How Long Your Food Actually Lasts in the Freezer

Shutterstock / Jennifer Bui / Thrillist
Shutterstock / Jennifer Bui / Thrillist

Stop treating the food in your freezer like it's going to stay good forever. Your freezer is not a cryonic chamber, and your food is not Walt Disney's head. Unlike Walt, who will live forever, the food in your freezer doesn't stay edible until the end of time -- it greatly reduces in quality so much you wouldn't want to eat it. So we created a handy chart to show you how long it remains at optimal flavor with the help of the USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service's FoodKeeper (note that this doesn't mean the food will be unsafe to eat, but that it will probably be super gross, especially if you don't use a fancy vacuum sealer). Print it out, stick it to the fridge with magnets, and never eat a freezer-burned sausage again.

Shutterstock / Jennifer Bui / Thrillist

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Lee Breslouer is a senior writer for Thrillist, and needs to clean out his freezer. Follow him to empty freezers: @LeeBreslouer.