Best Before vs Expiry Date: What Singapore Snack Packets Are Really Telling You

You find a half-forgotten packet of crackers at the back of the kitchen drawer. The date on the back says three weeks ago. Bin it, or eat it?

Most of us guess. And the guess is usually shaped by which words happened to be printed on that particular packet — because Singapore snack shelves carry "best before", "use by" and "expiry date" side by side, often on near-identical products. Here's what each one is actually promising.

Singapore doesn't use just one date term — and that's deliberate

There is no single mandated phrase here. In a February 2024 parliamentary reply, the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment explained that both "Use by" and "Best Before" are internationally accepted terms under the Codex General Standard for the Labelling of Prepackaged Foods, the international standard set by the FAO and WHO, and both are commonly used by local and overseas manufacturers.

Asked whether Singapore should standardise on one term to cut consumer confusion, the Ministry said no — forcing manufacturers to reprint packaging for the Singapore market alone would add compliance cost, and given the small size of our market, some overseas suppliers might simply stop shipping here rather than change their labels. That would narrow our food import sources, which for an import-dependent country is a real trade-off.

So the mixed terminology on the shelf isn't sloppiness. It's the price of keeping the shelves diverse.

What each term actually means

Best before

This is a quality date. It's the manufacturer's estimate of how long the product stays at its intended quality — crisp, aromatic, the right colour and texture. After it passes, a dry, shelf-stable snack usually doesn't become dangerous; it becomes disappointing. Crackers go soft. Nuts and seeds taste flat or faintly of old paint as their fats oxidise. Colours dull.

Use by

This is a safety date, used on products where microbes can grow to harmful levels before you'd notice anything wrong — chilled ready meals, fresh dairy, some deli items. The European Food Safety Authority's 2020 guidance on date marking sets out the risk-based logic manufacturers should follow when choosing between the two: the decision turns on whether the food can support the growth of pathogens over its shelf life. Dry, low-moisture products such as baked crackers generally can't, which is why they carry "best before" rather than "use by".

Expiry date

Often used interchangeably with the above on packaging. Read it as the manufacturer's hard stop.

The bit almost everyone gets wrong

Here's where Singapore diverges from the simple "best before is only about quality" line you may have read elsewhere. The Ministry was explicit: under the current Food Regulations, both "Use by" and "Best Before" indicate the expiry date beyond which the food product is not permitted to be sold in Singapore, due to possible deterioration in food quality.

So two different rules are operating at once:

  • For the retailer — the date is a legal cut-off. Selling past it isn't allowed, regardless of which term is printed.
  • For you, at home — the date is information, not an instruction. A packet of dry crackers a fortnight past its best-before is a quality question, not a safety one.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Singapore's food waste recycling rate sat at just 18 per cent in 2025, according to the National Environment Agency's latest waste and recycling statistics — the rest is incinerated. Every packet binned on a date-label misunderstanding lands in that 82 per cent.

How to judge a packet past its date

For dry, shelf-stable snacks — crackers, biscuits, nuts, crisps — a short checklist beats the date alone:

  1. Was it sealed? An unopened pack that's been kept cool and dry ages far more slowly than one clipped shut for a month. Once opened, humidity is the enemy, and Singapore has plenty of it.
  2. Smell it. Rancid fat is the main failure mode in nut- or oil-containing snacks, and your nose is good at it — a sharp, crayon-like or stale-oil smell means it's gone.
  3. Look for anything visibly off. Mould, clumping, damp patches, or any sign that pests have got into the pack. Any of these, bin it — no judgement call needed.
  4. If it's gone soft, that's texture, not danger. A few minutes in a low oven often revives crackers.
  5. Don't apply this logic to "use by" foods. Chilled and high-moisture products are a different category entirely. There, the date wins.

One more habit worth building: the date is only valid under the storage conditions on the pack. "Store in a cool, dry place" is doing real work in a climate like ours. A packet left in a hot car or a sunny windowsill can be past its best well before the printed date.

Where to find the date

Under the Singapore Food Agency's labelling requirements, all prepacked food sold here must carry the required label information, with SFA taking reference from Codex when setting those standards. Date marks are usually printed on the back or base of the pack, or crimped into the seal — sometimes in pale ink on a pale background. If you genuinely cannot find one on a prepacked product, that's worth flagging to the retailer.

The short version

"Best before" is about how good it tastes. "Use by" is about whether it's safe. In Singapore, shops can't sell past either — but at home, a dry snack a little past its best-before is a texture problem, not a health one. Use your nose and your eyes, store things properly, and you'll throw away a lot less.

At HexaCrunch, we bake our brown rice crackers in small batches and print a clear best-before date on every pack — because a snack that's still crisp when you open it is the whole point. Our crackers get their protein from farmed crickets, which is what makes them unusually protein-dense for a baked rice cracker, and they're built to stay crunchy in Singapore's humidity. If you've not tried them, the Try-All 3-Pack is the easiest place to start.

Sources

Back to blog