how about putting food expiration dates on packaged foods? you’ve already got fresh, normal, and rotten with fruits, veggies, and meats, so why not other foods that go bad. in fact that would work out perfectly; fruits, veggies, and freshly butchered, unpackaged meat doesn’t have a date on them so your judgment of their freshness is approximate, but packaged foods should have a specific date printed on them on which they loose their freshness, and after that date they become “stale” and then rotten.
Only real problem is that most food that goes bad (such as TV dinners, etc) goes bad thanks to lack of refrigeration. As such, it doesn’t make it to the use-by date.
If it doesn’t need refrigerated, it’s considered sufficiently full of preservatives that it won’t go bad.