances are it’s the standard US format.

MMMDDYY (Month Abbreviated)

In this format, “MMM” refers to the abbreviated name of the month (say Feb for February), “DD” refers to the day in the month, and “YY” stands for the last two digits in the year. For example, Jan 12 26 means January 12, 2026.

Sometimes, the month and day parts are switched around (like in the European format), changing the phrasing to 12 Jan 26.

This format is obvious and easy to decipher, no matter if the month is the first or second part of the date.

DDMMM (Day and Month Abbreviated)

This format combines the day of the month, represented by “DD”, with the abbreviated month name, denoted by “MMM” (e.g., Jan for January). An example would be 15 Nov, which translates to November 15.

This format is frequently paired with use-by dates for items with a brief storage duration. When a product’s shelf life spans just a week or two, specifying the year becomes redundant.

MMMYYYY (Month and Year)

Here, “MMM” stands for the abbreviated month name (like Aug for August), while “YYYY” indicates the full year. An example is Nov 2024, which means November 2024.

This intuitive format is common for products with extended shelf lives. Consider oats, which remain fresh for several months. The quality difference between the 15th and 30th day of the “expiration” month is negligible. As such, the day is omitted in this format. Thus, “Nov 2024” should be interpreted as “up to the end of November 2024”.

Sometimes, a slight variation of this format is used: MM.YYYY, where instead of the abbreviated name of the month, its number is used. There’s typically a dot between the parts for ease of reading.

Julian Date (3, 4, or 5 Digits)

The Julian date, or the Julian day, is a coding system frequently found on items like eggs and canned goods. It’s represented by three to five digits. The last three digits indicate the day of the year. For example, 156 corresponds to June 5th, marking it as the 156th day of the year.

When the code extends to four or five digits, the initial one or two digits denote the year. So, 3156 would be read as June 5, 2023, while 22156 signifies June 5, 2022.

To swiftly decode the three digits representing the date, you can refer to this helpful Julian calendar.

A challenge with the three- or four-digit format is the ambiguity of the year. Taking 3156 as an example, the leading ‘3’ likely refers to 2023. However, if dealing with an older item, it could mean 2013. Conversely, for products with an extended shelf life, it might indicate 2033.

It’s worth noting that Julian date codes are typically not used to indicate storage durations. These are more commonly employed as lot numbers informing when the product was made and aiding manufacturers in future referencing.

A-L Letter and 2 Digits

This format, often used for lot numbers and other reference-type information, doesn’t typically pertain to food safety. Here, the month is denoted by a single letter: A for January, B for February, continuing up to L for December. This letter is followed by a two-digit representation of the day.

For instance, A15 translates to January 15, while L05 signifies December 5.

It’s worth noting that this is a relatively uncommon format, and there’s seldom a need to decode it in everyday situations.

Those are the most popular date formats used on food products. While most of them are quite straightforward, some are a bit difficult to decipher on the go (think the Julian code).

The post How to Read Expiration Dates: 5 Terms and 7 Formats Explained appeared first on Does It Go Bad?.

If you’re not sure what’s the meaning of a “best if used by” (or “best-by”) date, or you have no idea if you should toss a product that’s after its “sell-by” date, this short guide is for you.

Read on to learn:

• what does “best-by”, “sell-by”, and “use-by” dates mean (roughly)
• how to use each of these dates
• how product dating works

Why are Food Date Terms Confusing?

The most important reason is that the phrases used by manufacturers aren’t standardized or regulated. While most shelf-stable food products come with a best-by date, you might run into a product that has a different phrase printed on the label.

The second issue is that many terms have the same meaning. For example, “best-by,” “best before,” and “best if used by” mean exactly the same thing.

The third is that those phrases often aren’t self-explanatory.

Like, what does “sell-by” mean for you as a customer? Should you toss the product once it passes that date or not?

Or how do you interpret the “use-by” date? Is the product no longer okay to eat after that date or not?

As you can tell, it’s easy to get confused.

