Sorry, but are you certain that number is both a date and the day it expires?
It could instead be a cash register code (perhaps a specific combination of ingredients), or the employee number for who made it (because Janet keeps fucking up, and Darma is sick of being blamed.)
I always assumed it was a comparison between the West and the USSR. One could swap the populations and few would notice. It was a culture and leadership thing.
In Next Gen the USSR was gone, so they no longer needed that angle.