Consumerist reader Brendan is familiar with our Raiders of the Lost Walmart findings, and he thinks those are great, really — “for general merchandise.” But it’s another story when it comes to finding food items for sale at Walmart that would appear to be way past their prime.

Although these chips advertise themselves as “New!”, Walmart didn’t seem to get the memo. Brendan writes:

“Raiders of the Lost Walmart is fine and dandy for general merchandise. But selling potato chips almost a year out of code is pushing it. I found these on a clearance rack on the grocery side of a Walmart Supercenter in Connecticut this weekend.”

It’s important to note that most likely, eating these chips won’t do your body any harm. A “Best Before”  or “Best By” date just means that a food will taste its best and freshest up until that date, which is May 31, 2012 for these chips. In this case, we can only imagine how chips with an almost year-old best by date would taste.

As for how old they really are, I’d like to present the very non-scientific evidence of a bag of chips I bought just two days ago. They have a best by date of July 2013, just a few months from now. That might mean the above chips could’ve possibly have gone on sale in the spring of 2012. Makes us wonder how zesty that zesty ranch is by now.

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