As a kid, Emma Willliams’ favourite dinner was McDonald’s.

But now a mum-of-two with a backyard full of chickens, she’s desperate for her family to avoid packaged foods and is making it her mission to minimise food waste.

“I find it really hard to waste food and seeing all the rubbish and things that people throw out,” she said.

“It’s only since really having kids that I retrained and educated myself a bit in nutrition.”

Williams and her clan also previously lived on a rural property for three years.

“We had farm animals and we grew a lot of our food,” she said.

“That gave us an appreciation of the work that’s involved in producing food.”

The Williams family makes sure to not over-shop for groceries and use up any ingredients nearing the end of their life. Leftovers from meals go straight to the chickens.

Williams’ passion for food has led her to volunteering with OzHarvest, which works to minimise food waste across the country. As part of that, she’s jumping on board the charity’s new campaign for reforming the date labelling of supermarket food.

According to OzHarvest’s research, Australian households throw out up to $1500 worth of edible food every year due to confusing “use-by” and “best before” dates.

The charity wants state and federal governments to amend what it says are Australia’s confusing and outdated food date labelling laws that have become a leading cause of household waste.

Its study found many householders discard food solely because of a date label, even when it’s perfectly good to eat.

The term “use-by” means food with the label can be guaranteed safe to consume only until that date.

On the other hand, a “best before” date means the product is still safe to consume after that but might lose some quality. In other words, it won’t taste as good but it’s not going to be harmful.

Food expert Ian Menz, head of the school of life sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, said the dates were determined following extensive research and testing.

“They might do the risk assessment and say, ‘Oh, this food stuff has a potential to be contaminated by this bacteria’,” he said.

“Then they would store it for a length of time and then continue to test when that bacteria might turn up.”

However, OzHarvest said people should trust their instincts and senses when deciding whether a food past its date needed to be binned or was still safe to eat.

“Sniff a product, look at a product, taste it to see if it is OK,” OzHarvest national advocacy and policy lead Katinka Day said.

“We’re really supportive of additional information on packets next to that best before label that encourages people to think, to sniff, look, taste.”

Williams also encourages her 12- and 16-year-old to use the sniff, look, taste test.

Menz agree it could be good to encourage people to use and trust their own judgment.

“If we go back to our ancestors, again, it was all of those telltale signs on the food of its quality, you know, the colour, the smell, that you used to assess whether food was safe or not,” he said.

Foodbank shares the mission to minimise Australian food waste. But it doesn’t support that advice.

“Do not risk eating food that has passed its use-by date even if it looks and smells OK!” its website says.

OzHarvest also wants many products to be moved from “best before” where safe, including milk.

It’s a move that some experts have questioned.

“In the UK, for example, retailers over there have voluntarily moved many products of milk from a ‘use-by’ to a ‘best before’ day and that’s prevented millions of litres of milk going to waste,” Day said.

Menz said most people would be likely to be able to detect whether milk was off by smell.

“It would certainly make you ill if you drank rancid milk,” he said.

“It’s a balance of needing to try to reduce food waste and, most importantly, keep people safe, then allowing people that right to get value for money for the food they purchase.”

While Williams is on board with the advice, she said the simplest way to reduce food waste and the hit to the wallet was just to buy less food from the supermarket to begin with.

“Supermarkets can be really overwhelming because there’s so many colourful packets and you get tempted to buy extra stuff because it’s on special,” she said.

“But are you actually going to use it like in the time frame?

“It’s all about planning.”

-AAP