How long food keeps: storage times, date labels and the 2-hour rule

A storage card for the foods your household buys most, each time marked as a safety limit or a quality limit, the date labels on your packages read, and the 2-hour and power-outage rules written down.

1. Time and temperature: the danger zone and the 2-hour rule Understand

Every storage time in this chapter rests on a temperature and a length of time. Some of the bacteria on raw food, hands and surfaces cause illness, and nearly all bacteria multiply faster when food is warm. Cold slows them down; time lets them catch up.

The danger zone is the range from 40 °F to 140 °F (4 °C to 60 °C). USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) says bacteria grow most rapidly in that range, doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes (FSIS, "Danger Zone" (40 °F to 140 °F)). Two hours at that fastest rate is time for six doublings. That is why a refrigerator is set at 40 °F (4 °C) or below, which FSIS says "will protect most foods" (FSIS, Refrigeration and Food Safety), and why hot food held for serving stays at 140 °F (60 °C) or above.

The 2-hour rule is the federal limit on how long perishable food can be out of refrigeration: 2 hours in all, or 1 hour when the air is above 90 °F (32 °C), as in a hot car or at a summer picnic. FSIS puts it as "Never leave food out of refrigeration over 2 hours," and FoodSafety.gov gives the same rule with the 1-hour limit (FoodSafety.gov, 4 Steps to Food Safety). FDA applies it to meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, produce and other refrigerated foods, and to leftovers, take-out and "doggie bags" (FDA, Are You Storing Food Safely?). For leftovers, FSIS starts the 2 hours when the food comes off the heat or out of a warming appliance (FSIS, Leftovers and Food Safety).

The rule is a line drawn so that a household does not have to estimate bacterial growth, not a point where food turns harmful. Every storage time in this chapter assumes food was handled inside it.

The 2 hours add up

The 2 hours count the whole time a food spends out of the cold, not each stretch separately. Clemson Cooperative Extension's guide to cooking for a crowd says the limit includes "preparation, storage and serving time" (Clemson HGIC 3540, Preparing Food for a Crowd). FDA's thermometer page adds the trip home: groceries should not sit in the car more than 2 hours, or 1 hour on a hot day (FDA, Refrigerator Thermometers). So 35 minutes in the cart and car plus 10 on the counter is 45 minutes of the raw chicken's 2 hours, before anyone cooks it. Once cooked, the dish starts a new count when it leaves the pan: 40 minutes on the table and 30 more on the stove while the kitchen is cleaned is 70 minutes, and then it goes into shallow containers and the fridge. (Those minutes are an illustration we made up.)

Cook the way you already do, and check the temperature against FSIS's Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart. Cooling cooked food quickly is in Prep and batch cooking.

2. Safety limits and quality limits

A food can go wrong in two different ways, and storage times measure two different things.

Spoilage bacteria (with molds and yeasts) make food taste, smell or look bad: sour milk, slimy greens, a fuzzy loaf. They grow at refrigerator temperatures, which is why food in the fridge still goes off. Pathogens are the organisms that cause illness. FSIS says pathogens generally "do not affect the taste, smell, or appearance of a food," and calls the difference "an issue of quality versus safety." A food can look and smell fine and still make someone sick, and a sour-smelling food can be unpleasant without being dangerous. The senses detect spoilage, not pathogens, which is why this manual does not ask you to judge a food by sniffing or tasting it.

One pathogen breaks the rule that cold protects. Listeria (Listeria monocytogenes) can grow at refrigerator temperatures. FDA says to use refrigerated ready-to-eat foods such as luncheon meats as soon as possible, because the longer they are stored, the more chance Listeria has to grow. That is why opened deli meat has a short refrigerator time even though it is already cooked.

From those two kinds of growth come the two kinds of limit this manual uses:

• A safety limit is the time after which the agencies say to throw the food out, because pathogens may have grown even if nothing looks wrong. The refrigerator times on the FSIS and FoodSafety.gov charts are safety limits: FSIS calls them "short but safe time limits" (FoodSafety.gov, Cold Food Storage Chart).
• A quality limit is the time after which the food is likely to be drier, blander, softer or stale, but, under the stated conditions, not less safe. Freezer times, pantry times and most date labels are quality limits.

