How long doCanned goodslast?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — low acid (such as meat, poultry, fish, gravy, stew, soups, beans, carrots, corn, pasta, peas, potatoes, spinach), and 1 more listed below — and they do not keep for the same time: at its best the shortest-keeping of them holds 12 months to 18 months outside the freezer, the longest 2 years to 5 years.

The shortest of these, Canned goods, low acid (such as meat, poultry, fish, gravy, stew, soups, beans, carrots, corn, pasta, peas, potatoes, spinach) at 4 days, is a safety limit, and past it the food goes out untasted.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as can, low acid, low and meat.

Canned goods, low acid (such as meat, poultry, fish, gravy, stew, soups, beans, carrots, corn, pasta, peas, potatoes, spinach)

• Unopened · in the pantry2 years to 5 years
• Once opened · in the pantrynot recommended
• Once opened · in the fridge3 days to 4 days

Canned goods, high acid (such as juices, fruit, pickles, sauerkraut, tomato soup, and foods in vinegar-based sauce)

• Unopened · in the pantry12 months to 18 months
• Once opened · in the pantrynot recommended
• Once opened · in the fridge5 days to 7 days

What the USDA adds in words

The USDA attaches 2 handling notes to this item, reproduced below word for word. All 2 are about safety rather than quality, which is the distinction this data is easiest to get wrong. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.

Canned goods, low acid (such as meat, poultry, fish, gravy, stew, soups, beans, carrots, corn, pasta, peas, potatoes, spinach), in the pantry. Canned items will be safe to eat well past the ‘use-by’ or ‘best by’ date as long as the can shows no dents, rust, or swelling.

Canned goods, high acid (such as juices, fruit, pickles, sauerkraut, tomato soup, and foods in vinegar-based sauce), in the pantry. Canned items will be safe to eat well past the ‘use-by’ or ‘best by’ date as long as the can shows no dents, rust, or swelling.

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Canned goods, low acid (such as meat, poultry, fish, gravy, stew, soups, beans, carrots, corn, pasta, peas, potatoes, spinach)

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 years to 5 years after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 4 days after the day you opened it

Canned goods, high acid (such as juices, fruit, pickles, sauerkraut, tomato soup, and foods in vinegar-based sauce)

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by12 months to 18 months after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by5 days to 7 days after the day you opened it

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the shortest window under this name — it at 3 days to 4 days in the fridge once opened — has run out, or the container sat out on the counter overnight. Throw the container out without tasting it, and count any hours it already spent out of the refrigerator as part of that window rather than on top of it.

What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: it is an animal food, or made with one. The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.

Items that behave the same way

Canned goods carries no single window to compare — its 2 kinds each keep their own — so these 6 are simply what the USDA rates on the same shelf, shortest first: Polenta at 7 days through Pine nuts at 3 months.

• Polentakeeps 5 days in the fridge once openedshelf-stable
• Roasted nuts (peanuts, cashews, almonds)keeps 4 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Pectinkeeps 1 month in the pantry once opened
• Potato chipskeeps 1 week in the pantry once openedup to 2 months sealed in the pantry
• Cashew butterkeeps 3 months in the pantry
• Pine nutskeeps 3 months in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

This is a common shape of record: 27 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening, and 7 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Meat products, Canned chicken and Doughnuts, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. The longest-keeping of them is Meat products at 5 years. Counted more loosely, by which of the three places are rated at all, 79 products match this one.

• Meat products3 days in the fridge once openedup to 5 years sealed in the pantry
• Canned chicken3 days in the fridge once openedup to 5 years sealed in the pantry
• Doughnuts1 day sealed in the pantryup to 2 days in the fridge once opened
• Pastries5 days sealed in the pantryup to 14 months in the fridge once opened
• Frosting or icing2 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Chutney1 month in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Gravy1 day in the fridge once openedup to 5 years sealed in the pantry
• Jams6 months in the fridge once opened

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 372 and 373 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 2 of the nine storage slots with a time. No one of the 2 is the kind the plain name means, so this page prints no single figure: the kinds are listed with their own windows and you pick yours. 1 slot is marked not recommended, which is an answer rather than a gap.

Where these numbers come from

Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.

Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.

Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.

Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.

USDA index terms: bean, beans, can, canned, carrot, carrots, corn, fish, food, foods, foods in vinegar based sauce, fruit, fruits, goods, gravy, high, high acid, juice, juices, low, low acid, meat, pasta, pea, peas, pickle, pickles, potato, potatoes, poultry, sauce, sauerkraut, soup, soups, spinach, stew, tomato, tomato soup, vinegar, vinegar based

KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.