How this site is built
Where every number on this site comes from
Every storage time here is the United States Department of Agriculture's, reproduced without change from one published snapshot of the FoodKeeper data. Nothing is estimated, rounded to taste or filled in where the source is silent, and every note on a food page is the source’s own sentence. Some food pages also quote USDA FSIS or FDA pages that name the food; those lines are copied whole, word for word, from a saved copy of each page, with its title, address and the day it was saved. What this site adds is arithmetic on the FoodKeeper figures, described below so you can check it against the source yourself.
The source, exactly
The data is published by the USDA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the FoodKeeper application, at foodsafety.gov/keep-food-safe/foodkeeper-app. The file this site is built from is that application’s own data feed on the same domain, foodkeeper_data_url_en.json, retrieved on 1 September 2026. That copy is 676,401 bytes and carries 661 source records; its SHA-256 digest begins b0abf1e20ba5. The build never fetches anything: the snapshot is committed, the digest is checked before every release, and a source that quietly changed under us would fail the check rather than rewrite the site.
From source records to pages
The FoodKeeper file holds 661 records. Three pairs of them carry the same name and differ elsewhere — in the heading the source files them under, or in the cells it fills — so none of the 661 is an exact copy of another. Records that share a name are one food with several states — five kinds of milk, three of leftovers — so they are merged into a single product, and every state keeps its own windows and its own subheading. That leaves 466 products. A product earns a page when the source gives it a storage time outside the freezer and at least 3 neighbors in its category on the same shelf, and when it is not a duplicate: a product in the same FoodKeeper category with the same figures and notes as a page already published gets no page of its own, and that page names it instead. 49 products were held back by that last rule alone. 21 more pass that rule but have never been published here, and a page for them waits for a decision to add new addresses. 372 pages are published.
What is computed here, and how
Two quantities on this site are ours, not the source’s. The freezer gain divides the freezer figure by the longest window the same food has without a freezer; the two are not always in the same package state — an opened carton in the refrigerator against the freezer from purchase — and the ranking prints both windows with their place. The opening cost divides the window before opening by the window after opening; the two can be in different places — an unopened can in the pantry against the open can in the refrigerator — and the ranking prints both with their place. Neither is ever divided by a figure shorter than a day, because below a day the source is printing a limit on standing in a warm room and not a storage time. Both live on the ranking pages, which also order foods by a single figure; a food page prints only the source’s figures and the date, which is the range added to the day you type, computed in your browser.
Where the source answers in words
Not every cell in the file is a number. These strings are read as answers rather than dropped, because a page that says the USDA is silent where it in fact answered is wrong about the one thing it is for. 3 of these strings are printed as they read; “1 Yea” is a typo in the source and is printed as “Unreadable in the source” with the original beside it, because reading it as one year would be our number rather than theirs.
- Package use-by date36 cells
- Indefinitely13 cells
- When Ripe12 cells
- 1 Yea2 cells
Which windows are about safety
The source prints storage times and does not say which of them are safety limits, and this site does not decide it either: an earlier version did, by the kind of food, and got it wrong often enough that the rule was withdrawn. Every food page instead carries the same 6 rules, each a sentence copied word for word from an FDA or USDA FSIS page — refrigerator and freezer temperatures, the 2-hour limit, freezing, safe thawing and “if you’re not sure or if the food looks questionable, throw it out” — linked to their own pages.
What this site cannot tell you
Its storage times rest on one source. The figures were not re-derived from FSIS publications, and where FoodKeeper is wrong this site is wrong with it — tell us and we will say so here. It knows nothing about your refrigerator, your power cuts or how the food was handled before you got it. It has no laboratory, no test kitchen and no food scientist on staff; the arithmetic is ours and the expertise is the source’s. Where the source leaves a cell empty, the page prints nothing in its place rather than guessing.
Citing this
KeepsUntil, BiLingoPlus LLC. Built from USDA FoodKeeper data retrieved 1 September 2026, digest b0abf1e20ba5. A food page withdrawn because another page carries the same figures answers with a permanent redirect to that page, which names it; a page withdrawn for any other reason answers not found rather than sending you to a list where the food is missing.
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. Storage times are reproduced from USDA FoodKeeper as published; when in doubt, follow the FDA and USDA FSIS guidance linked on every food page.