Expiry Dates, Consumer Behavior, and Food Waste: How Would Italian Consumers React If There Were No Longer “Best Before” Labels?

Abstract

Much research has been carried out on food losses and waste in the various stages of the food supply chain, consolidating the “fight” against food waste as one of the most important challenges in industrialized countries. Numerous different studies have focused on food waste at the household level, identifying both the multiple causes linked to this behavior and the factors that can drive towards the reduction of food waste. In this paper, a different approach was used, trying to analyze different individuals’ reactions to a concrete action consisting of removing “best before” labels from some food products, following the recent proposal by European Union to simplify date marking. How could any action in this area be implemented in every single country? Bearing in mind the general results of the cross-sectional official survey Flash Eurobarometer n. 425, the purpose of this study was to go deeper into the study of how consumers would behave if the expiry date were no longer available on a pack of spaghetti. The heterogeneity observed in the possible alternative reactions across European Union 28 countries, as well as by considering the importance played by the local context in which individuals reside led us to focus on a single country, and specifically on the Italian context, as an example of country in which citizens have a higher average level of knowledge about expiration dates than the global EU28 citizens, but where, at the same time, there is a more conservative behavior regarding using a product with no expiry date. The multinomial regression model—estimated using the generalized maximum entropy estimator—enabled us to identify different profiles and groups of individuals with which—as a suggestion to policy makers—it would be first necessary to intervene in order to standardize the level of knowledge on this specific topic. In this direction, territorial macro-areas proved to be strongly associated with the various reactions; the probability of consuming or throwing away was found to significantly differ across all the studied regional macro-areas, with a higher likelihood of throwing away the product with no best-before date in southern regions.

Assessment of household food waste management during the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia: a cross-sectional online survey

“…Regarding food labeling knowledge, we observed confusion about the interpretation of food labels. This is not a unique case, and consumer confusion has been found in other studies (Secondi 2019;Zielińska et al 2020), as well as calls on national regulations to reconcile food waste and food safety in labeling packaged food (Newsome et al 2014).…”

The Availability and Quality of Food Labelling Components in the Canadian E-Grocery Retail Environment

“…Despite the high variability in the availability and quality of most labelling components, we found low availability of date marking, packaging, and recycling information throughout all websites. Date marking provides information on the perishability of foods to help consumers plan meals and reduce food waste, thereby playing a key role in the purchase decision-making process for many consumers [ 20 , 21 ]. With innovations in technology to improve the traceability of foods [ 22 ], retailers can easily present date marking information or, at a minimum, indicate shelf life (e.g., 6 weeks when refrigerated) to consumers.…”

“…Third, we did not examine consumers’ perspectives on the e-grocery retail environment. Similar to physical packaging [ 4 , 20 , 28 ], e-grocery shoppers have been shown to use labelling information to make purchasing decisions [ 27 ]. However, considering the physical and technical differences of brick-and-mortar and e-grocery websites, further research is warranted to identify any specific labelling information and/or format needed to take into consideration to help e-grocery shoppers make informed purchasing decisions.…”

Hidden flows assessment in the agri-food sector: evidence from the Italian beef system

“…final consumption at home and at food services) represent the most critical steps in terms of thrown away food. Unsustainable and uneducated food consumption behaviors are the results of multiple variables such as bad purchases planning, incorrect labels' interpretation, unsuitable leftovers recovery into tasty and nutritious recipes and incorrect storage activities (Mondéjar-Jiménez et al , 2016; Roe et al ., 2018; Secondi, 2019). However, among others, one of the main drivers of food waste behavior, either in developed or developing countries, is due to the unawareness of the wastage-related losses of natural resources required to produce raw ingredients and transform them into meals, as well as the ignorance of the food waste associated environmental impacts (estimated in over 3.3 Gigatons of CO2e each year) and the related financial losses (estimated in over US$1 trillion) (FAO, 2013; Poore and Nemecek, 2018; Our World in Data, 2020; Adamashvili et al , 2019; Fiore et al , 2015).…”