Expiration dates are a nice guide on making sure the food in your house is still safe to eat.

But what about when the lines are less clear?

@thedevilspalate (aka the “No 1 Pit master on TikTok), shared a bit of his expertise on nice spice.

“Have you run into this situation where your older spice is kind of faded out and maybe it’s a little bit dry in there?” he asks, holding up two shakers of Tajin seasoning.

“And you can tell the difference between these two. This is brand new,” he says, holding up spices with a rich, red hue.

“This has been sitting here for maybe like a year or so,” he adds, indicating a shaker of faded brown spice.

“The faded one, you can still use it. It’s not gonna hurt you, technically, if you eat it. It’s not gonna, you know, make you sick or anything, but it’s gonna lose some of its flavor when it gets this faded like this, if you don’t use it.”

“So you can use it, but I would just throw it out and buy new because you’re not gonna get all the flavor in here. And plus sometimes it’s hard in there. You don’t want to deal with it, you know what I’m saying?”

@thedevilspalate

Safe to eat faded spices? #spices #grilleveryday #shlater

♬ original sound – Kirk Robinson

There were some spicy comments:

Some were down right salty:

There was a peppering of interjections:

Perhaps it’s thyme to reconsider:

…coriander.

If you liked that story, check out this video from a former Chipotle employee who reveals how the company cheats customers out of food.