The Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar to create a more standardized calendar and replaced the complicated Roman lunar calendar. In 1582 the Gregorian calendar, which we still use today, replaced the Julian calendar to better align the calendar dates with equinoxes and solstices. Despite this, the Julian calendar lives on and is still used in astronomy today. A modified version is also widely used by the military for MREs (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) and the food industry to track dates. In this use, a Julian date refers to a specific day of the year.

At Natural Grocers, we use Julian dates to track the day our bulk products are packaged on. You’ll find the date near the bar code in the form XX-XXX. The first two digits are the last numbers of the year and the three digits after the hyphen are the day of that year. So, for instance, a Julian date of 26-001 represents the first day of the year 2026, or January 1, 2026, while a Julian date of 27-165 represents the 165^th day of the year 2027 or June 14, 2027. You can use the calendars below to tell you specifically what day your bulk product was packed on.