Vitamins or supplements that are past the expiration date may not be potent or fully effective. Expiration dates are for a purpose. You may hate to throw out a 6 month supply of costly vitamins, but that expiration date is for a reason. It’s a guarantee that the ingredients are potent up to the date on the label. But is it safe to consume expired vitamins or supplements? To learn the answer, read on.
Expiration Date
An expiration date lets you know you are getting the maximum benefit out of a product until that date. After the expiration date, your vitamin degrades. In other words, you probably have a less active supplement after the expiration date, but you have no certainty that it is any weaker or less effective, than it was the day before the expiration date, or will be the day after the expiration date.
Just keeping the vitamins or supplements dry and out of light and heat doesn’t mean they will be fully effective past an expiration date or that they will be harmless for you to consume past the expiration date.
Potency Verses Future Sales
What determines an expiration date? Is it a standard amount of time? Not necessarily. It might be a year, or less, or more. Tests on supplements have shown that expiration dates usually indicate the active ingredients are at 90% potency. Although supplements probably last longer than the expiration date, the date is the limit of liability for the manufacturing company. Expiration dates define potency, but expiration dates also increase future sales.
Expired Vitamins and Health Risks
Vitamin supplements may go bad or lose potency, but minerals are fairly stable. They aren’t going to change much or become harmful past an expiration date. In fact tablet forms can still be effective after the expiration date for minerals that do not oxidize. This is because minerals are rock-like nutrients, not fats.
Pill forms of vitamins usually have a long shelf life because they generally don’t contain fats. But gelatin capsules and liquid supplements do not have a long shelf life. Oxidation occurs with time, despite the best efforts to keep the supplement cool and out of the light. Oxidation of fat is carcinogenic.
Double Dosage
Some people, aware that vitamins lose their potency after an expiration date, decide to double up and take twice the RDA. This is not a good idea, because not all vitamins are safely doubled. If you double dosage, you will get more than the RDA for some vitamins and minerals, and those amounts might be toxic. For example, vitamin A is toxic in excess. In addition, iron excess can cause cardiac trouble in men. And tablet forms of vitamins have a binding agent that is not good for us if we get too much of it.
Disposing of Expired Supplements
Your local pharmacy knows where and how to dispose of expired drugs. They should also know proper ways for disposing of expired vitamins. It’s not a good idea to flush your supplements, because the vitamins and minerals could end up in the drinking water supply.
Some folks have disposed of vitamins by crushing the supplement and stirring them into the garden compost for soil nutrients. Other folks have discarded vitamins in their curbside garbage containers, only to have them end up in the landfill. That may not be such a good idea, because of creatures that scavenge.
So the question remains; should you take expired vitamins? For the highest quality and potency of your vitamins, it’s best to dispose of expired supplements.
