Funny question!  (Only funny because I was thinking about the very same thing a couple days ago).   I have a box of chocolate outrage GU that I ordered a long time ago.  I ordered them while overseas when I was in Afghan in 2010 when I first started running.   Someone said I "needed GU", so I bought a good bit of it.  But I later noticed that personally, I do not ingest anything on any run of 20 miles or less.

Therefore, what I have now is a box of GU that expired in... April 2012 I think?

I took one with me to eat when I ran my first 50K last December, but just as I opened the package, I tripped on a root, went to the ground and never got to eat it anyway!

As it is, I will use a couple GU on an upcoming Marathon in March, but since these things are now 3 years old and a year expired, I am going to toss them and just buy a couple at the Expo.    --- I tend to think these that I have are fine, even if they are a year expired, but why test it...

I am sure that a GU only a few months expired is probably still just fine though.

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They expire?

What about them could expire sealed in a airtight... and completely impossible to open with your sweat covered hands...so you try to bite a corner of the tab with your teeth...and since your hands are sweaty you have to squeeze the living crap out the pouch to hold onto it....then you actually do manage to bite the top open and spit away the little tab without choking to death on it...all while running and gasping for your last breath...only to find you haven't bitten enough of the little tab off to get any flow of GU...pouch.

An expired GU won't kill you. The texture does deteriorate a little, though, apparently, so they are less viscous and more liquid. This may or may not be a bad thing depending on your opinion of GU. Check the ingredients because if it has aspartame in it (I'm not sure any of them do) that deteriorates with time and loses its sweetness. But at $1 to $1.50 a packet, I wouldn't be tossing them just because they were a bit past the sell-by date.

+1

Now I need to find the case I have.

The oldest Gu I've eaten was over two years past it's expiration date, and the clear plastic cover had started to come off. The outside looked bad, but it tasted fine and there was not texture change. However, I've found that Accel Gel goes nasty once it's a few months past it's expiration date.

I saved an extra espresso GU that I received from a race, and took it last week on my long run. It expired in November 2011, apparently, but still tasted fine.

Still working on a box that expired in 2009. They're fine.

2009 and still fine...I think that is the current record.      Anyone eating any that are older than that?!

(And on second thought, I have decided not going to toss mine that expired in Apr 2012, they should be just fine.

Chocolate Outrage.  The most tasty of them all if you ask me. :-)

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