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Data Sources & Methodology

FoodLasts publishes storage times only when they meet all of these criteria: primary-source backing, editorial review against the cited source set, and validation gates that reduce thin or copy-cat content before it goes live. This is general food-safety guidance, not individual or professional advice.

Sources last checked: . Current corpus snapshot: 299 foods and 3 cited source families.

Primary data sources

USDA FoodKeeper (CC0)

The USDA FoodKeeper dataset is one of our federal source families. Rows imported directly from FoodKeeper keep a FoodKeeper product ID and FoodKeeper provenance; editorial rows cite their own FDA, FSIS, or other federal references. Direct-source durations are normalized to integer days (e.g., "1–2 weeks" → min_days=7, max_days=14).

USDA FSIS guidance

The USDA FSIS food safety guidance is used as the authoritative reference for: danger zone temperatures (40°F / 4°C to 140°F / 60°C), pathogen context (Listeria, Salmonella, E. coli), and refrigeration requirements where USDA FoodKeeper is silent.

Original editor-authored content

For foods not covered by USDA/FDA data, our editorial team authors original storage guidance. This content cites peer-reviewed sources and is subject to the same quality gates as data-sourced content. Credentialed sign-off on this content is being added as part of our Tier-1 review program (see below).

Data licensing and reuse

FoodLasts machine-readable duration exports are published under CC BY 4.0 with attribution. FoodKeeper-derived rows keep their source provenance, and editorial rows cite their own federal references. Original photos, sensory-testing notes, and future first-party media use separate terms unless they are explicitly released under the data-export license. See the data licensing policy for the repo-level rules.

ETL pipeline and normalization

All data is processed through a reproducible ETL pipeline with the following stages:

  1. Ingest: Download, parse, or curate FoodKeeper, FDA, and FSIS source records.
  2. Normalize: Convert all duration expressions to integer day ranges (min_days, max_days). Display unit (days/weeks/months/years) is stored separately to preserve the most meaningful presentation for each food.
  3. Conflict resolution: Where sources disagree, we use the most authoritative source for the user's primary region (US by default), not the most conservative. A note is added where regional standards differ. We follow the region's authoritative baseline (USDA/FDA/FSIS for the US) rather than a blanket "most conservative" rule because a regionally-wrong or needlessly alarmist answer is itself a food-safety failure.
  4. Quality gates: Data artifacts go through validation checks during content updates; the production build gate is being tightened to enforce the full set on every deploy (see below).
  5. Artifact commit: A versioned JSON artifact is committed alongside each data update, making the build reproducible and auditable.

Quality gates

The current validation workflow checks data artifacts during content updates. These gates are also part of the local preflight process, and we are tightening the Cloudflare production build so the full set is enforced on every deploy:

  1. Data completeness: Every food must have ≥4 contract fields with substance.
  2. Pairwise uniqueness: No two foods in a locale can share an identical name and all duration values (prevents clone-page publishing).
  3. Variant justification: An opened/cooked/prepared variant page only publishes if its durations genuinely differ from the parent page.
  4. Citation presence: Every food must have ≥1 source entry in the database. Uncited claims cannot publish.
  5. Credentialed-review target: Tier-1 foods are queued for named credentialed review. Until that sign-off exists, pages are attributed to the FoodLasts editorial team rather than to an individual reviewer.
  6. Regional-validity: Storage tips that reference danger-zone temperatures must specify which regional standard applies.

Review process

Today, every storage figure is reviewed by the FoodLasts editorial team against its primary federal source before publishing. Credentialed sign-off by a registered dietitian (RD) or food scientist (MS Food Science or above) is our standard for Tier-1 pages; we are contracting that reviewer and will name them here and on the pages they sign off. Review always covers:

  • Verify that storage times match primary source data
  • Check for missing variant data (opened, cooked, thawed)
  • Review spoilage signs for accuracy and completeness
  • Flag any regional standard conflicts
  • Record the editorial attribution and the date reviewed

The editorial attribution and review date are displayed on every page. Where a credentialed individual has signed off, their name, credentials, and institution are shown; until then, pages are attributed to the FoodLasts editorial team.

The "verified" / "last reviewed" date is not the data pipeline's ingest run timestamp. It is produced from our reviews registry and content-change hashes, and it reflects when a human editor last checked that entry against its cited source. Today that check is an editorial review, not credentialed registered-dietitian sign-off.

Update policy

We monitor the cited USDA/FDA/FSIS source set for upstream changes. When source data changes, affected pages are flagged for re-review before the update goes live. Storage data is never updated automatically without a review pass against the cited source set.

Corrections

Found an error? We take corrections seriously. Use our contact form to send the food name, the incorrect information, and your source. Entries are also regularly re-checked against the USDA, FDA, and FSIS sources cited on each page.