Freezing is the clearest case. Freezing to 0 °F (-18 °C) stops bacteria growing without killing them. FSIS's freezing page says "Food stored constantly at 0 °F will always be safe," with only quality suffering, and FSIS's leftovers page calls frozen leftovers "safe indefinitely" (FSIS, Freezing and Food Safety). Once the food thaws, the bacteria start again, so thawed food is handled like any perishable. Freezer burn, the grayish-brown leathery spots on food exposed to air in the freezer, is a quality problem; FSIS says to cut those parts away.

Refrigerator times

Refrigerator times run out fastest, and they decide which meals go early in the week. These core figures come from FSIS's refrigeration chart and leftovers page and its shelf-stable page (for rice, pasta and opened cans). They match the keep-until calculator and the full storage table.

A time is a range, and the range is the agencies'. This manual does not narrow "3 to 4 days" to one day; you use the food within it. The clock starts when the food was cooked, bought or opened. To turn days into weekdays, this manual counts that day as day 0, so a dish cooked on Sunday is eaten by Wednesday to Thursday; the keep-until calculator and the other chapters use the same count. The short times leave little room: raw chicken bought on a Saturday afternoon has until Sunday or Monday, so it is cooked or frozen by then.

FSIS suggests a weekly habit of throwing out perishables that should no longer be eaten. The eat-first shelf from Kitchen inventory is where the short-dated foods go so they are seen (the eat-first shelf).

Freezer times

Freezer times are quality limits: how long the food keeps its best texture and flavor at 0 °F (-18 °C). That makes the freezer the way to stretch a refrigerator time. FSIS says to "Freeze leftovers within 3-4 days," the refrigerator time; this manual calls the last day of it the freeze-by day.

FSIS gives cooked leftovers 3 to 4 months in the freezer on its leftovers page and 2 to 3 months for cooked meat on its freezing chart. Both are quality limits, and the calculator shows both. Some foods freeze poorly whatever the time: FSIS names mayonnaise, cream sauce and lettuce, and the National Center for Home Food Preservation says cooked pasta or rice frozen on its own turns "Mushy" (NCHFP, Foods That Do Not Freeze Well). The freezer itself has to hold 0 °F: FSIS says a freezing compartment that cannot hold zero is for short-term storage only, and the readings from Kitchen inventory tell you which kind you have (thermometers). Test it Freezing and thawing methods are in Prep and batch cooking (freezing, thawing).

Pantry and canned times

Pantry times are quality limits too. FSIS says dating on shelf-stable food "is for quality, not safety," and that a cool, dry place below 85 °F (29 °C) is best, with temperatures above 100 °F (38 °C) harmful to canned goods (FSIS, Shelf-Stable Food Safety). Its chart gives low-acid canned foods (meat, stews, soups other than tomato, beans, corn, carrots, peas and most vegetables) 2 to 5 years, high-acid canned foods (juices, tomatoes, fruit, pickles, sauerkraut) 12 to 18 months, and rice and dried pasta 2 years. Once a can is opened, its contents are on a refrigerator clock: 3 to 4 days for low-acid food, 5 to 7 for high-acid. FSIS says a clean glass or plastic container keeps quality better than the can. Can codes are production codes, not dates for shoppers. Dented, swollen or leaking cans are covered in Kitchen inventory (cans).

Looking up a food: the storage table and FoodKeeper

This manual's storage table gathers the federal times for common foods, each marked safety or quality, with its source. For a food that is not on it, the federal lookup tool is FoodKeeper, a database of storage times developed by FSIS with Cornell University and the Food Marketing Institute, on the web and as phone apps (FoodSafety.gov, FoodKeeper App). Product-specific

FoodSafety.gov describes FoodKeeper as a way to "maximize the freshness and quality of items," so its times are framed around quality; for a perishable food, the 2-hour rule and the 40 °F refrigerator still apply. Each entry is for one category of product ("luncheon meat, pre-packaged" and "luncheon meat, store-sliced" have different times), so read the entry's name before you copy its number. When FoodKeeper and an FSIS chart differ, this manual uses the FSIS chart.

