Freeze Dried Food and Use-By Dates

I keep bees, who very kindly make me some spare honey. We beekeepers are obliged to put a 'sell by' date on any foodstuff we sell, and by consensus we generally put a two or three year time limit. But honey has been found in Egyptian tombs, about three and three-quarter thousand years old, still perfectly good and perfectly edible. You might want to draw some conclusions from this. 

Have to agree about the honey - I've got a bit of honeycomb in my fridge that I bought in the Nethybridge Spar in 2007 - still just as tasty as when I bought it (though given it's lasted this long, I do wonder why I bought it in the first place?)

Anyway, not sure if it's freeze dried or otherwise dried, but I once used a Bachelors Pasta in Tomato sauce thing that was 5 years past its sell by date and I'm still here to tell the tale.  It was fine, apart from it tasted and looked more like marmite than tomato.  I'm quite happy to - and frequently do - ignore dates on dried packet food.

A bee-keeping pal of mine supplies me with honey on an occasional basis. She once mentioned the Egyptian tomb thing. It struck me that instead of having honey delivered to me, I could accompany Lara Croft on a Tomb Raider venture instead.

Sugar... water... vinegar... salt... there are lots of things that have a 'sell by' or 'use by' or 'best before' date on them... even when they'd still be OK after thousands of years.

Check out the sell by date even on bottled water in the supermarkets

that some people buy.?  Cheers.