Sell by? Best by? Use by? When it comes to expiration dates, millions of Americans are confused. Congress wants to do something about it. (iStock)

That can of soup in your pantry says Best by June 2018. The cereal box on the shelf above it says Use by October 2016. The salsa in your fridge says Sell by June 6, 2016. And the quart of milk next to it simply says May 22, 2016.

Among the dates found on labels across the U.S. are production or pack dates of manufacture, sell by dates, best if used by dates, use by dates, freeze by dates and even enjoy by dates. 

And if that isnt confusing enough, all those dates are determined by differing laws in 41 states.

Its enough to drive a consumer to drink. (Theres good news on that front, though: Whiskey has no expiration date.)

If youre perplexed by all the date stamps, youre not alone. Two Democrats in Congress Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine are just as confused as you are, and they hope to do something about it before their terms expire. 

Blumenthal and Pingree are expected to introduce bills in the Senate and House this week to establish a national standard for date labeling that would provide consumers throughout the U.S. with consistent information on when a product begins to lose quality and when it is no longer safe to eat.

Its an effort designed not only to untax our brains, but to reduce food waste, too.

A Harvard study, The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America, found that 40 percent 160 billion pounds of food in the U.S. went uneaten every year, while nearly 15 percent of residents struggled to put food on their tables.

It also found that 91 percent of consumers occasionally throw food away based on the sell by date out of a mistaken concern for food safety even though none of the date labels actually indicate food is unsafe to eat.

The lack of binding federal standards, and the resultant state and local regulatory variability in date labeling rules, has led to a proliferation of diverse and inconsistent date labeling practices in the food industry, the report found. Open dates can come in a dizzying variety of forms, none of which, except for baby formula, are strictly defined or regulated at the federal level.

Many products may have a sell by date of, say, April 1, but they could be good in your pantry for another 12 or 18 months, Chris Bernstein of the Department of Agricultures Food Safety and Inspection Service said last year. And by throwing those out, what you’re doing, is you’re contributing to food waste in the United States.

Last year the Agriculture Department, in conjunction with Cornell University and the Food Marketing Institute, created a smartphone app for Android and Apple devices designed to help consumers determine proper storing methods for foods. 

But the app cant address the myriad expiration dates stamped on food packages, which is why Blumenthal and Pingree are submitting their legislation.

The bill would clearly and accurately indicate to consumers when a food product is no longer at peak quality or safe to eat, Blumenthal said in a statement.

It would also prohibit wasteful restrictions that currently bar the donation and sale of food past quality dates.  

A lot of people mistakenly think there is some sort of government standard for best by dates and that you have to throw out food once the date is passed, Pingree said in a news release. The truth is its the manufacturer who comes up with those dates, and much of the time the food is perfectly safe to eat well after the date has passed.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2016/05/18/confused-about-that-use-by-date-congress-attempts-to-standardize-expiration/

FindFace compares photos to profile pictures on social network Vkontakte and works out identities with 70% reliability

If the founders of a new face recognition app get their way, anonymity in public could soon be a thing of the past. FindFace, launched two months ago and currently taking Russia by storm, allows users to photograph people in a crowd and work out their identities, with 70% reliability.

It works by comparing photographs to profile pictures on Vkontakte, a social network popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union, with more than 200 million accounts. In future, the designers imagine a world where people walking past you on the street could find your social network profile by sneaking a photograph of you, and shops, advertisers and the police could pick your face out of crowds and track you down via social networks.

In the short time since the launch, Findface has amassed 500,000 users and processed nearly 3m searches, according to its founders, 26-year-old Artem Kukharenko, and 29-year-old Alexander Kabakov.

Kukharenko is a lanky, quietly spoken computer nerd who has come up with the algorithm that makes FindFace such an impressive piece of technology, while Kabakov is the garrulous money and marketing man, who does all of the talking when the pair meet the Guardian.

Unlike other face recognition technology, their algorithm allows quick searches in big data sets. Three million searches in a database of nearly 1bn photographs: thats hundreds of trillions of comparisons, and all on four normal servers. With this algorithm, you can search through a billion photographs in less than a second from a normal computer, said Kabakov, during an interview at the companys modest central Moscow office. The app will give you the most likely match to the face that is uploaded, as well as 10 people it thinks look similar.