From the card to the week

The storage card is also the planning list for The weekly plan. Foods with the shortest refrigerator times (raw poultry and ground meat, fresh fish, opened deli meat, bagged greens) go in the first days after the shop; foods with weeks or months wait. The weekly plan builds the plan in that order (perishables first).

3. Date labels: what the dates on packages mean

The date on a package and the storage time on a chart are two different clocks. The chart says how long a kind of food keeps in your kitchen; the package date is the maker's statement about one product. In the US, most of those dates are about quality.

FSIS sorts dates into two kinds (FSIS, Food Product Dating). Open dating is a calendar date printed for shoppers, set by the maker to show best quality. Closed dating is a production code, such as the numbers stamped on a can. FSIS says that, except for infant formula, product dating is not required by federal law, and "Except for infant formula, dates are not an indicator of the product's safety." Where a date is used on an FSIS-regulated food, it must be truthful and carry a phrase that explains it.

The infant formula date is the one federal date to treat as a hard limit. Federal regulation requires a "Use by" date, by month and year, set by the maker from its own tests, until which the formula holds the nutrients on its label (21 CFR 107.20). FSIS says, "Do not buy or use baby formula after its 'Use-By' date."

FDA's storage page reads "use by" as FSIS does: "The date is not a food safety date." FSIS adds that food with no signs of spoilage "should be wholesome" after a "Best if Used By" date. The reverse does not hold. A food that smells fine is not thereby safe, and once a package is opened or a food is cooked, the chart's storage time is the clock that matters, whatever the printed date: opened deli turkey gets 3 to 5 days even if its date is a week away. A food that has spoiled (an off smell, flavor or texture, in FSIS's words) is not eaten, whatever its date.

Egg cartons from USDA-graded plants carry a three-digit pack date, the day of the year from 001 to 365, FSIS says. In the baseline week in Your starting week, "worried about the date" was one reason for throwing food out; reading the phrase is how that reason gets checked.

Rules where you live

States can make their own date rules; FSIS's shelf-stable page says more than 20 states require dating of some foods. What a phrase means where you live is a question for your state's agriculture or health department, or your own country's food agency outside the US. Ask the authority

California is one example. Its AB 660, approved in September 2024, applies to food made on or after July 1, 2026 (California AB 660). A maker or store that puts a date on such food must use "BEST if Used by" (or "BEST if Used or Frozen by") for a quality date and "USE by" (or "USE by or Freeze by") for a safety date, with "BB" and "UB" allowed on small items. The law bars the sale of such food labelled "sell by," does not require a date where none is otherwise required, and does not apply to infant formula, eggs, or beer and malt beverages. So in California, "USE by" on a package made from July 1, 2026 marks a safety date, a different reading from the federal one. Elsewhere in the US, the federal reading is the default and your state's rule is the exception to check. Outside the US, temperatures differ too: the UK's Love Food Hate Waste program gives a refrigerator target of 0 to 5 °C (about 32 to 41 °F), for example.

4. Mold and produce

Mold is the spoilage most people can see, and one of the few cases where FSIS lets a household cut part of a food away and keep the rest. FSIS says molds grow at refrigerator temperatures and tolerate salt and sugar, and that foods with high moisture can be contaminated below the surface, with bacteria growing along with the mold (FSIS, Molds on Food: Are They Dangerous?). So the answer depends on how firm and how moist the food is.

FSIS says not to sniff moldy food, because it can cause respiratory trouble, and to use leftovers within 3 to 4 days "so mold doesn't have a chance to grow." A moldy leftover is usually one that went past its storage time without a plan; Leftovers and using it up picks this up (mold on leftovers).

