• Real Simple: Surprising Expiration Dates (via Lifehacker)

Most perplexing expiration factoid: “Pickles — Opened: No conclusive data….”

They are able to get very specific and long-term dates on a lot of other food (e.g. steak sauce: 33 months; vinegar: 42 months), but not pickles.

Thus, there can only be three possible reasons for pickles’ indeterminate results:

1. The interior of a pickle jar acts as a naturally-forming Schrodinger’s box, whereby the pickles are neither edible nor expired, but exist on a quantum wavefront of possibilities.
2. Seventeen years into their research trial, the researchers cut loose and enjoyed an evening of Reuben sandwiches, Texas-Hold ‘Em, and far too much tequila. In the morning, all ninety-three pickle specimens were unexplicably missing. In an effort to hide this fact, upon which rode the academic careers of three tenured professors and four postdoctoral fellows, the researchers swore a blood oath to never reveal the true circumstances of this fateful night.
3. They last for-freaking-ever.

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