They said “the water doesn’t have an expiration date, the plastic bottle does” so how come honey that comes in a plastic bottle doesn’t expire?
In: Chemistry
The plastic doesn’t expire.
The water doesn’t expire.
The integrity of the caps seal is guaranteed for said period of time under normal conditions.
What after this date it will leak? no it will not.
It’s how long they’re willing to say it will keep most off tastes out under normal storage conditions.
What does that mean? The bottles are not hermetically sealed 😉 so you can migrate quite a few disgusting flavors into them if stored improperly. Keep a bottle of water near say kitty litter and you’ll end up with kitty litter flavored water…. mmm dank and musty… which is due to an abnormal storage condition.
so why the date? regulation – depending on where you live either current or expired. They needed something so they oft chose the seal which is the source of this confusion additionally some companies chose to just put the maximum possible date as per regulations.
They kept it for assorted reasons if the regulation has been lifted, one being that people will chuck it and another being it’s cheaper and faster to produce with one set of bottles than multiple. Additionally it’s easier to track production and so forth…
What about plastic taste in water if the bottle is left in the hot sun.
That’s from prolonged exposure to direct UV light via sunlight which is not a normal storage condition.
Why doesn’t honey expire?
low water content vs high sugar content. It basically exist in a state where what would decompose it can’t live. Decomposition is merely something else eating it.
Any food or drink sold within EU has an expiration date. Yes, even honey, sugar, oil and water.
There is a bit of psychology to this employed by food manufacturers. The ones I worked with intentionally labelled products with much shorter expiry dates than the product actually has. This is to subtly communicate that the product is high quality and to stop big retailers buying years of product at once at cripplingly low discounts . There are other reasons for it like legal requirements from state or country level causing blanket labelling procedures as well however.
Plastic that is in sunlight does have a relatively fast “expiration date”. What happens is sunlight hits the plastic, destabilizes it and causes what are called plasticizers to leach into the water which will give it the plastic taste, as you are likely drinking minute amounts of microplastics. If properly stored, the shelf life of water bottles is likely extremely long.
This does not happen which thick walled plastic bottles such as reusable nalgene bottles as they are made of a different type of plastic that is not nearly as likely to emit the plasticizers.
Unless the water has been sterilised, it can start growing things in it. In Finland we stamp dates on it because over time the microbes have grown to a level that there is a health risk. The problem is not water, but microbes.
Honey is actively anti-microbial, also it is basically just sugar, to the point basically nothing will grow on it.
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