How important is an item's shelf life to you? Does it really matter? What if, for some reasons, some bad people changed the expiry dates? I viewed one documentary on some medicines with some men erasing the expiry dates with an acetone and then stamping new dates on the products packaging. Where is their conscience? Are they not thinking that many people can possibly die because of their greed for money? Or perhaps they read Harvard Health Publishing of Harvard Medical School ("Drug Expiration Dates -- Do They Mean Anything?") that " the effectiveness of a drug may decrease over time, but much of the original potency still remains even a decade after the expiration date ". So it is important to check the manufacturing date. Few years back I had a flatmate who was always excited when she purchased processed foods at very much low prices. She always looked for those items with shelf life soon to finish. Maybe it was also one reason she always suffered f