How this site is made

Editorial and data methodology

ShelfDate is a structured interface to government guidance, not a substitute for product labels or professional advice.

Primary data

Our main dataset is the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service's FoodKeeper data. The current downloaded English JSON identifies itself as FoodKeeper version 128 and contains 661 source rows; 647 rows contain usable storage periods. We preserve separate pantry, refrigerator, freezer, date-on-package, after-opening, and after-thawing fields rather than reducing every food to one generic number.

Supporting government sources

Page selection

The database can expose all 647 usable records without creating 647 search landing pages. The sitemap is deliberately capped at a curated set, including 168 focused item and government-guidance pages. Proxy, label-specific, non-food, and unresolved pages are excluded from the sitemap and marked noindex,follow in the working tree.

Calculator and helper methods

The storage calculator applies a FoodKeeper minimum and maximum period to the date supplied by the reader. Days and weeks convert directly. Months use 30 days and years use 365 days. The temperature, thawing, leftovers, and refreezing helpers apply only the decision rules displayed on their pages; their static tables remain the source of truth.

Editorial standard

Pages must identify the exact item or defensible product group, state the applicable storage condition, link to primary guidance, distinguish safety from quality where the source does, and avoid inventing a universal number when a package or formulation controls the answer.

Last methodology review: June 29, 2026.