From the Detective Files: The Great Soft Drink Mystery

jsw said:
I don't think it's been mentioned above, but expiration dates are only part of the story - if soda has been exposed to excessive heat, it degrades quickly.
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Not a problem in London :(
 
I forgot to mention another warning: Don't open a soda can and THEN turn it over to check the date on the bottom! :eek:
 
Doctor Q said:
I forgot to mention another warning: Don't open a soda can and THEN turn it over to check the date on the bottom! :eek:
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Why not? You are pouring it into a frosty mug, aren't you?
 
MR saves the day!

Funny thing...even though this thread disappeared a while back, I had an experience today at work.

At the café, we sell a variety of soda in cans. Some of it goes faster than others, so it only gets cycled through as fast as people buy it. Today someone bought a Diet Coke and started drinking it right away at the counter. She complained that it was very bitter.

I immediately remembered reading about Q's experience, so I checked the code on the bottom of the can. Bam! It had expired in April of 2005.

I gave her a refund and tossed the rest. What would I have done without MacRumors?

Needless to say, we have a flat of them (36 cans?) in the back, that all expired last fall, and I've got something to do after we close the shop: go out into the parking lot and toss them into the air and try to get them to explode in new and different ways! :D One managed to blow a small hole in its side tonight, sending it flipping and spinning for about 15 feet.
 
Doctor Q said:
I forgot to mention another warning: Don't open a soda can and THEN turn it over to check the date on the bottom! :eek:
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No, that does not usually work out real well. :D
 
OutThere, it's great when info spreads in such a way to benefit lots of people through chain-reaction-type scenarios such as yours. I love happy endings! :D
And thank you, Dotor Q, for the informative post on this subject...I had no idea soda had an expiration date. How many bunk cans have I consumed? Ick...
 
OutThere said:
I gave her a refund and tossed the rest. What would I have done without MacRumors?

...

One managed to blow a small hole in its side tonight, sending it flipping and spinning for about 15 feet.
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It seems MacRumors is good for tips on both health AND entertainment!
 
Kicking myself because I did it again

Having forgotten the lesson I learned when I first posted this thread, I starting thinking I wasn't as fond of Diet Pepsi Vanilla as I used to be.

DietPepsi_Vanilla_Logo.jpg​

But then I came to my senses and remembered to check the expiration date. Sure enough, we had a batch of old cans in the refrigerator!

* * *

People who are smarter than me drink water instead of soda. And many of them buy water in bottles instead of drinking tap water. Do you have to pay attention to expiration dates on water bottles?
 
Doctor Q said:
People who are smarter than me drink water instead of soda. And many of them buy water in bottles instead of drinking tap water. Do you have to pay attention to expiration dates on water bottles?
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I saw on TV once (I think it was How It's Made or something along that line) that bottled water has an expiration date because New Jersey requires it, and it's cheaper to put it on all the bottles instead of trying to have two lots (one for New Jersey and one for everyone else). Don't know how true that is, but there you go. :cool:
 
Doctor Q said:
IMHO, Coke Zero does indeed taste better than Diet Coke. It tastes a little plain (not a strong flavor), but it has none of the "off" taste of Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi, so for a 0-calorie cola, it's one of the better choices.

And since it's a newer product, you aren't as likely to find a can of it from the year 1999! :D
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I prefer the taste of Diet Coke. Coke Zero tastes like it has sugar in it. :) I have run into expired pop. It looses it's taste.
 
Tomorrow said:
bottled water has an expiration date because New Jersey requires it,
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And my question would be WHY?!:confused::confused::confused: Does it spontaneous breakdown into Hydrogen and Oxygen if left alone too long?:rolleyes: It doesn't turn into H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) does it?

I find Coke that has expired 2 years tastes exactly like TaB (None of the markets I frequent carries it anymore:(). It had exactly the same aftertaste too.:eek: Like a B movie, it was so bad it was good.:p
 
The last time I heard anything about TaB was in the movie Back to the Future!

Meanwhile, we had a fortune accident. Our refrigerator got confused about the temperature and was overcooling its contents. When I took out a Pepsi it was was like Pepsi-flavored ice slush, very good for a hot day in July!
 
I found some information:

Mental Floss said:
Have you ever wondered why that bottle of Poland Spring has a “drink by” date on it when common sense dictates that water doesn’t go bad? You can thank the great state of New Jersey. A 1987 NJ state law required all food products sold there to display an expiration date of two years or less from the date of manufacture. Labeling, separating and shipping batches of expiration-dated water to the Garden State seemed a little inefficient to bottled water producers, so most of them simply started giving every bottle a two-year expiration date, no matter where it was going.

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has never established or suggested a limitation on the shelf life of bottled water as long as it’s produced in accordance with regulations and the bottle remains properly sealed. Makes sense, because it’s, you know…water. Even Dirty Jerz caught on to this fact and amended the law a few years ago. But the expiration date has been an industry norm for so long that many producers have just kept it on there.

Better WIth Age?

