Salt is a naturally occurring mineral. It floated around the earth for millions of years before it ever entered your hands. It saw the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, and then the evolution of humans from tiny rats skittering around the underbrush into hubristic apes that would dominate the planet and set out for the stars. Wrenched from its home in the sea by the vast industrialized machine of the modern supply chain, it was then securely bottled up for your consumption. It sat patiently in wait for but a few years, a fraction of a fraction of its total lifespan... only for you to callously throw it away because it "expired."
Well, unless OP lives near an ocean, it'd be a bad idea to dump it out outside. Salt kills plant life. Shoulda just kept it. If they're nervous about bacteria, they could just use it in high temp cooking
It’s not the salt that goes bad but the packaging, which can start to perish through prolonged contact with salt.
Salt also absorbs moisture from air which doesn’t make it bad, but can make it hard to use in a commercially produced grinder.
The best before date, as usual, doesn’t mean it’s dangerous to consume but does mean that beyond this date, the manufacturer can’t guarantee the performance of the product.
Salt is mined from rocks and minerals that have been around for 350 million+ years but oops it expired on your shelf only lol
I’m pretty sure the expiration date is for the plastic container rather than the actual salt
Mountain House number 10 cans are good for at least 25 years; I think their pouches are the same but I'm not positive. We keep some on hand in case of long-term power outages. (I grew up in an area that got heavy, power-line killing snow almost every year. My partner did not, and he finds my emergency supplies wild since we've never lost power for more than six hours in the ~14 years we've lived together. ...But if we do, we've still got pasta primavera!)
In the US, the food expiration date laws are inconsistent and confusing. Surprisingly, there aren’t actually very many at all. “Best by” isn’t even a real expiration date! The only federal law for food dating is for baby formula. That’s it.
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/food-product-dating#:~:text=In%20an%20effort%20to%20reduce,product%20prior%20to%20its%20consumption
Other countries may have different standards, but the USDA has very few
Well... Its a mineral.. unless its absorbs dirty water or moisture from the air its stil just salt lol.
Id toss it just on suspicion of contamination but bot the salt itself. It remains the same
Edit: i just looked at the date and it being rock salt, and its in a good container and isnt discoulored. It was most likely fine
Yea I back tracked on the edit. I have adhd and didnt quite look to details until after. Its seems perfectly fine. I would check the scent and make sure there isnt any absorbed from the surroundings but im almost positive I've used worse lol
To those who think this is sketchy, why? Salt doesn't expire. Period. It may absorb some funky flavor after a while, but it's not gonna go bad. If it still looks like salt, and tastes like salt, it's fine.
Dry goods don't really go bad, they just get stale and less flavourful. This doesn't happen to salt though. That salt was still good to use. The US just makes manufacturers put use by dates of 2 years on most items as a precaution, but some of the ingredients that food manufacturers are using are already 5yrs old, so some items on stores shelves are 5yrs old and then they have the two year use by date stamped on them. General rule is if it isn't damp or moldy or smells off or slimy it's probably still ok to use.
I think with certain things, the date is more for when the packaging may corrode, like on water bottles. If I'm wrong on that, correct me.
This looks to be glass, so I would not be as concerned. Maybe the plastic topper?
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/7swapn/this_250_million_year_old_salt_expires_next_year/
There's a date on the package because all food products must have one. However, it does not expire.
As a bonus, here's a fun video [about expiration dates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GDLaYrMCFo).
Salt is millions or even billions of years old.
I guess we should just throw out all are salt away because it’s just too damn old to use!
Same goes for water!
A short story about Corporate/Government Greed:
1. Companies/corporations: we put these expiration dates on your products so you’ll quickly buy more of our products and make us more money faster. Throw the “expired” object away and hurry up and go buy another.
2. See: wash, rinse, repeat
3. Landfills/oceans: please stop throwing things away! You’re killing the earth!
4. Consumers: I need instructions. I’m probably not smart enough to figure things out on my own.
I’ll just do what the “government” tells me.
5. George Orwell: I tried to warn you.
6. Grandparents: we did not have expiration dates nor did we throw everything away and we managed to make it through life just fine.
The end.
> Do Not Refill
Well idk maybe don't use a shit plastic grinder McCormick? 🤷♂️ fuk u
I hate this greedy shit where they wanted you to subscribe to their products and keep buying them
When my grandma died in the early 2000's we found spices in her cupboard from the 1970's. I kind of wish I would have kept one just for the hell of it.
