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Can I still use this salt? (iili.io)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 107 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Sometimes expiration dates refer to when enough plastic from the packaging has decayed into the food material that it might be a problem. Bottled water works that way.

I don't know:

How much science there is behind the dating
How much plastic you're consuming in your food anyway and so who cares what's the difference
Whether that's what's going on with this salt package specifically

But it's not automatically crazy for there to be an expiration date on an immortal product if it comes packaged up in plastic.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I'm no expert, but I did watch a minidocumentary that explained that these best by dates are mostly arbitrary aside from perishable foods.

For some products they'll have taste testers rate the same product packaged at different times from 1-10 with 10 being factory fresh, and when it drops below an average of 7, that's the date they put on the packaging

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Yeah. I feel like they probably just pick some random bullshit, and if people get botulism they look at reducing it, and if they throw away a quarter-million dollars worth of product that expired they look at increasing it, and if neither of those happens then they don't worry about it. I have no knowledge of it but even hearing that they do taste tests is a little surprising to me. But I am cynical.

I did know some people who were once "employed" on a sort of temp job that was excising already-passed expiration dates from a massive number of cans of fish, and then stamping new later dates on them.

☹️

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Changes in texture are used for the best by dates too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah a lot of the dates are just guesses that they know for a fact it will last longer. They are required to put a date but not required to actually test how long an item lasts. A lot of items last much longer than their expiration date. Salt should be good indefinitely.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I think the law is to enforce "open dating" instead of having some secret coding that hides info from the consumer. What date they put on there is totally up to the manufacturer, so unless you can match dates and experience with the optimal time to eat something, it's only useful to make sure you got the latest product compared to the rest on the shelf at that time.

Climate Town had an excellent video on the subject. (since they're always excellent)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah but this kind of salt they only taste test every half million years or so, so the expiration dates cant be trusted to be that precise.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

While I've always thought that, I've also heard that it's the point where the plastic may not be reliable enough to contain or keep the contents uncontaminated. Either way, it's the plastic.

[–] Aux 5 points 3 months ago

Best before date doesn't mean shit in general. Salt can't go bad, there are no mechanisms for that.

[–] Viking_Hippie 2 points 3 months ago

It's the same with packaged ice cubes.

The main Danish "bag of ice" seller takes chunks of thousands if not tens of thousands of years old Greenland icebergs and put it in a bag that displays a best before date 1 year after the bagging 😄