Why do Travellunch freeze dried items have such short shelf life?

[housil]

That looks like a great item, housil. Did you open that recently to sample, or are those older pics?

It was taken 2016, when that FD was 11 years "old":

Bundeswehr ones didn´t have a best by date, just a production date as all military ones.

I don´t mind age of FD rations due to my own experience, MH grantees shelf live of 30 years for theirs.

[DonJa]

I think that those meals are high quality, and many have dairy, but probably they last longer than 2 years

A lot of it has to do with what's been verified through testing. Not every company sees value in accelerated shelf life testing. U.S. firms doing this are able to claim a shelf life (conservatively, usually) of 5 years. Powdered milk lasts at least this long, even at higher storage temperatures.