Refrigerate After Opening
Sep. 1st, 2008 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"I don't pick subjects as much as they pick me."
- Andy Rooney
There are some things in life that we just have to deal with, despite our sneaking suspicions or better judgment. Medical care, for example: we have to trust that these trained professionals know what they're doing, and that there's a valid scientific reason why they need to grab my nuts and ask me to cough. (This is either a folksy method for diagnosing a hernia or an ages-old hazing ritual for young doctors.)
Or your cable bill. No reasonably intelligent, right-minded person would or could discern the appropriate rate or rationale for the Communications Sales Tax or the FCC Regulatory Fee or the "Rights of Way Use" assessment, but we pay it because the alternative is getting your Comedy Central and American Movie Classics from a swarthy Kazakhstani paraprofessional named Clamp.
But I want to talk about expiration dates: those vaguely authoritative dates stamped on all manner of food stuffs from breakfast cereal to after-dinner mints. I keep coming around to the hypothesis that many of these expiration dates are total bullshit.
Some of these dates are beyond debate, if not beyond reproach. Expiration dates for dairy products are given the benefit of the doubt, as are those for packaged meat. I am inclined to trust organic items (i.e. items without preservatives), items that require refrigeration and open items prone to growing stale. I will even concede wisdom on most canned goods, after a particularly enlightening experience with a three-year-old can of garbanzo beans, which upon opening gave off the distinct aroma of Uranium-231.
(Pharmaceuticals are sort of a gray area. I confess to being a liberal arts major and passing too many notes during high school chemistry class, and I have no idea whether the expiration dates on pill bottles represent the beginning of a general fade in efficacy or if they undergo some sort of time-release mutation that will totally invert my hormones or something. I find that my personal fear of pharmacological metamorphosis is inversely related to my need for pain or symptom relief.)
Some items, however, really stretch my trust. I have a package of dry angel hair pasta in my pantry with a supposed expiration date of August 2004. Am I supposed to believe that this pasta will no longer properly absorb boiling water? Or if it does, it will somehow reconstitute as some sort of poison? Grape Nuts, the only breakfast cereal tough enough to survive a nuclear holocaust, supposedly comes with a one-year time limit, after which -- who knows -- it will taste even more like gravel? A box of croutons -- that is, intentionally dried and stale chunks of bread -- is apparently a ticking time bomb.
Okay, these items could conceivably contain derivatives or byproducts of actual perishable material, whatever that means. But the one that bothers me most is bottled water. Good lord in Heaven, how the hell does water go bad? Does it start to shed hydrogen atoms or something? Does it turn into wine? Is it just not as wet? God dammit.
We don't really who is responsible for these imprints. I gather it's not the FDA, or else it would be included in their designated nutritional summary box. I don't think it's the grocer, since the practical labor required for such an undertaking -- to say nothing of the actuarial calculations -- would be commercially prohibitive. That leaves us with the manufacturer, whose motives are questionable. Not only am I given to the assumption that these dates are derived from the calculus of minimally acceptable levels of legal liability, I am cynical enough to believe that the expiration dates are artificially deflated, just to get us to throw out the old shit and buy more new shit.
Which would be nothing less than despicable. But also brilliant.
- Andy Rooney
There are some things in life that we just have to deal with, despite our sneaking suspicions or better judgment. Medical care, for example: we have to trust that these trained professionals know what they're doing, and that there's a valid scientific reason why they need to grab my nuts and ask me to cough. (This is either a folksy method for diagnosing a hernia or an ages-old hazing ritual for young doctors.)
Or your cable bill. No reasonably intelligent, right-minded person would or could discern the appropriate rate or rationale for the Communications Sales Tax or the FCC Regulatory Fee or the "Rights of Way Use" assessment, but we pay it because the alternative is getting your Comedy Central and American Movie Classics from a swarthy Kazakhstani paraprofessional named Clamp.
