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  1. #1

    why does bottled water have an expiry date?

    I didn't know spring water expires D:

    Is this a real expiry date?

  2. #2
    It's probably just a sell-by date so stores don't get overloaded with them.

  3. #3
    Titan MerinPally's Avatar
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    You ever tried drinking water that's been sitting around for ages and is pretty stale? Doesn't taste as nice, so without that expiry date people wouldn't feel the need to buy more so often. Due to that, the companies make more money. Tbh I don't understand why people buy bottled water unless they're from an area of questionable water quality so it's not something that's ever cropped up in my life so far.
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    Quote Originally Posted by pkm View Post
    I didn't know spring water expires D:

    Is this a real expiry date?
    Either the water contains nutrients/minerals/and so on that degrade over time such that the water becomes nutritionally deficient, or, the plastic that the bottle is made from slowly degrades into the bottle over time and makes the water undrinkable.
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  5. #5
    According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, unopened commercially bottled water will keep safe indefinitely, as long as the bottles remain properly sealed and aren’t damaged.

    It's a quality indicator. Standing water can change color or taste slightly after long periods of time.

  6. #6
    Ever drink from an old or overly-refilled water bottle? It sorta almost tastes like plastic... that's because plastic is actually a form of liquid and that plastic overtime gets mixed into the water. Probably not the reason why it has an expiration date but just a pointer

  7. #7
    There is a limit to the amount of time your drinking water can be closed up and in contact with the plastic container in which it comes before it begins to decompose at a molecular level.

    Or, in short: It gets icky after a couple of years of sitting in a musky warehouse.

  8. #8
    LOAD"*",8,1 Fuzzzie's Avatar
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    So stores force to sell it and order more.

    If kept correctly, bottled water should last 20,000 years +

  9. #9
    Oh I see. So it's not the water itself then.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    im pretty certain its due to the plastic of the bottle deteriorating, and also the oxygen particles moving to the top of the bottle

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by pkm View Post
    Oh I see. So it's not the water itself then.
    Sometimes the coating on the inside of the bottle can degrade over time as well... leaving the water tasting a little funny and exposed directly to the plastic.

  12. #12
    Because the plastic slowly starts to poison the water.

  13. #13
    LOAD"*",8,1 Fuzzzie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Broloth View Post
    Because the plastic slowly starts to poison the water.
    this is a myth. impure plastics can taint water but by in large bottled watter is unaffected. The expiration date is simply a sales trigger. Like, "sell this case before 11/12". The water doesnt expire and the plastic it's in is fine for like 25.000 years..

  14. #14
    all the uneducated guesses in this thread are making me laugh, bottled water will never go bad, the reason they put an expiry date on it is because they are required by law.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by shocktopuslol View Post
    all the uneducated guesses in this thread are making me laugh, bottled water will never go bad, the reason they put an expiry date on it is because they are required by law.
    Now why don't you get even more constructive and tell the people WHY the law requires it....or are you just about done here?

  16. #16
    Fluffy Kitten Remilia's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aceshigh View Post
    Now why don't you get even more constructive and tell the people WHY the law requires it....or are you just about done here?
    Every single food product by law is required to have an expiration date in the US. This is to prevent stores from selling you potentially bad product and to give a heads up on 'when to eat this'. The expiration date is generally 1 month ahead of when the actual expiration is at as a safety net.
    It's also inadvertently a method to just say, 'oh hey, sell this thing now". Though I'm not sure how much of a case this is now as the inventory system is so much better now.
    Even if it doesn't degrade over time or in essence can't, they are required by law to place it there. It's a consumer safety thing, similar to how false advertisement can get you sued.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by undercovergnome View Post
    im pretty certain its due to the plastic of the bottle deteriorating, and also the oxygen particles moving to the top of the bottle
    What oxygen particles? Do you mean pockets of air that were sealed in with the water? Or do you mean the oxygen that is chemically bonded to the hydrogen that makes up water? If you mean the latter, water is a stable compound.

    Quote Originally Posted by Remilia View Post
    Every single food product by law is required to have an expiration date in the US. This is to prevent stores from selling you potentially bad product and to give a heads up on 'when to eat this'. The expiration date is generally 1 month ahead of when the actual expiration is at as a safety net.
    It's also inadvertently a method to just say, 'oh hey, sell this thing now". Though I'm not sure how much of a case this is now as the inventory system is so much better now.
    Even if it doesn't degrade over time or in essence can't, they are required by law to place it there. It's a consumer safety thing, similar to how false advertisement can get you sued.
    There actually isn't any federal law requiring bottled water to have an expiration date. Another interesting thing is that there isn't any federal law against selling expired products, there is, however, a law against selling unsafe products. Companies don't necessarily use the same standards for what dictate when a product becomes unsafe. Stuff like milk has a lot of room for error because it goes bad very quickly. You can even get bad milk at the store before it expires.

    Many things don't even have a readable expiration date, they have something printed in their own form of Julian code. Some are very simple and have a 5 digit number indicating the year of the century and the day of the year, some go beyond that to include the factory and the shift of manufacture, some require a cipher to figure out even the day of the year. Other products still don't even have the day, they simply have a month and year. An example of the simplest form could be something like 27313 or 13B28. In the first form, 273 is the day of the year and 13 refers to 2013. In the second example, 13 is 2013 again, but B refers to February and 28 is the day of the month. The most complicated form could be something like A31BQZ31 where you just have no idea what the hell any of that means without a cipher.

    As for why they exist, there are three reasons: inventory, sales and recalls. Inventory is in case a shipment gets screwed up and they need to account for everything, so they release the dates to the stores so they can check if they have what is being looked for. Sales is to try to encourage companies to sell their stuff more quickly because consumers dislike buying products that are expired. Recalls is similar to inventory, but if something is wrong with a batch, they can release the dates to stores so they can pull only the affected products and not every product of that type.
    Last edited by v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk; 2012-11-18 at 08:40 AM.

  18. #18
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    Even though water is water no matter how old it is, it will change like everything else over the course of time. Most of the dates actually put on food are regulated by law. Meaning food may be good for a lot longer than what is stated. Chocolate for instance can last a lot longer than the date stated (depending on what ingredients is used of course), but would you eat it if it was past its expiry date? Like stated in the beginning, everything changes over the course of time. Food is no exception to this. It might still be eatable, but might taste completely different. If the water hasn't changed color or in other ways seems wrong, then it most likely is safe to drink (certain precautions has to be made though).

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Remilia View Post
    Every single food product by law is required to have an expiration date in the US. This is to prevent stores from selling you potentially bad product and to give a heads up on 'when to eat this'. The expiration date is generally 1 month ahead of when the actual expiration is at as a safety net.
    It's also inadvertently a method to just say, 'oh hey, sell this thing now". Though I'm not sure how much of a case this is now as the inventory system is so much better now.
    Even if it doesn't degrade over time or in essence can't, they are required by law to place it there. It's a consumer safety thing, similar to how false advertisement can get you sued.
    I know, I was just making a point that he came in here to LOL at people for not knowing something, but didn't really give any information, just wanted to point out what I saw as a douche move just so he could LOL at people.

  20. #20
    Deleted
    Oh so I don't have to worry about poisoned water from the plastic?

    A friend of mine is totally convinced of it. -_-

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