Does expiry date / best by date mean anything for salt?

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ajapale

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Does expiry date / best by date mean anything for salt?

After all NaCl is NaCl and it would be much the same in 1000 years as it is now.
 
I personally would not take a bit of notice of it, I don't use much salt and I have the same container for years, no idea how old it is and never noticed any difference in the salt.
 
I'd take any of my advice with a pinch of salt.. and another over the shoulder for luck :)

You can ignore the use by/sell by dates on salt. The only thing you might notice with table salt is that the iodine evaporates over time and it may alter the taste.
 
It's got a lot of history as a food preservative. I've never even thought to check the UB or BB dates. Older granular salt might be a bit clumpy from absorbing atmospheric water vapour, but a bit of agitation should fix that.
 
brianb said:
Older granular salt might be a bit clumpy from absorbing atmospheric water vapour, but a bit of agitation should fix that.
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Or a few grains of rice in the salt apparently - the rice is supposed to absorb the moisture.
 
That reminds me of the advertising that Ballygowan Water were using a few years ago. Basically, they claimed that it took thousands of years to create their water. Then, when you buy it, it had a Best Before date.

The mind boggles.
 
Practically all of my herbs and spices are well past their best before date. Bit like myself I suppose.
 
Bought some sea salt some time back and it was already damp when purchased. Thought it was just me but some relatives had bought some in another branch of Dunnes and theirs was damp also and sea salt is not cheap.
 
Hillsalt said:
That reminds me of the advertising that Ballygowan Water were using a few years ago. Basically, they claimed that it took thousands of years to create their water. Then, when you buy it, it had a Best Before date.

The mind boggles.
Click to expand...

Makes perfect sense.

Once you put water in a bottle where it is not flowing and has no access to fresh oxygen, it will go stagnant eventually.
 
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