Impact of Messaging Strategy on Consumer Understanding of Food Date Labels

Explore consumer understanding of the food industry's 2-date labeling system and the relative effectiveness of messages in increasing understanding.

Participant understanding of date labels assessed before and after random assignment to 1 of 7 messages explaining the meaning of the labels.

US online survey through Amazon Mechanical Turk collected responses from July 29, 2019, to August 5, 2019.

Adults aged 18 years or older who speak English (n = 2,607).

Seven message variations.

Behaviors, awareness, and understanding of date labeling, and effectiveness of messages and opportunities for improving them.

Pearson's chi-square test of independence, Wald chi-square test of association, McNemar's test of marginal homogeneity, and logistic regression.

The majority of respondents use date labels to make decisions and believe they know what the labels mean; however, only 64.0% and 44.8% knew the general meaning of the Best If Used By and Use By labels, respectively. Even fewer understood their specific meanings. Overall, education increased general understanding to 82.0% for Best If Used By and 82.4% for Use By (P < 0.001). The effectiveness of the educational message did not vary significantly by message variation.

Consumer education is needed to improve understanding of the 2-date labeling system, ultimately improving food safety and decreasing wasted food. This study highlights opportunities for effective educational communication.