| Issue #50, March 23, 2007 |
Expiration Dates
And You Thought They Could Remain in Your Pantry Forever
By Dan Rattiner
The other day in a magazine, I came upon a list of expiration dates for certain foods, liquids and beverages that are usually sold without expiration dates. For example, did you know that a can of Coca Cola, unopened, has an expiration date? It’s nine months after they manufacture it. How about a can of unopened Diet Coca Cola? Three months. Now why is that? I’ve always been suspicious of whatever it is makes a Coca Cola a Diet Coca Cola. Suspicions confirmed. Whatever it is, it doesn’t last long.
All the following expiration dates apply to things you buy that sit, unopened, in your house on a shelf. Ketchup is good for one year. Maple syrup is good for one year. Personally, I have bottles of maple syrup, unopened, in my pantry, from when Ronald Reagan was President. It’s real good stuff. Came from endangered trees in the hills behind Booth Bay Harbor, Maine. I pop a bottle open for special occasions when I have guests.
Olive oil has an expiration date. I thought olive oil lasts forever. It lasts two years. I thought soy sauce lasts forever. It lasts two years. Canned tuna, unopened, is just good for a year. Explain this to me. What can get into, or for that matter, out of, an unopened can of Chicken of the Sea?
A show of hands, please. How many people believe that anything with alcohol lasts forever? Alcohol is alcohol. Think of eight-year-old Scotch. Or a twenty-year-old bottle of Chardonnay.
Well, you’re on your own with alcohol. But a friend of mine, Bill Sokolin, who is a dealer in fine wine, once took an old bottle of wine he owned to a party of wine aficionados, just to show it off. It had been corked and sealed in 1787 and had been in a wine cellar at the home of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. Bill, holding the bottle by its neck, turned to dodge a waiter, and hit the bottle on the back of a metal chair. Now there was wine and broken glass everywhere.
People actually came running over to taste the spilled wine, getting down on their hands and knees and rubbing their fingers in puddles of it and then putting it in their mouths, and to hell with any broken glass. The wine tasted like mud.
How about peanut butter? Unopened. Two years. But who ever heard of peanut butter not getting opened for two years? Salad dressing? One year. Vinegar? Isn’t that what everything turns to when it goes bad? No? A bottle of vinegar, unopened, goes bad in three and a half years. And turns to what? Go figure.
That about completes the survey of the things I wrote down from this list, except for one, which I will get to at the end of this article, which lasts FOREVER. And no it is not water. It’s quite a surprise.
So I’m in Bob’s Village Market, next to Dan’s Papers, and I decide to buy a bottle of Fiji Water. I have been to Fiji and the place is indeed quite wonderful, with summer year round, gentle breezes and an ocean that is so clear you can see all the fish swimming around.
The tap water in Fiji is indeed as pure as what they put in the bottle, and it tastes the same too, a kind of satiny, soft, powdered coral reefy taste. Now, I could spend a lot of time talking about how wasteful it surely is to pack bottles of it into crates, put the crates into tankers, put thousands of gallons of diesel fuel into the gas tanks of the barges and tankers and motor tons of cases of Fiji Water to Bridgehampton (and tankers bringing our water to Fiji) but that’s another story.
The real interesting news is that my bottle of Fiji Water, bought November 14, says it was bottled at 2:37 p.m. on June 28, 2006 in Viti Levu, a rather funky town that is the capital of that island, and it is “best used” by June 28, 2008 at 2:37 p.m., which, if my calculations of the time zones are correct, is actually 1:37 a.m. the next day here in Bridgehampton.
At which time, it does what? Explodes? Turns to vinegar? Well, it doesn’t turn to vinegar. It just gets, I guess, funky and probably poisonous. So you throw it down the drain, where it goes through pipes to join all its fellow water molecules down in, well, the aquifer below the basement of the house, befouling it. And then it condenses into clouds and rains down on — what — Fiji?
Every once in a while, here at my house in East Hampton, I go on a tear, looking through the pantries and junk drawers with an eye to throwing out that which is beyond its expiration date. I have a philosophy about this, which is science, tempered by what I will call, for lack of a better word, old wive’s tales.
For example, I will keep batteries one year after their expiration date, in the belief that the manufacturer puts on an expiration date that is short, by a year, of the date at which they actually expire.
I will throw out suntan lotion either after two years or after it first noticeably begins to separate into two different kinds of goo when you squeeze it.
I will NEVER throw out either aspirin or alcohol. Both, in spite of any instructions otherwise, will, in my opinion, last forever. Stick deodorant also lasts forever.
Prescription medication, I believe, will last twice as long as the written expiration date, except for antibiotics which expire precisely on the date noted.
And then there is perfectly good stuff in the junk drawer that has nothing to do with expiration dates. The other day I found a brand new little black plastic stand that was still in its clear plastic bag, in perfect new condition, designed to hold up a Nokia 1030 cell phone on a desk. They haven’t made 1030s in almost ten years. But I couldn’t throw it out. If I throw it out, sometime late tomorrow afternoon, somebody will call me. Happens every time.
“Have you seen that old Nokia cell phone stand that came with my old phone?” somebody will ask. Back it goes into the drawer.
As for food, anything in my pantry in an unopened bottle will last forever, in my opinion. It’s dark in there. Dark has powerful preservationist powers. And bottles, especially bottles of sliced beets, are packed really, really tight.
I have been, periodically, very offended when a close friend or relative enters my pantry and, after re-appearing, shocked, says they are now doing me a big favor by throwing out all the old post-expiration stuff, including my vast collection of expired cans of Campbell soup I am keeping in there. I have ordered people out of my house who have said they will do this.
Reach for the Campbell’s, it’s right on your shelf, is my slogan. I have cans in there from when cars had tailfins. Had one just the other day. Mixed a canful of water into it, stirred and heated it. Delicious.
As for the refrigerator, I have a whole other set of rules that apply. If it was taken home in a doggie bag from a restaurant from the night before, no matter how good it was, I won’t eat it. It was just for show that I brought it home. Didn’t want to offend the waiter. Now it is icky, used food. Throw it out. Or give it to the dog.
Here’s the rule for beverages. Any beverage that is beyond the expiration date gets the sniff test. If it passes the sniff test, it is fine. Pour it into a glass slowly. If no clump of grey stuff blops out into the glass, drink it.
Beer never goes bad. Vodka never goes bad. Fruit juice, especially grapefruit juice, never goes bad. Fruit juices are tart and acid. Acid lasts forever.
Your dog’s dog food expiration date is exactly double and then double again the human expiration date as printed on the same food, because dogs have evolved over the ages, foraging through the woods for food, to have iron stomachs. Dogs also have hair trigger noses that are as smart as Obiwan Kenobi. You never see a dog who ate something that went bad. It just isn’t something you have to worry about.
The thing that this study says lasts forever? Mayonnaise. Believe it or not. It might change color a bit. So if it is 100 years from now and you are old and decrepit and decide you’d like to have some mayonnaise, go get the jar and if it looks a bit green or blue, don’t worry. It’s just the coloring. The stuff inside is as delicious as it ever was. And it always will be, too.
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