How long doGritslast in the pantry?
The methods the USDA actually rates for this item
The USDA rates only 1 of its nine storage methods for this item, and the pantry from the day of purchase is what it rates. The other 8 slots are blank, and a blank is not a zero: it means no published figure, not that the method fails.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA rates this item in the pantry and nowhere else, one of 84 foods of the 466 it files that way.
- Unopened · in the pantry12 months
Turning the range into a date
Counting 12 months forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by12 months after the day you bought it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 12 months in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Grits, boxed keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.
Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Grits, boxed past its 12 months in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. A rancid, paint-like smell in a nut, an oil or a seed, mold around the neck of a bottle, or a swollen can mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Is that a long time?
10 items in the Shelf Stable Foods list keep exactly as long as this item, 12 months, so they all share place 38 of 70 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 41% of them.
Items that behave the same way
All 5 of the 6 items nearest this item keep exactly as long as it does, 12 months, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
This is a common shape of record: 24 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, pantry from the day of purchase, and 8 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Cream sauces, Worcestershire sauce and Bacon bits, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the 8 shown, 5 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Worcestershire sauce at 1 year.
- Cream sauces6 months sealed in the pantry
- Worcestershire sauce1 year sealed in the pantry
- Bacon bits1 year sealed in the pantry
- Canola oil1 year sealed in the pantry
- Sunflower oil1 year sealed in the pantry
- Grapeseed oil1 year sealed in the pantry
- Biscuit or pancake mix9 months sealed in the pantry
- Graham cracker/animal cracker6 months sealed in the pantry
The rest of the Shelf Stable Foods shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Shelf Stable Foods shelf together with 69 others, and 37 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Coconut cream at 5 years down to Polenta at 7 days. Nearest this product by window are Cereal, Toaster pastries and Macadamias, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Shelf Stable Foods the same product ranks 38 of 70. The middle of the shelf is Sunflower oil, at 1 year. 5 products on this shelf publish no window outside the freezer and stay out of the order.
- Cereal12 months2 months in the pantry once opened
- Toaster pastries12 months1 week in the pantry once opened
- Macadamias12 months12 months sealed in the fridge
- Peanuts12 months12 months sealed in the fridge
- Pistachios12 months12 months sealed in the fridge
- Walnuts12 months9 months sealed in the fridge
- Dry stuffing mix12 months9 months in the pantry
- Sunflower seeds12 months7 months in the fridge once opened
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 12 months, the Shelf Stable Foods aisle gives 22 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Peanut butter at 24 months against this one's 12 months; after it come Chocolate syrup, Molasses and Popcorn. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 15 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Fruits, dried and Cashews among them. The largest step the category offers is Sesame seeds at 5 years.
- Peanut butter24 months2 months in the pantry once opened
- Chocolate syrup2 years6 months in the fridge once opened
- Molasses2 years6 months in the pantry once opened
- Popcorn2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Black pepper2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Cajun seasoning blend2 years1 year sealed in the pantry
- Flaxseed2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Almond oil2 years2 years sealed in the fridge
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 627 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 1 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in months, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. Every figure here comes from one fixed snapshot, USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026, and is not refreshed page by page.
Where these numbers come from
Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.
Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.
Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.
USDA index terms: box, boxed, boxed grits, grits
KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.