Does anybody really think the government knows best?
The government requires manufacturers put "expiration dates" on all things that are consumeable. How stupid and ridiculous can the bureaucrats be?.
Cheese is nothing more than spoiled milk with the right bacteria. Wine is spoiled grapes. Beer is spoiled grain. Wine vinegar is wine or fruit juice spoiled the right way. Soy sauce is spoiled soy beans. The list is endless.
When King Tut's tomb was opened up wheat was discovered. According to our USDA's guidelines the wheat was CENTURIES "out of date". Scientists took that wheat and were able to grow it and used it to improve modern wheat varieties' disease resistance.
When I was raising my kids, I accidently discovered the foolish paranoia people have about the "expiration date" or "best if used by date". I'd buy the "out of date" milk, cottage cheese (spoiled milk), yogurt (milk with bacteria in it) and anythng else I could find for 10% to 20% of their original price. My kids didn't get sick or have any health problems. We ate out of date cereal, soup, tuna, chewing gum, frozen foods and more things than there is space to list. My dogs ate out of date dog food. I burned out of date charcoal in my grill where I cooked out of date hot dogs which I placed in out of date buns with out of date relish and pickles and added out of date catsup and mustard.
I lived in a town for a while where a grocery store chain bragged in their ads about how fresh their groceries were. They advertised that if you found something on their shelves that was out of date they would give you the same item, in date, for free. I didn't usually shop there because they were so expensive. The first trip I made to their store I walked out with over $300 of "free" packaged meats. A week later I was given two shopping carts full of cereal, cookies, dog food and odds and ends like chewing gum. (I found some packages of chewing gum 10 YEARS out of date.)
My rule of thumb is food will keep on the shelf twice time to the expiration date of the newest item of that variety on the shelf. Explaination: I look at the boxes on the shelf. If the newest box of cereal has an expiration date on it that is 6 months from todays date, I know it will be perfectly fine on my pantry shelf for 12 months.
Things last longer if they are stored where it is cool and dark. My pantry is in the house where it is air conditioned. I lived on a farm where the farmer stored potatoes from one year to the next to feed the hogs he sent to market. He stored them in the barn's basement where it was cool and dark. When he needed potatoes for his family's table he sent his kids to the barn to bring back some potatoes. If the USDA had been in charge the potatoes would have been declared to be out of date. When his parents were kids they ate potatoes from the barn. When he was a child he ate potatoes from the barn. His kids ate potatoes from the barn. Get the idea?
I got some hamburger and cheese out of my chest freezer and made taco salad. Some how the topic of expiration dates came up. After dinner was eaten and they left for the night to go back to their homes, I pulled the package wrappers out of the trash. Every thing I cooked and used was at least one year out of date. Nobody noticed and nobody got sick. Even the spouces that strongly declared they could never eat anything out of date didn't know and couldn't tell.
Out of date? So what! Its just another government program gone amuck. Don't worry about things being out of date. If it doesn't smell or look bad, its likely to be OK. I read some place where a bottle of wine that was found in Napoleon's wine cellar sold for over $100,000. Hows that for out of date spoiled grapes? ;)