As food banks across Canada continue to face record demand, billions of dollars worth of perfectly edible food is being thrown away over confusion tied to “best before” labels, a new report says.
The report from Toronto-based food rescue organization Second Harvest found that nearly 23 per cent of avoidable food waste in Canada, worth over $12 billion, can be linked to outdated practices around date coding.
“We are way behind on food waste strategy…. People are throwing away perfectly good food because they believe food is unsafe after a certain day,” said Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest.
The organization says much of the confusion stems from consumers misunderstanding the difference between “best before” dates and actual expiration dates.
This confusion amounts to an estimated 1.6 million metric tonnes of avoidable food waste.
Under current federal regulations, prepackaged foods with a shelf life of 90 days or less are required to carry a “best before” date under rules set by Health Canada and enforced by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
Products with longer shelf lives are not required to carry those labels, though many manufacturers still voluntarily include them.
Second Harvest says many Canadians incorrectly interpret “best before” labels as indicators of food safety, rather than food quality.
Get breaking National news
Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.
“People just do not know that a ‘best before’ date is based on the peak freshness of whatever that product is,” Nikkel said.
According to Health Canada, a “best before” date refers to when a product may begin to lose freshness, taste or nutritional value, while an expiry date indicates when certain foods should no longer be consumed for safety reasons.
The report found that Canada is falling behind several peer countries that have already modernized date-labelling systems as part of broader food waste reduction strategies.
California, for example, has standardized “best if used by” and “use by” labels and banned the use of “expires on” labels starting in July 2026.
Other countries, like Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea, are also distinguishing between labels tied to food safety and those tied to food quality.
Nikkel added that the lack of stronger food waste policies is especially concerning at a time when food banks across the country are seeing unprecedented demand.
Neil Hetherington, CEO of Toronto’s largest food bank, the Daily Bread Food Bank, shared a similar sentiment, saying that Canada’s food waste problem has become increasingly difficult to ignore.
“Canada is the single greatest waster of food in the world,” he said. “We have great safety records as well, but you’ve got to balance those two.”
The organization is now helping one in 10 Torontonians in need.
“Before the pandemic, we were serving about 60,000 clients per month. That number last month was 330,000,” he said.
Hetherington said confusion surrounding food labels regularly contributes to unnecessary waste and loss of donations.
“If you talk to public health, they’ll tell you that a shelf-stable product can survive more than a year after the ‘best before’ date.”
In Ontario’s Halton Region and Hamilton, one food rescue organization says many lower-income families are throwing away food they could still safely eat because of misunderstandings around labels.
Meaghan Richardson, director of development and marketing at Food for Life, said the organization once struggled to distribute a truckload of “perfectly safe” chocolate milk because it was approaching its ‘best before’ date.
“We had a really hard time moving that truckload of milk through our system because people just really thought the milk magically goes bad at that date,” Richardson said.
“When people are purchasing foods and we have a labelling that’s causing confusion and causing them to throw out food that would be perfectly edible, that’s a real societal problem.”
All three organizations say more awareness among the public on date labels and better practices are key to managing this problem.
Second Harvest estimates more than 41 per cent of food wasted in Canada could be rescued, which is enough to feed 17 million people three meals a day for a year.
The organization is calling for four main changes: removing unnecessary “best before” labels on some foods, improving label clarity, expanding public education and including food waste reduction in Canada’s National Food Security Strategy.
Global News reached out to the CFIA for a response regarding potential changes to date-labelling practices but did not hear back in time for publishing.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