While “expired” unopened bottled water isn’t going to do you any harm, it isn’t going to get better with age, either. The plastic that water is packaged in — usually polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for retail bottles and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) for water cooler jugs — is slightly porous, so the water can pick up smells and tastes from the outside world. Keep a case of bottled water in the basement for a year or so and it’s going to pick up some interesting flavors. There’s nothing better on a hot summer day than a 2007 Evian, with hints of dust and a crisp kitty litter finish!
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Source: http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/26866.html
 
Doctor Q said:
... Do you have to pay attention to expiration dates on water bottles?
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When I was in high school (late 1990's) some pales and I found a case of bottled water in an abandoned room that was going to be used for storing equipment for the Navy Junior ROTC. We were helping clear the room out and found the water. Well those bottles had an expiration/use by date on them. I had never seen that before.

Another time in Middle school during breakfast we had those little milk containers and they had an expiration date of that day at noon :eek: Some of us were joking that we would be dead in 6 hours.
 
Doctor Q said:
Meanwhile, we had a fortune accident. Our refrigerator got confused about the temperature and was overcooling its contents. When I took out a Pepsi it was was like Pepsi-flavored ice slush, very good for a hot day in July!
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I'll stick a 7up in the freezer for a little while sometimes to get that slush going. Mmmmm.
 
Doctor Q said:
People who are smarter than me drink water instead of soda. And many of them buy water in bottles instead of drinking tap water. Do you have to pay attention to expiration dates on water bottles?
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Over here the legal guidelines around tap water are more stringent than for bottled water. Bottled water is a good source of nutritious arsenic :)
 
Has it been mentioned that the older plastic bottles leach chemicals into the water, over time?

I know this is better now, at least with the travel bottles you buy, and fill yourself.

I would follow the expiry date, unless I knew better, for sure.
 
Doctor Q said:
A crime is reported :mad:

My coworkers and I share a supply of soft drinks. Last month, one of them mentioned to me in passing that his Diet Pepsi wasn't very good, or else his taste buds were having a day off.

The plot thickens :eek:

A week later, a different coworker said the same thing about her Diet Pepsi. Being a programmer, I'm used to solving problems step by step, so I tried a Diet Pepsi. It seemed ok, so I suggested that they each try one from their supplies at home. They did; one said it tasted odd at home, while the other said it didn't, so I wasn't sure what to conclude. We thought that perhaps Pepsi had tinkered with their formula, but we hadn't heard any news about that. Maybe there was a bad odor in the office that was influencing people's taste sensations, even after they went home? Maybe they both imagined it or one was influenced by the power of suggestion when the other complained?

More clues :confused:

Then, late last week, a can of MY favorite, Diet Dr Pepper, tasted bitter to me. I asked yet another coworker, who also likes Diet Dr Pepper, and he said he thought he was crazy because he discovered that he didn't like Diet Dr Pepper anymore, but realized when I asked him that it was the drink's problem, not his.

So it wasn't the power of suggestion and four of us couldn't have had the same imagined sensation.

Clearly, two different major soft drink companies wouldn't be tinkering with their formulas at the same time, so we starting suspecting that a batch of drinks had gone bad in our shared refrigerator. But I never heard of soft drinks going bad like this.

I looked at the lot numbers on the sides of the cans, but they didn't seem to mean anything. And the listed ingredients (eww) hadn't changed, although phrases like "artificial and natural flavors" might remain the same even if they changed which types of chemicals they used for those flavors.

The formal investigation :cool:

Today we did side-by-side taste tests of the cans we had left vs. some we just bought at the grocery store, and confirmed that the former tasted less flavorful, more astringent, closer to Diet Coke than Diet Pepsi, while the latter tasted the gool ol' way we remembered.

I had looked at the lot numbers, but I discovered that the cans also have expiration dates, on the bottoms, in MMMddyy format. It turns out that our supplier (a warehouse place) had sold us expired soft drinks! We called and complained and will get replacements. And it seems that one coworker had old cans at home too. Case solved!

One for the files :)

We might have thought to check the dates in the first place, but taste is so subjective that each person thought "it's just me" before we saw the pattern and I started playing Sherlock Holmes. And none of us realized that soft drinks expire.

Interestingly, some of the non-diet sodas from that warehouse, which other coworkers drink, had also expired, but nobody noticed a difference in taste. Perhaps their ingredients have a longer shelf life.

Soft drinks aren't nutritious anyway, but I didn't know they turn downright evil if they sit around too long!

Postscript ;)

I have retained full rights to this detective story for when the movie comes out. Who will play me and my three coworkers? Maybe we can get Jack Black to play the warehouse delivery guy. Should I be played by Denzel Washington or by Tony Shalhoub? I hope it won't be Rick Moranis!

I can now move on to the next mystery: why the touch-sensitive elevator buttons blink on but don't stay on when you poke them swiftly. If they sense your touch enough to react, why don't they stay on?
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"When the impossible is eliminated, whatever remains, no matter how improbable. must be the truth." -- Sherlock Holmes :cool: :D
 
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