ABSTRACT
Most European food health and safety regulations demand that food items are labelled with either a use-by or a best-before date. They were put in place to inform consumers about food safety (use-by) and food quality (best-before). These date labels, however, do more than simply inform consumers about edible or inedible, good versus bad food, they altered how people perceive food and its freshness independent from the actual age and edibility of the product. In this chapter, I therefore explore how modern food production and the date label influence consumers’ needs for freshness and disgust-avoidance. Hereby disgust is associated with the expiration date rather than sensory experiences and the natural lifetime of food. Disgust is mediated through a label that spares the body from a potentially unpleasant experience. Thereby, through the standardization of the natural lifespan of food products into shelf life, the date label simultaneously standardized disgust. In the mind of many consumers best-before turns into not-good-after, which has serious implications on people’s food waste behavior.
