If you have food that’s about to go bad or that you know you won’t eat before its sell-by date, the freezer will be the ideal place to store it as it will help your food stay fresh for longer.
But many will know that even frozen food comes with a specified ‘use by’ or ‘best before’ date. So how long does food really stay fresh in the freezer? This was something one man wanted to find out, as he took to social media to ask whether the expired frozen food item his mum wanted him to eat was really safe to consume.
At the beginning of the video, the man was seen opening his mum’s fridge after being told to eat a certain food item from there. He went on to show that the package of potatoes had a use by date of February 26, 2023.
He wrote on the video: “Guys my mom wants me to eat this food that expired a very long time ago and she says it’s okay because it’s frozen… should it eat it?”
This sparked a response from Dr Dana Figure, a surgeon from Los Angeles, California, who went on to explain whether or not you should eat expired frozen foods.
“Okay so this blew my mind the first time I heard it, but according to the FDA, you can keep frozen food forever. Indefinitely,” he revealed in her Instagram video. “However, the reason you wouldn’t want to eat a one hundred year old cheeseburger, for example, is the quality goes down overtime beacause of freezer burn.”
Because of this, she recommended people to follow the general guidelines for how long you should keep foods in the freezer, as this guarantees your food to stay fresh.
The government’s Food Safety website says frozen foods stored continuously at 0°F (-18°C) or below can be kept indefinitely. However, they also have recommendations for how long to store certain food items in order to gurantee freshness.
Meat items like hotdogs, bacon, and sausage will stay fresh in the freezer for 1-2 months, whereas mince, ground meat, fresh veal, pork, beef and lamb can say fresh between 4-12 months.
If you have leftovers, these can usually stay fresh in the freezer for up to six months, depending on what they are.
How does the freezer keep food fresh?
“Freezing preserves foods for extended periods because it stops the growth of microorganisms,” Dr Figure said. “However, once thawed, these microbes again become active. So it’s still important to cook food thoroughly.”
She then went on to say: “By the way, an expiration date is different than a ‘best by’ or ‘use by’ date. This just refers to the period where the food will be at its peak quality.”
“And call me crazy, but I don’t think 2023 was that long ago,” she said, referring to the packet of frozen potatoes that the man in the video was seen holding up.
