Have those ingenious Japanese invented food that never goes bad? Not quite.

Canned food is the friend of the lazy and the survivalist thanks to its long shelf-life, but even your trusty tin of tuna or beans will turn bad on you one day. But not for this eagle-eyed Japanese twitter user.

Since 2017 isn’t a leap-year there is no 29th of February. The result? Those born on the 29th of February must wait another three years to blow out the candles on their cake, and that this use-by date, like tomorrow, will never come.

Twitter user @tymiot wondered whether the contents were still good to eat on the first of March. Not such a ridiculous worry as even a cursory Internet search about botulism will have you casting a wary eye on anything you ever eat again. One respondent claimed that if the can wasn’t swollen it was probably safe to eat, and that only if was about two years past its sell-by-date should you begin to worry. That might be a bit pushing it for most people though.

Officially, RocketNews24 does not condone the eating of food that has passed its best-before date, as people with far more specialized knowledge and fancy scientific equipment than we have access to are the ones responsible for setting those time limits.  That said, if you happen to have any canned goods lying around with time paradox-style expiration dates stamped on them and you’re leery about eating them yourself, you can always mail them to us, and we’ll probably find someone around the office who’s crazy and/or hungry enough to eat it.

Source, featured image: Twitter/@tymiot