Not enough people in this thread talking about how *all* expiration dates are made up. None of them are standardized or enforced by any regulatory body.
The people deciding when those.chips in your pantry "expire" are the people who want to sell.you another bag.
It’s the plastics. It’s the reason bottled water is so bad. After the first year many of the plastics start breaking down and if not considered fda approved past that length of time.
Tbh please fact check me. I realize I don’t now remember where I heard this from.
Get rid of sea salt. It contains mercury, cadmium, arsenic, chromium and lead, from human pollution of the oceans. It belongs in the garbage.
Salt is salt, except for the toxic impurities found in sea salt and Himalayan salt. Buy regular table salt, which has all the heavy metals removed.
My mom used to love the McCormick spice grinder things. Even though the salt inside is probably still fine, I can say from experience that the grinders tend to accumulate grease, dirt, and gunk and get pretty gross after a while.
Na verloop van tijd is het etiket niet meer leesbaar. De datum is vooral een advies om het product ooit te gebruiken, om te voorkomen dat je niet meer weet wat het is en hoe je het kunt afvoeren.
Salt is a naturally occurring mineral. It floated around the earth for millions of years before it ever entered your hands. It saw the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, and then the evolution of humans from tiny rats skittering around the underbrush into hubristic apes that would dominate the planet and set out for the stars. Wrenched from its home in the sea by the vast industrialized machine of the modern supply chain, it was then securely bottled up for your consumption. It sat patiently in wait for but a few years, a fraction of a fraction of its total lifespan... only for you to callously throw it away because it "expired."
salty ass comment /s
/s for salty
>/s for salty Sassy alt comment
From the earth it came, back to the earth it goes
Except this time trapped in plastic never again to touch it's brother and sister of the earth it came from
Except for the mechanism, those McCormick grinders are glass.
Well, unless OP lives near an ocean, it'd be a bad idea to dump it out outside. Salt kills plant life. Shoulda just kept it. If they're nervous about bacteria, they could just use it in high temp cooking
The evolution of the salt.
https://imgb.ifunny.co/images/0500fd83fe6e8f879caa3b6e01ef9c607cdd4219a6cc8d7df85b87eec32a1e1b_1.jpg
I was just looking through my photo album for this. Too funny
It’s not the salt that goes bad but the packaging, which can start to perish through prolonged contact with salt. Salt also absorbs moisture from air which doesn’t make it bad, but can make it hard to use in a commercially produced grinder. The best before date, as usual, doesn’t mean it’s dangerous to consume but does mean that beyond this date, the manufacturer can’t guarantee the performance of the product.
This is a glass container. OP is dumb and should feel bad about themselves.
the grinder part is plastic though. so if the salt is a solid chunk, nothing is going to come out anyway
Yum micro plastics.
Better to be dumb than to be a jerk. If anyone should feel bad, it's you.
That comment has strong “is this pork processed” vibes. https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyspecific/s/oHgKZj91ss
Your comment made me laugh. How is any of that possible when the earth is only 6,000 years old? /s
I now feel sad for the little salt shaker. :(
This is beautiful
Did ChatGPT write this? Its very OpenAI coded
Why am I crying over a container of salt…
We have a winner
This is why I love Reddit
It’s not trashed. Should’ve kept it for sure, but it will just eventually go back into the earth (when the plastic eventually deteriorates)
Salt is mined from rocks and minerals that have been around for 350 million+ years but oops it expired on your shelf only lol I’m pretty sure the expiration date is for the plastic container rather than the actual salt
Everything food related sold requires a best before date, so they put an arbitrary date on sometimes.
They put an arbitrary date on often, I would say.
It's usually 3 years in the US, because New Jersey has a law that says no food items can be sold more than 3 years after their manufacture date.
I bought food for camping it’s the stuff you rehdrate in the pouch and my bag: exp 05/2049 !!!
Mountain House number 10 cans are good for at least 25 years; I think their pouches are the same but I'm not positive. We keep some on hand in case of long-term power outages. (I grew up in an area that got heavy, power-line killing snow almost every year. My partner did not, and he finds my emergency supplies wild since we've never lost power for more than six hours in the ~14 years we've lived together. ...But if we do, we've still got pasta primavera!)
