Pringles are everywhere these days. Whether it be at a large supermarket, small bodega, gas station, pharmacy or online retailer, there's a pretty good chance you'll find these canned potato products there.
For approximately two years now, I've been purchasing different varieties of Pringles from a range of different businesses. After years of buying ridged Utz potato crisps from the bodega around the corner from my apartment, I didn't appreciate the way the price of their chips doubled there a couple of years ago.
When I was a kid, my Family would often have State Line potato chips on hand, and they still make some very good chips, but they can be hard to find. Munchos are also pretty awesome, but they're usually even harder to find.
Even though they can sometimes taste a little greasy, the different varieties of Pringles are pretty consistent in size and flavor. Most of the time, they're also unbroken chips.
A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at a local gas station/mini food mart in my neighborhood to buy lottery tickets and a can of pizza-flavored Pringles. Keep in mind that this is one of the largest and most well-known gas station brands, with locations everywhere.
A small rack containing two shelves of various Pringles varieties was situated in the mini-mart section. On the top shelf were small, half-size cans of the potato crisps, and on the bottom shelf, approximately 25 full-sized cans of different Pringles varieties were displayed.
For decades now, I've been checking the expiration dates on most of the food items I purchase. When I looked at the bottom of one of the cans of Pizza-flavored Pringles from the shelf, I thought I was seeing things.
The expiration date on the bottom of the can read October 2022. After looking at the date several times, to confirm what I saw, I put the can back on the shelf, and picked up another one. The second can also had an expiration date of October 2022.
By that point, I was pretty freaked-out at discovering the two pizza-flavored cans of Pringles having expiration dates that were more than a
year out of date. Just for ha-ha's, I checked the expiration date on a can of Pringles BBQ-flavored chips, and it was in early-2023.
After discovering that the three regular-sized cans of Pringles were almost 1.5 years past the expiration date, I decided to check the freshness of the half-sized cans of Pringles on the top shelf of the rack.
All three of the half-sized cans that I checked had early-2025 expiration dates. Go figure.
So far, I haven't had a chance to mention the prehistoric Pringles to the staff members at the gas station/mini mart, but I hope to do so soon.
The employees at the gas station seem pretty honest and ethical (I hope), and my guess is that they don't even know about the outdated potato crisps. Maybe, when the chip vendor brings their products in for re-stocking, nobody is regularly checking expiration dates and/or rotating stock.
Whatever the reason may be, it's always unacceptable to sell outdated food items.
Is it worth the effort to check the expiration dates on food products?
Definitely, yes.