Where produce keeps

Fresh produce has no federal refrigerator chart, only advice on where each item keeps best. This manual follows UC Davis's Postharvest Technology Center, in a sheet made in 2004 and last modified in 2011, the newest version we found (UC Davis, Storing Fresh Fruits and Vegetables for Better Taste). Its advice is about taste and texture, a quality question.

Some produce stays out of the fridge because cold damages it: UC Davis says home refrigerators usually run at 38 to 42 °F (3.3 to 5.6 °C), cold enough to blacken banana skins and take the flavor out of tomatoes. So bananas, citrus, melons, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic and winter squash stay at room temperature; avocados, peaches, pears and plums ripen on the counter first; most berries, grapes, leafy greens, herbs other than basil, broccoli and carrots go in the fridge. Inside the fridge, UC Davis keeps fruits and vegetables in separate drawers, to limit the effect of the ethylene that ripening fruit gives off: a natural gas that speeds ripening and can shorten the life of nearby vegetables. It says to use refrigerated produce within a few days.

EPA's household guide adds the humidity drawers: vegetables that wilt, such as leafy greens and carrots, go in the high-humidity drawer, and most fruit, and vegetables that rot such as mushrooms and peppers, in the low-humidity one; wash berries only when you are ready to eat them (EPA, Preventing Wasted Food At Home). For safety, FDA says to refrigerate all pre-cut or packaged produce (FDA, Selecting and Serving Produce Safely), and once cut, any produce is on the 2-hour rule. FoodKeeper gives bagged salad greens 3 to 5 days, and 2 days once the bag is opened, a short window that puts greens on the eat-first shelf. Product-specific The item-by-item list is the storage page's produce table (produce table).

5. Power outages and who is at higher risk

In an outage the refrigerator becomes an insulated box that warms slowly. How long food stays cold depends on how long the doors stay shut and, for a freezer, how full it is, since frozen food holds the cold for the food around it. FSIS's emergencies page and FoodSafety.gov's outage chart agree on the figures (FSIS, Keep Your Food Safe During Emergencies; FoodSafety.gov, Food Safety During Power Outage):

• A closed refrigerator keeps food safe for up to 4 hours.
• A full freezer holds its temperature for about 48 hours, or about 24 if it is half full, with the door closed.
• Refrigerated perishables (meat, poultry, fish, eggs, leftovers, milk, yogurt, soft cheese, cut produce, cooked rice and pasta) are discarded after 4 hours without power, or after more than 2 hours at 40 °F (4 °C) or above.
• Frozen food that still has ice crystals, or reads 40 °F (4 °C) or below, can be refrozen, with some loss of quality.

FoodSafety.gov's chart lists what can be kept, such as hard cheeses, butter, whole uncut produce, mustard, ketchup and bread. The appliance thermometers from Kitchen inventory are what make these rules usable: a reading when the power returns says whether the fridge stayed at 40 °F. FSIS suggests planning ahead with a full freezer and a cooler with gel packs. Test it

Who is at higher risk

Storage times are the same for everyone, but the harm from foodborne illness is not. FDA's produce page says children, older adults, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems (such as transplant patients and people with HIV/AIDS, cancer or diabetes) can be especially vulnerable, and that these groups should avoid raw or lightly cooked sprouts. CDC lists foods more likely to carry harmful germs: raw or undercooked poultry, meat, seafood and eggs; raw sprouts; unwashed produce; cut melon; unpasteurized milk, juice and soft cheese; and raw dough or batter (CDC, Preventing Food Poisoning). On a storage card, deli meat, with the Listeria risk FDA describes, is the food to ask about first.