In the US, the food expiration date laws are inconsistent and confusing. Surprisingly, there aren’t actually very many at all. “Best by” isn’t even a real expiration date! The only federal law for food dating is for baby formula. That’s it. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/food-product-dating#:~:text=In%20an%20effort%20to%20reduce,product%20prior%20to%20its%20consumption Other countries may have different standards, but the USDA has very few
So it's probably best to store salt in glass?
It's in a glass container here. They threw that away too. Great they posted here for posterity. What is even the point?
I don't like when things get wasted. It was dumb to throw it all away.
Probably, does glass expire? I actually don’t know lol
Glass is also made from rocks and minerals
So what you're saying is glass will also expire on OPs self
No, but the plastic grinder might
Glass is incredibly stable. Especially with salt inside, nothing alive will be able to live in conditions like the inside of that container of salt.
Depending on whats in it, glass can change over time, for example clear glass can turn purple!
I love eating rocks
Since when does typical foodgrade plastic expire
It wouldn’t go bad unless it was contaminated with something over the years, but it’s also really cheap to replace
And at one time it was more valuable than gold is today.
Salt is a rock. It goes bad like a rock would.
It's a mineral. Rocks are combinations of minerals.
>Jesus Christ Marie, they're not rocks. They're minerals"
The way I can *hear* this lol
Me tooo!! Ugh I miss that show
[Really miss Breaking Bad](https://youtu.be/r1yYJBzf1VQ?si=jm8gYxVPO-9w3T0_)
One.. two… ten… a million… boxes
This made me so proud
*sometimes part of a rock then
They crave that mineral
Rocks are made of one or more minerals.
You might be able to preserve it, with more salt.
Salt doesn’t go bad.
Well... Its a mineral.. unless its absorbs dirty water or moisture from the air its stil just salt lol. Id toss it just on suspicion of contamination but bot the salt itself. It remains the same Edit: i just looked at the date and it being rock salt, and its in a good container and isnt discoulored. It was most likely fine
There is no reason to throw it away
Yea I back tracked on the edit. I have adhd and didnt quite look to details until after. Its seems perfectly fine. I would check the scent and make sure there isnt any absorbed from the surroundings but im almost positive I've used worse lol
To those who think this is sketchy, why? Salt doesn't expire. Period. It may absorb some funky flavor after a while, but it's not gonna go bad. If it still looks like salt, and tastes like salt, it's fine.
This sub just came up on my feed, but the number of people throwing it out “to be safe” is wild.
Dry goods don't really go bad, they just get stale and less flavourful. This doesn't happen to salt though. That salt was still good to use. The US just makes manufacturers put use by dates of 2 years on most items as a precaution, but some of the ingredients that food manufacturers are using are already 5yrs old, so some items on stores shelves are 5yrs old and then they have the two year use by date stamped on them. General rule is if it isn't damp or moldy or smells off or slimy it's probably still ok to use.
I think with certain things, the date is more for when the packaging may corrode, like on water bottles. If I'm wrong on that, correct me. This looks to be glass, so I would not be as concerned. Maybe the plastic topper?
That was my first thought. The plastic container expires, not the salt.
These dates are all made up horse shit
Salt is a rock…. That’s like worrying if the water in your sink is old. It’s pretty much always been here and isn’t going to change lol
Salt had been around for millions of years, its not going bad in your cupboard.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/7swapn/this_250_million_year_old_salt_expires_next_year/ There's a date on the package because all food products must have one. However, it does not expire. As a bonus, here's a fun video [about expiration dates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GDLaYrMCFo).
That salt is about thousands of years old already. That's a sell by date not expiration date. Most food is good well past that date.
Considering some of the other spices we see posted, it's actually not that old (12 years rofl).
Salt should be tossed after a few months. Make sure it’s behind your left shoulder though, and watch out for Seabass.
"Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?."
Do the seabass have frickin laser beams on their heads?
Silly to toss it.
If there were an anti-caking ingredient, that may expire, but humans expire before salt ever would.
No. Unless contaminated
That’s perfectly good salt, unless you poured uranium on it or poisoned it.
It doesn’t. Some salt rocks are literally 2 billion years old.
I mean…it’s salt. How old do you think it was BEFORE it got in the plastic bottle?
No. At worst it’ll stick together. Bang on it.
America has the most anti-science "expiration" date bullshit... Congrats on throwing away some rocks.
No but the plastic tab will start to spit microplastics mhmm
Salt is millions or even billions of years old. I guess we should just throw out all are salt away because it’s just too damn old to use! Same goes for water!
