Let’s remember back in the day people went to the market way more often and we didn’t have so many packaged foods with preservatives. If anything, in general, we keep food longer than ever before.
I used to buy tortillas that were the best this side of the Rio Grande, I often wondered where they bought the corn flour for them. Their package had no date. No date for sell by, use by, when the product was made, nothing. I wasn’t happy about it. I still bought them, but I would really prefer a date. You can’t really rely on a store to rotate the merchandise. NC and TN I had the worst experiences with moldy and bad food. More than once in NC I found packaged bread green with mold in the shelf. More than once the fish I bought smelled bad when I got home to use it. I found mustard past the date, cocktail sauce past the date, cheese past the date. It was ridiculous. TN I consistently had deli meat go bad in less than two days, I stopped buying it. I didn’t buy fresh cut deli meat for years, except when traveling.
When I buy food at the store I expect it to be edible. The employees are not opening packages to smell the food and see if it’s still good (although the bad fish should have been obvious). You need to give the store a date as a guide.