Budgeting · Groceries · Video Lesson
What Food Date Labels Really Mean
A yogurt is one day past the date on its lid. Plenty of people throw it out, and most of the time the date never said to. This lesson takes the video’s three labels — Best if Used By, Sell By and Use By — and turns them into something a class can do. Students read seven packages and decide who each date is written for and whether it says to throw the food out; then they work through one household’s month of thrown-away food and find out how much a correct reading of the label would have saved, and how much no label could.
For Teachers
Lesson at a glance
- Topic
- Budgeting & Groceries
- Grade Level
- Grades 9–12 & Adult Ed
- Resource Type
- Video Lesson + Worksheet
- Estimated Time
- 45–50 minutes
- Format
- Whole class, pairs, individual quiz
- Materials
- Video, printable worksheet with answer key, and a calculator for page 2
What Students Learn
Learning objectives
- State the yearly cost of wasted food the video gives for one person and for a family of four.
- Explain what a Best if Used By date means, and what it does not mean.
- Say who a Sell By date is written for, and explain why it is not an expiration date.
- Explain what a Use By date usually means, and name the product the video says is the exception.
- State the share of consumer food waste the video says comes from confusion over date labels.
- Name the signs the video says mean food should not be eaten, whatever its date says.
- Explain why understanding the dates does not replace storing food properly.
- From a household’s list of thrown-away food, separate what a correct reading of the label could have saved from what it could not, and work out that part over a year.
- Explain why food thrown away too early costs money before any cheaper-shopping idea can help.
Materials
What you’ll need
- Internet access to play the video (2 minutes 16 seconds — the plan plays it twice, which is why a short film still fills a period)
- Printed copies of the worksheet — the seven packages on page 1, the household’s month on page 2, the quiz on pages 3–4, answer key on page 5 for the teacher
- A calculator for page 2, which asks students to add up prices and work out a year. Page 1 has no arithmetic
- Board space for the opening vote. The lesson starts by asking the class whether they would eat a yogurt one day past its date, and the tally is worth keeping until the end
Key Terms
Vocabulary
- Food waste
- Food that is bought and never eaten. It is money that has already been spent, so every item thrown away is a purchase paid for twice if it has to be bought again.
- Date label
- The date printed on a package, with a phrase in front of it. The phrase says what the date is about, and it is the part most people skip.
- Best if Used By
- The maker’s estimate of when the food will have its best flavor or quality. It does not mean the food turns bad the next day.
- Sell By
- A date meant mainly for the store, so it knows how long to display a product and when to rotate its stock. It is not an expiration date.
- Use By
- Usually the maker’s estimate of when the product will be at its best quality. The video’s exception is infant formula, where the use-by date really does matter.
- Expiration date
- What people often call every date on a package. The video’s point is that most of those dates are about quality or the store, not about when food has to go.
- Spoilage
- Food going bad. The video’s signs are food that smells wrong or looks spoiled; those are reasons to throw it out whatever the label says.
- Storing food properly
- Keeping food where and how its package says to, so it lasts — which is often somewhere different once the package is opened. Understanding the dates does not replace it.
For Teachers
Lesson plan
Estimated time: one 45–50 minute class period. In a shorter period, set the quiz as homework and run steps 1–6 — they come to 38–41 minutes, and the quiz detaches cleanly because every item is answerable from the video alone.
Before you start: this lesson is about money lost after the groceries are bought. It pairs well with the Grocery Budget & Unit Price Challenge, which is about spending less at the register, and it takes none of that material.
Lesson sequence
- Eat it or toss it? (4–5 min). Put one line on the board: a yogurt is one day past the date on its lid. Take a show of hands — eat it or toss it — and write the tally up. Then ask what the people who said “toss” were reading. Leave the tally there; step 5 comes back to it.
- Watch the video (3 min). It runs 2 minutes 16 seconds. Ask students to write down the three labels it names and one thing it says about each.
- Who the date is for. Page 1, in pairs (10–11 min). Hand out page 1 only — the two handouts go out one at a time, in the order they print. Seven packages, each with its label as printed. Pairs circle who the date is written for, then whether the date by itself says to throw the food out. Two of the packages print the same words, USE BY, and they do not get the same answer. Take that pair out loud after the circling, not before.
- What reading the label would have saved. Page 2, individually (12–13 min). Play the video a second time, then hand out page 2 only. One household’s log of the food it threw away in a month, with prices. Students decide, item by item, whether a correct reading of the label would have kept it out of the trash, then add up the month and work out a year. A calculator helps. The finding is the pair of totals, and it is worth leaving for students to find.