Fortunately, the Federal Safety and Inspection Service provides rough descriptions for the most commonly used phrases. I’m going to use those when describing the terms below.

Most Popular Food Date Phrases

For starters, you need to know that the dates on food products (except for infant formula) aren’t an indicator of food safety. In other words, those aren’t expiration dates by any means.

Those dates are there mainly to inform the customer how long the product should retain the best quality.

That’s why in many of my articles, I inform you about how long, roughly speaking, the described product keeps quality after the date on the label. For many shelf-stable products (like powdered milk or canned tuna) it’s often years. For others (e.g., most nuts) it’s not nearly as long.

Let’s talk about the meaning of the commonly used phrases, one by one.

“Best-by” Date

Best-by date indicates how long the product is at its peak freshness. It has little to do with the safety of the food. Many foods will stay both safe and in good quality for weeks or even months past the best-by date.

So, how long after the “best-by” date can you safely eat? That depends on the food product itself, unfortunately. Sometimes it’s weeks, other times it’s years. That’s why I run this site.

“Best-by” date can be found on all sorts of shelf-stable products, starting with pantry staples such as rice or pasta, through condiments like ketchup or mustard, ending with milk alternatives such as almond milk or oat milk.

Besides “best-by”, some products are labeled “best if used by” or “best before.” That’s the same thing.

Of all the popular phrases, this one is the most intuitive, I think. It simply informs that a product is best consumed by a certain date.

“Use-by” Date

“Use-by” dates are (usually) much more strict than “best-by” dates.

If a food product comes with a “use-by” date, it means that the product will probably be okay to eat for only a couple of days past that date. Sometimes it’s 2-3 days, other times it’s 2 to 3 weeks, but it’s most likely no more than that.

Again, it all depends on the product, and that’s one of the reasons I run this site – to let you know how much time you can expect from a specific product.

Refrigerated foods, including most dairy products (like yogurt or buttermilk) and meat, usually come with a use-by date.

“Sell-by” Date

This term is kind of tricky.

Theoretically, it informs the retailer how long the product could stay on the shelf. But what does that mean for you, the customer?

Not much, unfortunately. The food can still be good to eat for a few days or even a couple of weeks. As usual, it depends on the product itself.

“Sell-by” is often labeled on milk, poultry, and eggs. Sometimes on dairy products, too. If you buy commercially prepared salads (i.e., tuna salad or potato salad) in the supermarket, some of these also come with a sell-by date.

Like with the “use-by” date, the period the product retains quality is usually relatively short, up to maybe a couple of weeks. Because of that, I treat the “sell-by” date the same way I treat the “use-by” date.

Some manufacturers use those phrases interchangeably, while others prefer to use one over the other. For me, it’s basically the same thing.

The post “Best if used by” vs “Sell-by” vs “Use-by” – Food Product Dating appeared first on Does It Go Bad?.

Types of Sweet Syrup

According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, there are 5 types of sweet syrups for preserving fruits. These are:

• Very Light Syrup contains 10% sugar. Light syrup approximates the natural levels in most fruits. It also contains the fewest calories.
• Light Syrup contains 20% sugar. Perfect for preserving sweet fruit.
• Medium Syrup contains 30% sugar. This is a great sweet syrup for preserving ripe apples, cherries, berries, and grapes.
• Heavy Syrup is 40% sugar. It’s a great syrup to use for preserving tart fruits including sour cherries, apricots, gooseberries, peaches, pears, and plums.
• Very Heavy Syrup is 50% sugar. It’s best for preserving sour fruits of all kinds. It also contains the most calories.

As you might have already noticed, the sweeter the fruit, the lighter the syrup should be used for preservation. This works the other way around too: the more tart the fruit, the sweeter the syrup you should use. Also, the heavier the syrup, the more calories it contains. That means you should always aim to use light syrup when preserving fruits.

