Highly unlikely it's "gone bad."

To do shelf-life testing, a company must actually keep a product around for a certain length of time and then do its testing. Most companies aren't interested in storing their products for years on end just so they can do shelf-life testing. Instead, they typically store it for some specific length of time (e.g. 1 year), do their testing, and--if it passes their quality check--that length of time becomes the shelf-life of the product. An expiration date typically means, "We tested this product one year after date of manufacture and we can reasonably guarantee that it will still be fresh." It doesn't mean, "We tested this product one year and one day after date of manufacture and it has gone bad so you better use it within one year of the date of manufacture."

The caffeine molecule is so stable that they are now using the amount of it found in lake and river water as a means
of determining how much sanitary sewer water has entered water ways. The old standard test was a coliform bacteria
count (a common bacteria found in the gut). The problem with using coliform is that this bacteria is plentiful when any organic matter,
not just sewage, decomposes in surface water. Caffeine on the other hand almost certainly was "processed" through a human and ran
down a toilet before it entered the lake or river.

Hope that wasn't too much information;)

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

I was wondering the same thing about my Endurolyte tablets. Especially after I was cramping after popping a few. I think I just needed more than usual that race.

Yes.

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I sometimes wonder, what do they do with all the caffeine that is removed from coffee and soda?

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Kevin

Years ago, I used to work in a restaurant where our fountain Coke syrup came in gallon milk-carton style containers. Amongst the ingredients listed on the carton was; "coca, (cocaine removed)."

Somewhere, there is a HUGE pile of removed cocaine.

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I think i saw it over at Tony Montana's house.

Chances are you can still use it PROVIDED you stored it under the right conditions and the product wasn't exposed to "elements". Normally, a pharma or consumer goods product loses its aesthetics ( color, gets sticky, etc. ) after it has expired but not its potency.

I work in a Pharma company and normally, we extend expiration dates of products which are near expiration ( those which have 6 months or less shelf lives ). For as long as our retention samples were manufactured way longer than the expiration dates of the products in question, we always extend the expiration dates of these products FOR as long as the stability tests shows no significant losses in potency, which normally don't happen.

However, once the product is exposed to temperatures more than its required storage temp, then its potency becomes less and less.

HTH.

Not to be too picky because i suspect you are correct about caffeine eing stable, but even if it isn't stable, it would still be usefull for tracking sanitary water. All that is required is a compound in sewage that is only added through human use, is easy to analyze for in the amounts found in lakes and rivers, and is reasonably stable and its stability is predictable.

Styrrell

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Styrrell