- Back to the tally (4 min). Return to the step 1 vote. Which answers came from the date, and which from the food? Then put the question the video is careful about to the class: if food that smells wrong goes in the trash, does food that smells normal have to be fine? It does not, and the video never says it does.
- Discussion (5 min). Use two or three of the discussion questions below.
- Quiz (7–9 min). Collect pages 1 and 2 first, then hand out the separate 12-question quiz on pages 3–4, one point per question. It prints after the handouts and is taken without them, because several of its options state what page 1 asks students to decide and what page 2 builds on. The answer key is page 5, for the teacher, and detaches from the back.
Activities
- Read the product, not just the words. The core of page 1. Students who finish early can find the phrase on three packages at home or in the classroom — a snack, a drink, anything — and sort them the same way.
- The two totals. Page 2 ends with what the household lost to a date alone and what it lost for reasons no label could fix. Three minutes on why the second is not money a better reading could have kept does more than any amount of explaining.
Assessment
Students complete the separate 12-question multiple choice quiz, worth one point each, so it is out of 12. Every objective is assessed by at least one quiz item or one handout question. Both handout pages also carry marks of their own, printed on each page and broken down in the answer key. Separating what a label could have saved from what it could not is weighted onto page 2 rather than the quiz, because it is a production rather than a recognition task. If you are grading from the quiz alone, collect page 2 as well.
Extension
- A week’s log. Students design a one-week log a household could keep on the fridge, with columns that would let someone answer page 2’s question at the end of the week. The hard part is the column that records why something was thrown out.
- Rewrite the lid. Students rewrite the phrase on the page 1 yogurt so that nobody could mistake what it means, in no more than six words, and then trade with a partner to see whether it survives being read quickly.
Discussion
Discussion questions
- Before the video: a yogurt is one day past the date on its lid. Would you eat it? What, exactly, were you reading when you decided?
- The video says a Sell By date “really isn’t meant for you.” Why would a store print a date for itself on something it is selling to you?
- Infant formula is the one product where the video says the date really does matter. What might be different about who eats it and what depends on it?
- On page 2, some of the food in the trash was lost no matter how carefully the label was read. What could the household have done about those items instead?
- The video says you can lose money before the meal prep even begins. Why does a cheaper dinner recipe not help with that?
- Food that smells wrong goes in the trash. Does it follow that food which smells normal is fine? Why is the video careful not to say so?
Printable Quiz
What Food Date Labels Really Mean — Quiz & Answer Key
12-question multiple choice quiz based on the video, worth 1 point each. Includes two student handout pages and an answer key on a separate page for teacher use.
Teacher Notes
Notes for teachers
Where the video’s figures come from. The $728 a person and the family-of-four figure are from the EPA’s April 2025 report Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers, which puts a household of four at $2,913 a year — the video rounds that to “almost $3,000”. The 20 percent is the FDA’s estimate of consumer food waste that comes from confusion over date labels. Both are estimates and both will be revised, which is why they appear on the quiz, attributed to the video, and on neither handout. The handouts work from one invented household’s own log, which cannot go out of date.
The video’s safety rule runs one way, and so does this lesson. Food that smells wrong, looks spoiled, or may not have been handled safely goes in the trash whatever its label says. The reverse is not true: food that shows no sign of spoilage has not been shown to be fine, and nothing here says it has. That is why page 2 asks whether a correct reading of the label would have kept an item out of the trash rather than whether it was safe, and why the lesson prints no storage times and no rule about how long food lasts past a date. For product-specific guidance, the federal food-safety agencies publish it and keep it current.
Page 1 is built so it cannot be done by matching phrases. Two packages print the same words, USE BY, and only one of them is the exception the video names. A student who reads the label and not the product gets one of them wrong, and that is the most useful wrong answer in the lesson. The FDA notes that infant formula is the one product federal law requires to carry a date.
Hand out pages 1 and 2 one at a time. Page 1 asks what a date is for; page 2 asks what that is worth. The quiz is pages 3 and 4 and detaches cleanly, because every item is answerable from the video alone — but collect both handouts before it goes out, because several of its options restate what they establish.
Nobody is asked about their own kitchen. Every package and every price is invented, and each student page says so. On a topic about food, that matters: some students in any class live in households where food is short, and a lesson that asks them to report what their family throws away is asking something it should not.
What this lesson deliberately does not do. It teaches no way to spend less at the store — comparing prices by the ounce, coupons, buying in larger sizes — because the Grocery Budget & Unit Price Challenge and the Grocery Budget Task Cards already do, and this lesson is about money lost after the checkout. It says nothing about nutrition; the Daily Nutritional Needs Worksheet covers that.
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