Apart from the statutory 'use by' and 'best before' dates, many foods also have 'display until' or 'sell by' dates for retail stock control.
Some bewildered consumers have been going by the 'display until', rather than the later 'use by' dates as a guide to when food should be thrown away.
Press coverage of environment secretary, Hilary Benn's launch of a strategy to reduce food waste has added to the confusion.
Reports that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was going to ban 'best before' dates triggered a rash of phone calls to the Food Standards Agency (FSA).
The FSA issued statements to correct the misunderstanding and to clarify that the UK could not unilaterally ban 'best before' dates because EU legislation required them. However, non-statutory voluntary 'display until', 'sell by' and similar labels could be dispensed with if retailers agreed.
The saga of 'use by' date labelling began over 20 years ago when amendments to the 1979 EC Food Labelling Directive were under discussion. The 1979 Directive provided for 'best before' durability date labelling only. Member States agreed that an amendment was needed for labelling of foods that were highly perishable and potentially unsafe.
So it was that the two-tier system was introduced in the 1989 amending Directive. For reasons lost in the mists of time, the UK plumped for the wording 'use by' when others, such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, selected words that mean 'eat by'.
Perhaps the old Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food thought that in the UK we only 'used' food rather than 'ate' it as we had a less emotional relationship with it. As if 'use by', 'best before', 'sell by' and 'display until' aren't enough, a few foods also have dates of manufacture.
Now, in a drive to reduce levels of listeriosis, the FSA has launched an advertising campaign encouraging the over-60s to use reading glasses to read 'use by' labels. That's assuming we can find where they are on the pack.
Given the difficulties we can have in locating the labels, luminescent ones might protect our sanity. That too becomes more fragile with age thanks to the cumulative effect of yet more warnings from the nanny state about the risks we face in life.
I would be grateful if someone invented a homing device for the reading glasses sprinkled like confetti around my home, especially in the kitchen where there is a danger they might fall into the frying pan and emit noxious fumes.
''Clare Cheney director general Provision Trade Federation clare.cheney@provtrade.co.uk''