Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndrome
Why is it that bottled water has a use by date?
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I can actually answer that one! Twenty years in the soft drink industry!
Water is actually one of the hardest things to bottle. With "normal" soft drinks you can simply stick in preservatives and keep the bugs at bay. The machinery can also be sterilized and maybe a little bit of sterilizer left in it (food grade stuff that is harmless to swallow).
However with water, you can't put anything in it, and the machinery has to be not only sterilized but meticulously rinsed completely clean before bottling the water. That means that if at any stage of the process there is a tiny slip up, you could allow something to get into the water being bottled.
Once it's bottled, any small contamination will mean the spores of mold that are everywhere around us will bloom.
Couple that with the way that water is usually always bottled in clear packaging (for that "clear" look), and sunlight will also cause bacterial or mold blooms. This could be stopped by packaging water in brown or dark coloured bottles, but you wouldn't have the same appearance.
There's also "use by" and "best before", which are two hugely different things. Things that will go off...milk, dairy products, fresh food, etc...has "use by" which means after that date it will go bad after that date. However, "best before" means that after that date the stuff is still safe to eat but they can no longer guarantee taste or appearance.
Actually a lot of water simply has a bottling date on it.
Oh, and Spam doesn't even have a use by or a best before, just about the only food item that doesn't...it keeps for literally decades if stored even half carefully...
