By now, you and that bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s are old friends.

She was with you when you were pregnant and craving stacks of pancakes, and she was still smiling warmly at you years later when your preschooler was demanding French toast sticks for breakfast.

Given your disregard for her sell-by date, your little guy might be able to pack her up for college, and according to the food safety experts, that would be OK.

“Imitation flavor syrups, they’ve got so much preservative in them those things last forever, they really do,” said David Wixted, instructor at Schenectady County Community College and certified ServSAFE teacher and proctor.

“Your dry goods tend to have a much longer shelf life than your perishable foods.”

A lot of foods are still good — or at least safe to eat — well past the dates stamped on their boxes, bottles or cans.

And with the exception of baby formula and some infant foods, the federal government doesn’t require expiration dates on food products.

“They’re useful from a quality control standpoint,” said Jessica Chittenden, spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Agriculture, who adds that she fields numerous questions about expiration dates every week. “If we were to rely solely on expiration dates, we would be very wasteful.”

The government doesn’t require date stamping because dates don’t guarantee safety, Chittenden says.

If you buy a package of ground beef and leave it in your car, she says, it might still be within the expiration date, but that doesn’t mean it would be safe to eat. The department inspects grocery stores and other food retailers annually to check that the products being sold meet food safety standards.

Retailers and manufacturers use product dating so they can keep track of their stock and make sure the products headed to your pantry or refrigerator will taste their best, persuading you to buy them again.

Follow these food safety tips

The USDA and David Wixted, an instructor at Schenectady County Community College and certified ServSAFE teacher and proctor, offer these food safety tips:

Canned goods

Generally, canned foods high in acidity, such as tomatoes and pineapple, can be stored for 12-18 months, according to the USDA. Low-acid canned foods, such as meat, poultry, fish and most vegetables, will last for two to five years with proper storage, meaning the cans are in good condition and are kept in a cool, dry place.

Wixted recommends avoiding cans with dents. “All it takes with that dent is a little pinhole that you can’t see,” he said. “When I go shopping for my house, and I’m picking up a can of something, I will run my hands over it to see if there are dents in there. … Botulism is odorless and tasteless, so you don’t know that it’s in there.”

Cheese

Mold isn’t always bad. With hard cheese, Wixted said, “You can cut to an inch from where the mold is and continue to use the product because mold is a natural part of cheese,” he said. “If there’s mold, obviously, around the whole thing, then you’re going to throw it away.”

Meat

Follow sell-by dates on meats and proteins within a day or two, Wixted said.