Does it get too dry? Go stale?
Is there something that makes dried pasta unable to rehydrate?
Expiration dates on shelf stable foods can be ignored.
Why does dried pasta have an expiration date
Submitted 5 hours ago by ReedReads@lemmy.zip to [deleted]
Comments
curiousaur@reddthat.com 25 minutes ago
slazer2au@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I always assume that expiration dates on non perishable good is more to do with the integrity of the packaging then the food itself.
Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Also legal limits, different categories of food have a max best before date.
First_Thunder@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
also legal liability, if someone dies eating your spaghetti, you have to cover yourself
Gork@sopuli.xyz 3 hours ago
This is funny when it applies to stuff like rock salt.
Billions of years in a mountain but the packaging says it’ll go bad in a few months.
khannie@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
All of the answers here are missing something: pasta has a very small amount of fat in it. Eventually that fat goes rancid.
You can significantly extend shelf life of things like pasta and rice by storing them in inert gases but that’s not done generally.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 4 hours ago
In dry stuff it’s generally the fat going rancid.
Though I’ve used 5 year old pasta and it was fine. The fat may have been rancid, but I suspect between boiling and immersion in sauce you just wouldn’t taste it.
(Also, rancid fat isn’t necessarily harmful).
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
Expiration dates are mostly bullshit, that said, I have seen very old pasta get a bloom on them and while it was perfectly edible, the texture was marred slightly.
e0qdk@reddthat.com 5 hours ago
I’ve got boxes of spaghetti that are at least six years old (I know I had them on hand during COVID…) which I’ve cooked up successfully as recently as last week.
YMMV with other types (particularly if it’s got any meaningful amount of oil/fat in it) but for spaghetti at least, I haven’t yet found an upper bound on usability.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Unless it’s vacuum sealed it will absorb water from the air and eventually go kind of manky. I don’t know how it is in all parts of the world, but most pasta here other than the exceptionally fancy stuff is just packaged loose in cardboard boxes that are in no way airtight.
If you stuck your spaghetti in one of those vacuum pumped storage containers to get all or most of the air out of it, it’ll probably last until the heat death of the universe regardless of what the packaging said on it.
RamRabbit@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Shelf-stable food is almost permanently good to eat. The dates mean nothing.
Dried food can go bad if it gets wet, regardless of the date.
Canned food can go bad if the packaging is pierced, regardless of the date.
something183786@lemmy.world 10 minutes ago
Ask me about the food poisoning my whole family got from a store bought shelf stable pie crust!! We made the pie within a couple weeks of buying the crust, but determine after the fact that it expired a year prior! 🤮
BillyClark@piefed.social 5 hours ago
Despite the memes, apparently, Twinkies go stale pretty soon after they’re made.
nylo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
that is a decidedly NOT fun fact :(
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 hours ago
I’ve had crackers where the fat has gone rancid. Not great, but edible, especially with something to mask it - dip, peanut butter, cheese, etc
nylo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
was it out of an MRE or just a back of the cupboard find?
Shortstack@reddthat.com 5 hours ago
In my experience the pasta breaks apart more the older it gets during the cooking process. The end result of a particularly old box of rotini looks more like the fragments at the bottom of a bag of tortilla chips that are too small to dip with.
My personal cutoff is about 1.5-2 years after expiration
Never had an issue with taste though
StickyDango@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
There’s a best before date, use by date, and, expiry date. Dry pasta will have a best before. Companies have this so that they can guarantee that if storage conditions are ideal, the pasta will look, taste, and cook the same as if it was fresh out of the packet. Past this date, it might get brittle, but it wouldn’t affect the food safety of the product.
Extra info for those who are interested:
Best before will be things like rehydrated pasta, your meats, dairy, perishables… Though admittedly, I have eaten yogurt and hummus 4 months past the date. I lived by myself at the time and they lived in the back of the fridge.
Expiry would be things like baby formula, medication, anything that has a higher risk to health, whether it means it’s for a high risk population, or if it’s got an important role.
5ibelius9insterberg@feddit.org 5 hours ago
In Germany there is a difference between Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum [the food company guarantees the expected quality up to this date] so basically „best before“, and Verbrauchsdatum [If you eat this product after said date, there’s a rising probability of you getting sick] which would be the expiration date.
On some products they ask you to look, smell and taste, because it’s probably still good after the Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 5 hours ago
Britain has the Best Before date for stable foods, Use By for foods where harm could be caused, and a newer scheme to leave dates off fruit and vegetables entirely, to reduce waste.
breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
It can go bad, but it probably wouldn’t make you sick. Fats can go rancid through oxidation. It wouldn’t taste great. Proteins can decay, impacting the structure and flavor. It would probably just break apart when you tried to rehydrate it.
If you were storing it properly - no moisture and an air-tight container - it’d probably take way longer than the best before date.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 5 minutes ago
I remember reading that at least in some jurisdictions, food producers are legally required to store samples of the food batches they’ve produced that haven’t expired yet, or something like that… so that implies they need to put something on there.