Why do common household items (shampoo, toothpaste, medicine, etc.) have expiration dates and what happens once the expiration date passes?

Question

Why do common household items (shampoo, toothpaste, medicine, etc.) have expiration dates and what happens once the expiration date passes?

In: Other

Answer 1

Expiration dates are there because a company didn’t check if some product still works exactly the same 5 years after manufacturing. So they just say it expires after a year, which they did check.

Basically nothing happens. There are changes to expiration dates for things you eat to read “use by” if you actually need to use it by a date. “best if used by” dates on the other hand will taste bad long before it’s dangerous. The FDA is recommending that all companies start using the same wording so this isn’t confusing.

I believe for medicine the US government has checked a variety of medicines in long term storage (for emergency use if we all get smallpox or something) if they are still good and basically everything is still potent. Medicines slowly lose potency over the decades. Some lose it faster than others.