This manual does not list what each group should avoid or decide whether someone in your household is in one; their doctor or registered dietitian settles that. The question is short: "Is this person at higher risk from foodborne illness, and are there foods they should avoid or eat only cooked?" Write the answer on the household sheet in The people at your table (medical diets and who to ask). Ask the authority

6. See it: Jordan's storage card and the Delgados' freezer See it

Free sources behind this chapter:

• FoodSafety.gov, Cold Food Storage Chart: refrigerator and freezer times on one page, with the note that freezer times are for quality only.
• FSIS, Food Product Dating: the federal definitions of each date phrase and the infant formula exception.
• FoodSafety.gov, Food Safety During Power Outage: the item-by-item keep-or-discard chart.
• UC Davis, Storing Fresh Fruits and Vegetables for Better Taste: the two-page sheet behind the produce table.

7. Practice: ten foods on the storage card Practice

Minimum: ten foods on the storage card with their times and type, three date phrases read, and the two lines posted. Time: about 45 minutes. Materials: the storage table, the storage card (or paper with the same columns), three packages from your kitchen, a marker, and tape or a sticky note.

1. Pick the ten foods from your baseline week's receipts, the fridge and the cupboard, including what went into the waste bag.
2. Find each food in the storage table with the search box or the category buttons. Copy the refrigerator, freezer and pantry times as the ranges given, and write "No" where a column does not apply.
3. Mark the type and source. A row with a federal refrigerator time and a freezer or pantry time is "Both"; a row with only a refrigerator time is "Safety"; a row whose times are all freezer, pantry or FoodKeeper times is "Quality."
4. Look up any food the table lacks in FoodKeeper. Check the entry's name matches your product, write "FoodKeeper" as the source, and mark it quality.
5. Read three date phrases, from the fridge, the freezer and the cupboard if you can, and write each phrase, its date and its meaning where you live.
6. Post the two lines on the fridge or inside a cupboard door: "Perishables in the fridge within 2 hours (1 hour above 90 °F). Do not taste food to test it." and "Outage: doors shut. Fridge up to 4 hours; full freezer about 48, half full about 24. Discard perishables above 40 °F for more than 2 hours. When in doubt, throw it out."

8. Your kitchen Your kitchen

9. Check your work Check your work

Criteria

• Does the storage card have ten rows, each with a refrigerator, freezer and pantry entry (a time or "No")?
• Is every time the range the table gives, not shortened to one number?
• Does each row have a type, with federal refrigerator times as safety and freezer, pantry and FoodKeeper times as quality, and a source?
• For the three packages, did you write the phrase, the date and its meaning where you live?
• Are the 2-hour line and the outage line posted where the household can see them?

Worked example

Jordan's card (fictional) has ten rows with three entries, a type and a source each. The ranges are the table's: "1 to 2 days" for the chicken, not "2 days." The five FoodKeeper rows are marked quality. Jordan read the yogurt's "Best if Used By," an egg carton's pack date of 280 (early October), and a can of beans with only a code, and wrote each one's meaning. Both lines are taped inside the fridge door. The card meets the criteria; whether the fridge holds 40 °F over the coming week is the next thermometer reading.

Common mistakes

• Reading a "Best if Used By" or "Sell-By" date as the day to throw food out. Federally, both are quality or inventory dates.
• Going the other way: keeping an opened food past its storage time because its printed date is still ahead.
• Marking freezer times as safety limits, and throwing out frozen food that stayed at 0 °F only because the chart month passed.
• Counting only one stretch out of the fridge against the 2 hours, instead of the car, the counter and the table together.

What is still unresolved

This chapter cannot tell you whether a particular food in your kitchen is safe to eat; it gives the federal times and rules, and when a food's history is unknown, it is thrown out. Whether your fridge and freezer hold their temperatures is settled by the weekly readings from Kitchen inventory. What a date phrase means where you live is settled by your state or country's food agency, and whether anyone at your table is at higher risk by their doctor. How the card's times shape your week is the work of The weekly plan.

10. Knowledge check and scenario

Checklist

• My storage card has ten rows, each with its times and their type.
• I read the date phrase on three packages and wrote what each means where I live.
• The 2-hour line and the outage line are posted where the household can see them.
• I checked my freezer list against the freezer times. (Go deeper; optional)
• I compared three of my foods in FoodKeeper and the storage table. (Go deeper; optional)