Ottawa Families Are Tossing Food That's Still Good — And It's Costing Billions
Ottawa households are discarding billions of dollars worth of perfectly edible food every year, and a new report points to one surprisingly mundane culprit: the 'best before' label.
A report released this week highlights that widespread confusion around date labels is contributing to an estimated $12 billion in food waste annually across Canada. The finding hits especially hard in cities like Ottawa, where food bank usage has reached record highs and demand for emergency food support is still climbing.
What Does 'Best Before' Actually Mean?
Here's the thing most people don't realize: a 'best before' date is not a safety deadline. It's a quality indicator — a manufacturer's estimate of when a product is at its peak freshness, flavour, or texture. After that date, the product may not be as crisp, fragrant, or perfectly textured, but in most cases it's still completely safe to eat.
'Expiry dates,' by contrast, are safety-critical and appear on a much narrower range of products — things like infant formula and certain medical foods. Yet Canadians routinely treat 'best before' stamps the same way, tossing yogourt, bread, canned goods, and produce that could still feed a family.
The report found that this mislabelling confusion is one of the biggest drivers of avoidable household food waste in the country.
The Timing Couldn't Be Worse for Ottawa's Food Banks
The findings come as Ottawa's food banks and community organizations are stretched to a breaking point. The Ottawa Food Bank has reported sustained record-level demand over the past two years, driven by the rising cost of groceries, housing pressures, and the lingering economic fallout from the pandemic.
Volunteers and staff at food banks across the city spend significant time sorting through donations, often having to discard items that donors have prematurely written off as 'expired.' Edible food that could stock shelves and feed families is instead going to landfill — a cruel irony when so many Ottawa residents are going without.
Food rescue organizations in the city, including those working with grocery retailers and restaurants, have long flagged date label confusion as a major barrier to getting more food redirected to people who need it.
What Ottawa Residents Can Do Right Now
The good news is that fixing this is largely a matter of changing habits — and the changes are easy to make:
- Smell, look, taste: Use your senses. If bread looks and smells fine a day past its best before date, it almost certainly is fine.
- FIFO method: First in, first out. Rotate your pantry so older items get used before newer ones.
- Freeze before discarding: Bread, meat, and many dairy products can be frozen close to their best before date and used weeks later.
- Donate early: If you know you won't use something before its best before date, donate it to a food bank while it still has time on the label — most food banks can only accept items with a few days or more remaining.
The Case for Label Reform
Advocates are pushing for standardized, plain-language date labelling across Canada — something like a unified 'use by' versus 'best if used by' framework that would make it crystal clear whether a date is about safety or quality. Several European countries have already moved in this direction, with measurable reductions in food waste.
For Ottawa, a city that takes pride in its community spirit and its network of mutual aid organizations, taking food waste seriously is both a practical and moral issue. Every jar of peanut butter rescued from the recycling bin is one more meal on someone's table.
Source: Global News Ottawa / globalnews.ca
