Can I still use this salt?

Comments

• pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Some tourists in the Museum of Natural History are marveling at some dinosaur bones. One of them asks the guard, “Can you tell me how old the dinosaur bones are?”

  The guard replies, “They are 65,000,011 years old.”

  “That’s an awfully exact number,” says the tourist. “How do you know their age so precisely?”

  The guard answers, “Well, the dinosaur bones were sixty five million years old when I started working here, and that was eleven years ago.”

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• mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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 7, that’s the date they put on the packaging

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    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨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.

      ☹️

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    • snooggums@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • JCreazy@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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    • blackbrook@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨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.

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  • Rhaedas@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨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.

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    • Didros@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You would think that the abrasive nature of the salt would shave off more plastic than the plastic breaking down. I guess you need to keep track of how many earth quakes you get and how much you shake the container when you get salt.

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• v4ld1z@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You may have to wash the salt first

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• BoxedFenders@hexbear.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  250 million years ago to 2019. This salt had a good run.

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• AccountMaker@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  From what I heard, salt is usually packaged with iodine or some substances that prevent clumping that expire over time. So after some time the salt won’t have those anymore, but it should be safe to consume. Salt cannot spoil because bacteria cannot grow in salty places.

  Don’t know how plastic containers relate to that sadly.

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  • user134450@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    sodium iodide does not prevent clumping. typical anti-caking agents in salt are: fumed silica, potassium ferrocyanide, alumosilcate salts [Na+ | Ca2+ | K+] and sometimes, more frequently in organic products: simple carbonate salts (also [Na+ | Ca2+ | K+]).

    I know there are people who are afraid of anything with with the word “cyanide” anywhere in the description but ferrocyanides are really quite harmless. they are so harmless in fact that they are a common component of chemistry kits for little kids to make prussian blue.

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  • Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The label says it’s 100% uncontaminated though 😂

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• lugal@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes, salt doesn’t go bad

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  • anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But thus looks like natural salt, so no preservatives 😁

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    • lugal@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Maybe they used natural preservation like, let’s say, salt? OP should check the ingredients

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  • snooggums@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This comment is absolute gold.

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    • pezmaker@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s probably NaCl

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    • lugal@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Glad to be of service

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• Zerush@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Well, I understand that with some years in an plastic bowl, the salt may absorb some substances and microplastics. But about Honey, what comes in glass jars? There they also put an expiration date, even though still edible honey has been found in several thousand years old Egyptian tombs.

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  • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The expiration date - unless it’s a different legal definition where you are from - is not really about being edible, but just signifies the guarantee the producer gives, basically “up until this date we will guarantee this product will maintain the expected quality”. In this case, I think it will be them not guaranteeing that the salt won’t have drawn water from the air and clumped up or something like that.

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    • user134450@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      i think what you are describing is the “best before date”. the expiration date instead works as OP describes it: after the expiration the product should be tossed.

      i usually see expiration dates on fish and meat. afaik honey never comes with an expiration date; the best before date is probably only relevant for the taste of the honey, not for its safety.

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  • JCreazy@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s required by law so they have to put something.

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    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      As weird as it sounds, this actually isn't true in general. Except on baby formula, it's not required by federal law. Some states require it and some don't, but it's more or less put there voluntarily by everyone because they don't want spoiled stuff going around with their name on it.

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  • 5oap10116@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    As a plastics engineer, I would be more concerned with the heavy metals in Himalayan pink salt. Also, any microplastics wouldn’t be “absorbed” If anything the salt would abraid the walls through shaking the container which could scrape the walls and grind our some small particles over time. That bwing said, the plastics used for these types of applications are relatively virgin and frequently don’t contain any additives aside from possible colorants or glass fill or something line that.

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• DavidGarcia@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s just the data after which the microplastics have aged to their finest toxicity

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• BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Over 250 million years of shelf life, I think it can last a few million years more.

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• KingJalopy@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Lots of salty comments in this thread

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• Flyberius@hexbear.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I would.

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• lurch@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  if you think microbes got in that can survive in salt and are harmfy0ul to humans (which is unlikely), you can bake it in your oven a bit (without the container)

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  • GiveMemes@jlai.lu ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Can any organism live on 100% salt? I was able to find info on hypersaline solutions, but I would think that existing on a pure polar solute would pretty much just kill by osmosis right?

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    • lurch@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I guess a few spores don’t mind salt, but i don’t know for sure. That’s why I wrote microbe.

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• darkphotonstudio@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes.

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