Certain pantry staples actually belong in the fridge. Here’s a surprising one you might not have known about.
We get it—fridge space is valuable. You don’t want to take up that valuable real estate with something that seems to be doing just fine in the pantry. Your parents stored this stuff in the pantry; why can’t you?
Turns out there are multiple items that can spoil faster or lose their flavor when left out at room temperature.
The unknown culprit
Unfortunately, this TikToker had to find out the hard way, now she’s warning others so they don’t make the same mistake.
“I have been accidentally poisoning myself for at least 3 months,” the text overlay on Anna’s (@yourmom2805) video read.
In the trending video, which has nearly 140,000 views, Anna explains that she bought a big bottle of maple syrup from Trader Joe’s (it appears to be the two-pound bottle), which she uses nearly every day to make her overnight oats.
She also uses it for her chia seed concoctions and when making homemade granola.
Recently, Anna started noticing that while the oats tasted “really delicious” when she ate them, by the time she got to work, she felt nauseous. She chalked it up to the Celsius energy drink she’d chug when she got to work and didn’t think much else of it.
Until today.
Anna was adding the last drops left in the maple bottle to her oats, feeling proud that she’d actually finished a whole bottle. As she mixed it up, she took a few seconds to inspect her breakfast concoction.
“I see floating mold in there,” Anna disclosed.
She was confused because the expiration date wasn’t for another two years. That’s when she notices another label. “Please keep refrigerated after opening.”
“So I called my mom, and I told her this, and she was appalled at my stupidity,” Anna said.
“I might actually be the only person in the world who didn’t realize that this needs to be in the refrigerator,” Anna continued. “I got through this entire thing without refrigeration once.”
Her nausea has since stopped, she shared in a comment reply.
In a written reply to the Daily Dot, Anna said she wasn’t aware that her syrup needed to be refrigerated because of the type of syrup she had growing up.
“I grew up in a “discount” syrup household – my family would always have the syrup that had more preservatives sitting in our pantry,” she said. “I’m fully aware that most condiments/food items need to be refrigerated, but since I was used to seeing our family’s syrup on a shelf, I never thought twice about storing it that way!”
Anna noted that she wasn’t alone in her mistake, though.
“I’m surprised by the sheer number of comments people left on the video saying they thought the same exact thing,” she wrote. “Funny enough, I received a number of texts from friends saying they had the same syrup that they stored in their pantry… they checked it after seeing my video and also saw mold in their bottles!”
“I’ve definitely learned my lesson & will be thoroughly reading the label from now on,” she concluded.
Surprising items that go in the fridge
Maple syrup needs to go in the fridge because, unlike the fake pancake syrup many people grew up with, real maple syrup doesn’t usually have preservatives in it. So, for long-term storage it’s best to refrigerate it.
Due to its high sugar content, maple syrup is prone to spoiling and developing mold once exposed to air. If you have a bottle of opened maple syrup in the pantry that’s been there for a while, it might be time to chuck it.
Here are some other goods you might not have known need refrigeration, according to CNET:
- Ketchup – Especially the organic kind.
- Soy sauce – This one won’t spoil, but it will lose it’s freshness and taste.
- Nut flours and whole wheat flours – The wheat germ will spoil faster than in other types of flour.
- Lemons, oranges, and limes – They’ll keep up to four times longer in the fridge.
- Butter – It is dairy, after all.
- Organic nut butters – If you’re not going to finish it within a few weeks, put it in the fridge. The oils can separate and go rancid.
- Nuts – They can keep for up to four months out, but last a whole year in the fridge.
- Tortillas – Refrigeration can extend their freshness from just a week at room temperature to four weeks.
The thing about expiration dates
While Anna was going based on the syrup’s expiration date, she was a bit misguided about how they worked.
The expiration date on an item is the last day the manufacturer considers a food to be safe to eat or at peak quality.
But once a shelf stable item is open, the expiration date is no longer reliable. Usually an opened item has a few weeks or months til it goes bad.
Here’s a quick label guide, according to Consumer Reports:
- Best If Used By/Before: This is when the item will taste its best, but it doesn’t indicate how safe an item is to eat. Like how after a certain date, chips may still be safe to eat but may lose their crunch.
- Sell By: Manufacturers add this to communicate to retailers when to remove a product from shelves so that customers have access to food at it’s best quality. This tends to be common with items like milk that require refrigeration.
- Use By: This is the last day the manufacturer guarantees an item will be at peak quality.
@yourmom2805 Me vs. 32 fl ounce syrup mega bottle #syrupgate ♬ original sound – anna 🍌
Commenter reactions
“If it’s in a bottle and it gets opened, it’s going in the fridge for me,” a top comment read.
“Does nobody read bottles? REFRIDGERATE AFTER OPENING,” a person asked.
“I have never put syrup in the refrigerator, and I’ll have a bottle for a year sometimes,” another shared.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
