Soda expiration dates

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It used to be when I’d buy a soda the expiration date would be over a year away.
That was always a nice feeling, knowing I could shelve it for a year and it would still be good.

Recently, however, EVERY soda I buy has an expiration date that’s 1-3 months away! I mean EVERY SINGLE SODA! I’ve even seen soda in stores that was actually already expired!
Is there a worldwide surplus of soda or something that this stuff has been sitting on the shelves this long or what?

2

When I worked for Coca-Cola (in another lifetime, it’s been so long ago), route salesmen routinely pulled soda from racks if was more than 90 days old; it tastes best when it’s relatively fresh.

your humble TubaDiva
“It’s the real (old) thing.”

3
      • 4 or 5 years ago I used to work at a convenience store that carried their own generic brand of soda. It all came with dates that were 3-4 months away and we had to throw it out when it expired.(me + my pals would take the old -unopened- cans and use them for shooting practice)
  • The grape soda was the one that went bad relatively fast - it had the shortest shelf life. It contained some (small) percentage of real grape juice and it would ferment at around 5 months or so. It smelled musty and tasted awful, and didn’t have nearly enough of a kick to stomach the stuff. After it went bad, if you left it open for half an hour white mold would start to grow in it. - MC
4

What??? Has soda technology taken a nose-dive since my youth? I used to routinely drink pop from bottles stuck away for years – in our cottage or brought back from trips and forgotten. It always tasted fine.

I thought those expiration dates on pops (a new development to me) were a joke to gull the gullible masses. Are today’s sodas actually less chemical than those of yore? 'Hard to believe.

5

!!!WARNING!!!
Never drink sodas after the expiration date. Within 24 to 48 hours of that date, the soda will turn into rat urine.

6

In fact, many rats are simply made of aluminum with some mold DNA. Not much else.

7

My guess – and it’s a guess only – is that soft drinks made with sugar can be stored longer than soft drinks made with sugar syrup.

Since most soft drinks today are made with syrup, 90 days is about it.

your humble TubaDiva

8

I’m going to guess Aspertime for the diet drinks. Someone once told me that bag-in-box fountain syrup is still formulated with saccherine (sp) because of Aspertime having such a short shelf life. (I’ve also heard that saccherine can’t be used in anything anymore, so I dunno.) I’ve tasted some way-past-expiration date diet soda and it was pretty foul.

9

Tab is still made with saccharin (actually, it contains both saccharin and aspartame). IMO, diet drinks tasted a lot better when saccharin was the chemical of choice.

10

Dammit! I just bought a Diet Coke out of a machine in a movie theater and it tasted terrible – I checked the date when the show was over and of course, it was 5 months past expiration. So annoying because you have no way of checking beforehand, and since we were late for the show (theater’s fault again, one box office guy for a mile long line of people) I didn’t think to look and exchange it before going in. Plus, unlike some of the customers I’ve had at MY theater, I don’t feel it’s worth making trouble over one crummy soda. I told an employee on the way out, but I seriously doubt that if the manager has several cases of expired Diet Coke in his closet he’s going to spoil them out and get new ones. This is of course thanks to United Artists’ wonderful practice of having a theater’s “cost of goods sold” effect the manager’s quarterly and yearly bonus. Uh, oops. Not trying to hijack this into a “who hates United Artists’” thread, honest!

11

Hell yeah it’s worth making trouble! Damn theaters are charging like $3 or $4 now for a large coke!

I’m tempted to complain even when the soda IS good. You should at least be able to get some free refills or something for that price.