We all have them sitting in a drawer somewhere. Or maybe a few snuck into the glove box to only be long forgotten.

When we grab fast food we also often grab handfuls of ketchup packets. Hot sauces from Taco Bell. Soy sauce from the Chinese take out joint. But often we don't use them all during the meal, and save them for another day. 

And there are a lot of sauce packets made! For example, Heinz sells an absurd number of these packets each single year—according to the company, around 11 billion or so every 365 days, or two for every person on the planet. At nine grams each, that’s about 109,000 tons of ketchup. 

Because there are no expiration dates on the packet itself we tend to think they will last forever, but that's not the case. I’m here to tell you that, in most cases, they don’t. 

Now there are some types of condiments commonly found in packet form, like honey, salt, and sugar, that don’t really go bad for various reasons.

But those spare Taco Bell sauce packets that you’ve been using like Tabasco from another mother? Yes, they spoil. They lose their flavor over time, and those plasticky metal packets only go so far to protect the spicy flavor that’s buried inside of the casing. Same with ketchup, mayo, mustard, BBQ sauce, or relish.

And believe it or not, they do actually have expiration dates generally listed—just not on the sauce packets themselves. Instead, they tend to have it on the boxes that the restaurants pull the hot sauce out of.

So how long do these condiments last? Well, you'll have to read the full story to find out!