It sure seems the size of the refrigerator itself is significant: if you have tons of space, you just store more, and it's easy to lose track of. Basically, a

It sure seems the size of the refrigerator itself is significant: if you have tons of space, you just store more, and it's easy to lose track of. Basically, a smaller fridge might comes with lifestyle changes, but, also a much smaller cognitive load. If you can't store that much, you don't have to recall when you bought it, or what you still have. In our house, a lot of food waste is in cooked or par-cooked food, which comes without a label, stored in a container. I'd be very curious, but I do notice that the US wastes a ridiculous amount of food (~30% I've read in recent articles). We also have the largest refrigerators. Of course, I seriously doubt you'd ever get any kind of regulation on refrigerator size in the US. But, it would be interesting to see how that compares with label changes. My suspicion is that in the US, the effects from label dates isn't that great. We just have too much stuff.