How to Calculate How Much Water and Sugar You Need

Calculating the measurements to prepare different kinds of syrup is a bit tricky. Generally speaking, the sugar and water add up to 100%. So to make a very light syrup, add 9 cups of water for every cup of sugar. To make a light syrup, it’s 8 cups of water for 2 cups of sugar, and so on. It’s easy if you need 10 cups of syrup. If you need 6 cups of syrup, you need to do a bit of math yourself, which involves converting cups into tablespoons to get the measurements right.

(credit: Jason Leung)

How to Preserve Fruits in Sugar Syrup?

1. Start by preparing the fruits as well as the jars you’ll use to preserve your fruits. Begin by sterilizing the containers first. You need an airtight glass container with a sealed lid. Mason jars are a great option. Wash the jars well with water and dish soap. Rinse thoroughly then bring a pot of water to a boil. Using a metal tong, place the clean jars and lids in a boiling water bath. Sterilize for 10 minutes. Set aside.
2. Clean, trim or cut the fruits into desired sizes. The cleaner the fruits, the more effective the preserving process will be. Remove decayed or brown spots. Make sure the fruits are at the peak of quality and freshness. Set aside.
3. Make the sugar syrup. In a pot, combine the water and sugar together then bring to a boil over high heat. Once the sugar has dissolved completely and the syrup has thickened somewhat, it’s ready to use.
4. There are two options when it comes to packing the fruit. First is to throw the fruits into the sugar syrup as it cooks before packing. This technique is called hot packing. The second option is to pour the hot syrup directly into the container as the syrup is done. That’s cold-packing. If you chose cold packing, pack the prepped fruits into the sterilized jars. Gently pour the hot sugar syrup into the jar but do not fill the container all the way through. Leave about half an inch of space.The fruits must be immersed in syrup completely. Wipe any syrup from the jar rims or add more syrup if needed. Seal the container with the lid and then screw the bands tightly to set the rubber seal in place. Do not over-tighten the lids. Give each glass container a label complete with the processing date. Store in a cool, dark, and dry place for best results.

For additional info on proper food safety and canning processing, please refer to the USDA guide.

What Fruits to Preserve in Syrup?

Sweet, tart and sour fruits are the best fruits to preserve in sugar syrup. According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, some of the fruits commonly preserved in syrup are stone fruits: apricots, nectarines, sour cherries, peaches, and plums.

Berries, such as cranberry, gooseberry, tomato, red currant, strawberry, raspberries, blueberries, etc. are often preserved in syrup too. Some sweet fruits, such as figs, sugar apples, sweet apples, persimmon, etc., could be preserved in syrup.

Tart and sour fruits, such as apples, mangoes, guava, grapes, pears, tangerines, grapefruits, and passion fruits are just a few that can be preserved in syrup. However, fruits that are high in fat (coconut, durian, avocados, etc.) and melon-type fruits (watermelons, honeydew melons, bananas, and cantaloupes) shouldn’t be preserved in syrup.

How Long Do Fruits in Syrup Last?

The shelf life of fruits preserved in syrup will depend on many factors. These factors include the thickness of the syrup, the kind of fruits that were preserved, the quality of the fruits, as well as the way the preserved products were processed.

Acidic fruits preserved in syrup have a longer shelf life than sweet fruits. That’s because these fruits could activate chemical reactions such as pectin set. These chemical reactions inhibit microbial growth. Canned fruits, which are usually preserved in either light or heavy syrup, will keep for at least a year in the pantry. But once opened, the shelf life is reduced to a week or so. Sealed, homemade preserved fruits will also last for a year or so when stored in a cool, dry, and dark place.

Can Fruits Preserved in Syrups Go Bad?

Preserved fruits in syrups may go bad if the container has been compromised. Exposure to air could shorten the shelf life of the preserved fruits. If the preserved fruits have developed an off-color or odd aroma, they might have gone bad. If you are seeing signs of mold growth, discard the preserved fruits right away. Low acid preserved fruits are more likely to go bad compared to high acid preserved fruits. If the container of the preserved fruits is leaking or if left unsealed, discard it.

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