Some tourists in the Museum of Natural History are marveling at some dinosaur bones. One of them asks the guard, "Can you tell me how old the dinosaur bones are?"

The guard replies, "They are 65,000,011 years old."

"That's an awfully exact number," says the tourist. "How do you know their age so precisely?"

The guard answers, "Well, the dinosaur bones were sixty five million years old when I started working here, and that was eleven years ago."

Sometimes expiration dates refer to when enough plastic from the packaging has decayed into the food material that it might be a problem. Bottled water works that way.

I don't know:

• How much science there is behind the dating
• How much plastic you're consuming in your food anyway and so who cares what's the difference
• Whether that's what's going on with this salt package specifically

But it's not automatically crazy for there to be an expiration date on an immortal product if it comes packaged up in plastic.

You may have to wash the salt first

Yes, salt doesn't go bad

250 million years ago to 2019. This salt had a good run.

From what I heard, salt is usually packaged with iodine or some substances that prevent clumping that expire over time. So after some time the salt won't have those anymore, but it should be safe to consume. Salt cannot spoil because bacteria cannot grow in salty places.

Don't know how plastic containers relate to that sadly.

Well, I understand that with some years in an plastic bowl, the salt may absorb some substances and microplastics. But about Honey, what comes in glass jars? There they also put an expiration date, even though still edible honey has been found in several thousand years old Egyptian tombs.

That's just the data after which the microplastics have aged to their finest toxicity

Anyone else hate it when products fluff themselves up with dramatically grandiose blurb? FORMED BY THE PRIMAL SEA shut the fuck up

Possibly. Depends on what your use case is, perhaps the container it's stored in is degrading and putting some contaminants on the salt itself, microplastics and the like

More than 250 million years of shelf life, I think it can last a few million years more.

I would.

Lots of salty comments in this thread

if you think microbes got in that can survive in salt and are harmful to humans (which is unlikely), you can bake it in your oven a bit (without the container)

For a proper answer you'd have to look up the plastic type and check for conditions where it would degrade. Plastics vary a lot by type and conditions of storage and exposure to sunlight.

As an example you could probably keep a container of polypropylene (code 5) or HDPE (code 2) with salt for at least 5 years in a dry dark place without any concern. Salt can still scratch the outside of the container and cause minor plastic pollution if shaken every now and then for 5 years.

However, if you want to make the salt last for your whole life then a glass/ceramic/stainless steel containers are the way to go. The life of the salt would then be mostly limited by moisture in the air so if you manage to make a design of the lid to allow airflow around a package of silica or rice you'll have your forever container.

Yes.

As a salt vampire, I will happily take any expired salt off your hands.

And off your face.