Color-Coded Bread Bag Ties: Who Knew?

Paul Michael, wisebread.com; GettyDid you know there's a way to help figure out how fresh store-bought bread is? Just look at the twist-tie or plastic tab that keeps the bag closed. Turns out, it's color-coded to reflect the day that the bread is baked. It seems unlikely but Snopes.com dug into it and found that it became an almost-universal practice among commercial bakeries as a way to help grocery store restockers recognize which loaves to replace on their shelves.

To remember which color is which day, put the colors in alphabetical order. Here's the breakdown:

Blue: Monday
Green: Tuesday
Red: Thursday
White: Friday
Yellow: Saturday

There are certainly some exceptions to this practice so we can't recommend relying on it exclusively to determine freshness. Some bakeries will use their own color-coding systems or only one color altogether, and always remember that the date on the tag is the date the bread needs to be sold by, not the date it was baked on.

Now we just want to know why bread isn't baked on Wednesdays.

Do you know of any other food packaging color-codes?

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4 Comments

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JOSEPH

And now there's this: The Freshness Wheel to help you remember.
www.freshnesswheel.com

August 06 2011 at 10:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

MR.BILL

ALWAYS GLAD TO HAVE MORE BREAD RECIPES.
STILL WANT TO KNOW WHY THERE IS NO COLOR FOR WENSDAY? I HAVE NEVER KNOWN A COMMERCIAL BREAD BAKERY THA SHUT DOW ANY DAY. USE TO LIVE DOWN THE STREET FROM TASTY BREAD (TOASTMASTER BAKERIES (1949 ST. LOUIS,MO) CALLED ON HOLSUM BAKERY IN SAN ANGELO, TEXAS, 1968 & THEY THEY BOUTH BAKED ON WENSDAY,..BUNNY BREAD BAKED IN REGIONALL BAKERIES, SEVEN DAYS A WEEKAND SHIPPED BREAD THROUGH THE NIGHT TO SPOT WHERE THE DRIVERS WOULD MEET THE TRAIN AND THKE THE BREAD OFF FOR THEIR ROUTE.

July 07 2011 at 12:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve Langan

Tie colors are definitely not universal. Sara Lee uses red, white, blue, orange, yellow for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The tags are mainly used because when delivering and stocking in bulk it is much easier and less time consuming to view the tag than it is the date stamp on each loaf One thing is universal-all bread companies deliver five days a week, with days off being Wednesday and Sunday. Thus, these days have no color coded bread for the deliver driver to remove from the store.

July 06 2011 at 8:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

puzzled

This is nothing new. I learned in the early 80's that bread bag ties were color coded according to the day of the week. I just have never been able to remember which color goes with which day.

June 19 2011 at 7:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply