dunno that the food would go off that fast as long as the packaging remains intact, how fast food goes off is often related to how much air or moisture gets to it and the temperature it's stored at.
things like osm's and various other bars are virtually sealed in inside the packet anyway by a lot of sugar covering them.. i've had muesli bars well beyond best before dates, the worst i've seen is heat started pulling the sugar out of the bar otherwise it was edible..
I think the OSM snack bar is contained in a nitrogen-only gas so eliminate oxidation too. Of course, if the integrity of the food-wrapper was breached then it would be useless. Good on Cookie Time for giving us the option of buying a snack bar with a short shelf life but no preservatives (and sometime gluten-free too).
I ate commercially freeze-dried apricots once that were 20 years old preserved in a foil packet and lived to tell the tale.
Few of these things will kill you Most wont even make you sick but things with high amounts of unsaturated fat do go rancid with time and some people can tolerate the taste change better than others. Ive eaten 2 minute noodles 2 years past date and broken packet before and would again but there is so much saturated fat and salt that eating them in the same decade would surfice. Cant say my ones tasted any better though.
High sugar and sealed if sterile when packed will last forever although the apricots would of been well down on vitamin c levels
High salt if well packed should stay ok but we all know what salt does to the body
Fats have definite best before dates and can taste awful but if sealed shouldnt become harmful
Nuts and grains can have mold spores that can be hard to kill by normal sterilizing methods suitable for food. However there growth is impeded by salt. These can grow causing hallucinogenic compounds and certain illnesses. They have been implicated in some cancers as well. Peanut butter in America has a warning on it about this nowdays. Ive eaten some pretty stale peanut butter before and am still here.
fat needs to be in the presence of oxygen to go rancid, so it depends on the packaging as to how quickly it will go rancid and more dense food doesnt go rancid as fast as food with air in it...
EWH! Noticed that when I opened up a packet of crackers that I'd kept too long. Had to heave them into the bush. Luckily crackers aren't that heavy to lug and then throw away.
2 minute noodles have preservative in them which is why they stay in the stomach for a bizarre length of time compared with home made 2 minute noodles.
I wouldn't be worrying about salt unless you're one of the unlucky 10% that can get hypertension from it. The dreaded ramen noodles are the menace and peanut butter can contain aflatoxins that can cause liver cancer. If you suffer from cold sores (types 1 and 2), peanuts are best avoided as the arginine feeds the herpetic viruses but I digress...