Don't forget to get rid of the oxygen. Do. You know how many life forms have already breathed it before you?
It's litterally millions of years in this form. So no, it doesn't go bad. And trashing is really unnecessary. Even with that due date on it.
It lasts longer than twinkies.
I don't think it actually would make you sick if you ingested it. I've heard that seasonings generally just lose flavoring overtime.
Dumb to trash it. Salt and honey never truly go bad.
Throwing salt away is dumb. It’s a rock, rocks don’t expire
Salt does not go bad but its flavor can change and its container can breakdown. honestly you could have reused that just fine.
It's like water- the item isn't decomposing, the *packaging* is.
Unless it's glass
Stopper and grinder are plastic.
A short story about Corporate/Government Greed: 1. Companies/corporations: we put these expiration dates on your products so you’ll quickly buy more of our products and make us more money faster. Throw the “expired” object away and hurry up and go buy another. 2. See: wash, rinse, repeat 3. Landfills/oceans: please stop throwing things away! You’re killing the earth! 4. Consumers: I need instructions. I’m probably not smart enough to figure things out on my own. I’ll just do what the “government” tells me. 5. George Orwell: I tried to warn you. 6. Grandparents: we did not have expiration dates nor did we throw everything away and we managed to make it through life just fine. The end.
Salt does not go bad.
I buy salt that's like 800 million years old, but yeah a decade past the label is sketchy enough to toss prob
Couple more years that’ll be lab made diamonds.
what, why
unless it contains iodine or other seasonings you’re good… it’s salt lol
Nope
Paradox.
Salt? Nah. It can get all hard and clustered and unusable though.
I think they legally have to put an expiration date on all foods in the US.
No, it doesn’t
> Do Not Refill Well idk maybe don't use a shit plastic grinder McCormick? 🤷♂️ fuk u I hate this greedy shit where they wanted you to subscribe to their products and keep buying them
Ever seen moldy salt?
Uhh why did you trash it 😭
Things like garlic powder simply lose flavor over time, but salt stays salt forever.
That's like asking if water goes bad.
Water stagnants and bacteria will breed in it. It can be made potable again, sure.
Missing the point entirely, but I always expect there to be that one person incapable of basic thought.
Am I missing the point, or did you not articulate it in a way that gets that point across?
You're just a complete fool. Nobody was talking about that and if you didn't want to act like an insufferable know it all, you'd know that.
Who hurt you?
Good response. Typical, but good.
Salt doesn’t go bad. It’s literally a rock. Himalayan salt is millions of years old
When my grandma died in the early 2000's we found spices in her cupboard from the 1970's. I kind of wish I would have kept one just for the hell of it.
no
It's the plastic that degrades. Salt absorbs the off flavors.
This is like finding a gun, killing someone and then asking if you can get in trouble. If you threw it away, what's the point of asking?
For future reference…? To learn…? I mean there’s quite a few perfectly valid reasons to ask.
steer judicious sip coordinated melodic special kiss illegal bear spoon *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I have had salt that went “bad”: it became clumpy instead of pouring out freely. I hit it with the meat tenderized and made it go “good” again.
Salt kinda lasts forever.
Don’t go bad. Salt is a preservative
That salt is like…as old as the earth. Older maybe? It’s fine.
It's a rock.
Not enough people in this thread talking about how *all* expiration dates are made up. None of them are standardized or enforced by any regulatory body. The people deciding when those.chips in your pantry "expire" are the people who want to sell.you another bag.
Salt does not go bad. It gets very hard if moisture gets in.
It’s the plastics. It’s the reason bottled water is so bad. After the first year many of the plastics start breaking down and if not considered fda approved past that length of time. Tbh please fact check me. I realize I don’t now remember where I heard this from.
Get rid of sea salt. It contains mercury, cadmium, arsenic, chromium and lead, from human pollution of the oceans. It belongs in the garbage. Salt is salt, except for the toxic impurities found in sea salt and Himalayan salt. Buy regular table salt, which has all the heavy metals removed.
My mom used to love the McCormick spice grinder things. Even though the salt inside is probably still fine, I can say from experience that the grinders tend to accumulate grease, dirt, and gunk and get pretty gross after a while.
Na verloop van tijd is het etiket niet meer leesbaar. De datum is vooral een advies om het product ooit te gebruiken, om te voorkomen dat je niet meer weet wat het is en hoe je het kunt afvoeren.
Yikes.
[удалено]
Waiter my salt isn't potent enough