Kabakov says the app could revolutionise dating: If you see someone you like, you can photograph them, find their identity, and then send them a friend request. The interaction doesnt always have to involve the rather creepy opening gambit of clandestine street photography, he added: It also looks for similar people. So you could just upload a photo of a movie star you like, or your ex, and then find 10 girls who look similar to her and send them messages.

Some have sounded the alarm about the potentially disturbing implications. Already the app has been used by a St Petersburg photographer to snap and identify people on the citys metro, as well as by online vigilantes to uncover the social media profiles of female porn actors and harass them.

The technology can work with any photographic database, though it currently cannot use Facebook, because even the public photographs are stored in a way that is harder to access than Vkontakte, the apps creators say.

But the FindFace app is really just a shop window for the technology, the founders said. There is a paid function for those who want to make more than 30 searches a month, but this is more to regulate the servers from overload rather than to make money. They believe the real money-spinner from their face-recognition technology will come from law enforcement and retail.

Kukharenko and Kabakov have recently returned from the US, and Kabakov was due to travel to Macau and present the technology to a casino chain. The pair claim they have been contacted by police in Russian regions, who told them they started loading suspect or witness photographs into FindFace and came up with results. Its nuts: there were cases that had seen no movement for years, and now they are being solved, said Kabakov.

The startup is in the final stages of signing a contract with Moscow city government to work with the citys network of 150,000 CCTV cameras. If a crime is committed, the mugshots of anyone in the area can be fed into the system and matched with photographs of wanted lists, court records, and even social networks.

It does not take a wild imagination to come up with sinister applications in this field too; for example authoritarian regimes able to tag and identify participants in street protests. Kabakov and Kukharenko said they had not received an approach from Russias FSB security service, but if the FSB were to get in touch, of course wed listen to any offers they had.

The pair also have big plans for the retail sector. Kabakov imagines a world where cameras fix you looking at, say, a stereo in a shop, the retailer finds your identity, and then targets you with marketing for stereos in the subsequent days.

Again, it sounds a little disturbing. But Kabakov said, as a philosophy graduate, he believes we cannot stop technological progress so must work with it and make sure it stays open and transparent.

In todays world we are surrounded by gadgets. Our phones, televisions, fridges, everything around us is sending real-time information about us. Already we have full data on peoples movements, their interests and so on. A person should understand that in the modern world he is under the spotlight of technology. You just have to live with that.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-face-recognition-app-end-public-anonymity-vkontakte

You may already know that so-called “diet foods” can sometimes be worse for you than the full-fat varieties they’re supposed to replace. But in addition to their nutritional qualities, new research suggests that the way we eat “light” snacks may be making them even worse for our health. 

According to a study to be published later this year by the International Journal of Research in Marketing, people who eat “light” snacks and drinks such as baked potato chips or diet soda are likely to eat 13 percent more calories than people eating full fat snacks. That’s because it’s easier to justify overindulging when a food is labeled as healthier, according to the study’s lead author, Joost Pennings, a finance and marketing professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Pennings told The Huffington Post that while the snacks themselves can be effective, it’s a matter of how we react to the label.

“‘Light’ products may help, but behavioral responses to the light claim may wash out the positive effect,” he said. “Understanding the psychological effect of the claim that a product is ‘light’ need further investigation to ensure that ‘light’ results in a lower calorie intake by consumers.”

This so-called “health halo” effect is nothing new. A study from Sept. 2015 found that if you drink diet soda, you’re more likely to indulge in other junk foods like cookies and candy. Ruopeng An, that study’s author, suggested that perhaps people “feel less guilty about consuming more calories after drinking a diet beverage, and therefore they feel justified in eating muffins or chips.”

So what should people who are trying to watch their weight reach for instead? Perhaps one of these 13 healthy snacks might do the trick.

Check out the video below: 

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2016/05/16/diet-snacks-bad-for-you_n_10003102.html