But I want to talk about expiration dates: those vaguely authoritative dates stamped on all manner of food stuffs from breakfast cereal to after-dinner mints. I keep coming around to the hypothesis that many of these expiration dates are total bullshit.
Some of these dates are beyond debate, if not beyond reproach. Expiration dates for dairy products are given the benefit of the doubt, as are those for packaged meat. I am inclined to trust organic items (i.e. items without preservatives), items that require refrigeration and open items prone to growing stale. I will even concede wisdom on most canned goods, after a particularly enlightening experience with a three-year-old can of garbanzo beans, which upon opening gave off the distinct aroma of Uranium-231.
(Pharmaceuticals are sort of a gray area. I confess to being a liberal arts major and passing too many notes during high school chemistry class, and I have no idea whether the expiration dates on pill bottles represent the beginning of a general fade in efficacy or if they undergo some sort of time-release mutation that will totally invert my hormones or something. I find that my personal fear of pharmacological metamorphosis is inversely related to my need for pain or symptom relief.)
Some items, however, really stretch my trust. I have a package of dry angel hair pasta in my pantry with a supposed expiration date of August 2004. Am I supposed to believe that this pasta will no longer properly absorb boiling water? Or if it does, it will somehow reconstitute as some sort of poison? Grape Nuts, the only breakfast cereal tough enough to survive a nuclear holocaust, supposedly comes with a one-year time limit, after which -- who knows -- it will taste even more like gravel? A box of croutons -- that is, intentionally dried and stale chunks of bread -- is apparently a ticking time bomb.
Okay, these items could conceivably contain derivatives or byproducts of actual perishable material, whatever that means. But the one that bothers me most is bottled water. Good lord in Heaven, how the hell does water go bad? Does it start to shed hydrogen atoms or something? Does it turn into wine? Is it just not as wet? God dammit.
We don't really who is responsible for these imprints. I gather it's not the FDA, or else it would be included in their designated nutritional summary box. I don't think it's the grocer, since the practical labor required for such an undertaking -- to say nothing of the actuarial calculations -- would be commercially prohibitive. That leaves us with the manufacturer, whose motives are questionable. Not only am I given to the assumption that these dates are derived from the calculus of minimally acceptable levels of legal liability, I am cynical enough to believe that the expiration dates are artificially deflated, just to get us to throw out the old shit and buy more new shit.
Which would be nothing less than despicable. But also brilliant.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
I agree
Date: 2008-09-02 06:02 pm (UTC)I add one (or two) years to the expiration dates on all medicines in my house. They're OBVIOUSLY still good.
Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-02 10:14 pm (UTC)Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-08 02:46 am (UTC)The technical definition of the exipiration date of a drug is: the date beyond which, when stored under proper conditions, the potency of the drug is no longer guaranteed within 90% of the stated strength. Waoo, that was a mouthful. Drugs do degrade, usually in a harmless way. USUALLY.
BUT! A word to the wise for you Tylenol hoarders: Tylenol can POTENTIALLY degrade into a compound that is actually very toxic to your body (as is, Tylenol is pretty rough on the liver), so it's very prudent to toss out the old stuff. A few months to a even year past expiration? It's all probably still good. Anything further than that ... wouldn't think of risking it, actually.
And that is all for now. :)
Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-08 04:45 am (UTC)Nobody solves a problem like you.
Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-08 07:59 pm (UTC)For years, I talked about some theory of dream analysis that I was positive was legitimate until I learned its source: Dr. Frasier Crane of the Bull & Finch Pub, Boston. I'd been quoting sitcom writers for 10 years.
Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-10 02:41 pm (UTC)Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-10 07:01 pm (UTC)PS -- http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/10/1056
Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-10 07:25 pm (UTC)Re: I agree
Date: 2008-09-21 08:52 pm (UTC)i started a page on here, but i don't think i've written ANYTHING yet. think it's about time to rectify that.
nespeculate@yahoo.com
and I am as good as the New England Journal of Medicine, so quote away. :P