How long does Lettuce last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Lettuce (iceberg, romaine) keeps 1–2 weeks in the fridge from purchase. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 2 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Lettuce, iceberg, romaine
- From purchase · in the fridgeUse by1 week to 2 weeks after the day you bought it
Lettuce, leaf, spinach
- From purchase · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 7 days after the day you bought it
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
Lettuce, leaf, spinach keeps 3 days, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — iceberg, romaine and leaf, spinach — and they do not keep for the same time: Lettuce, leaf, spinach holds 3 days to 7 days outside the freezer, Lettuce, iceberg, romaine holds 1 week to 2 weeks.
Why the freezer is not an option here
The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for every one of the 2 kinds under this name, and for Lettuce, iceberg, romaine the whole answer is 1 week to 2 weeks in the refrigerator from the day of purchase. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The refrigerator is the only place the USDA gives this item a storage time, as it does for 64 of the 466 foods the USDA lists. The source also indexes it as iceberg, romaine, leaf and spinach.
Lettuce, iceberg, romaine
- In the freezernot recommended
- From purchase · in the fridge1 week to 2 weeks
Lettuce, leaf, spinach
- In the freezernot recommended
- From purchase · in the fridge3 days to 7 days
Can you freeze lettuce?
The USDA does not recommend freezing lettuce. It is not a safety warning, since food held at 0 °F stays safe, but it comes back changed. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.
How to tell if lettuce has gone bad
Go by the date first: lettuce keeps 1–2 weeks in the fridge. Mold, slime, a sour smell or soft dark spots mean it goes out; firm produce can be saved by cutting 1 inch around a small moldy spot, soft produce cannot. Refrigerate cut or peeled produce within 2 hours.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety USDA FSIS: molds on food FDA: are you storing food safely FoodSafety.gov: the FoodKeeper app.
Is it still safe to eat, or just past its best?
The answer at the top of this page reads 1 week to 2 weeks in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Lettuce, iceberg, romaine is raw and whole. Past it, whether it has gone bad is yours to judge by look and smell: this window rates quality, not the day it turns hazardous.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Lettuce, iceberg, romaine past its 1 week to 2 weeks in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Items that behave the same way
All 6 of the 6 items nearest Lettuce, iceberg, romaine keep exactly as long as it does, 2 weeks, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
Where these numbers come from
Every storage time on this page is the USDA’s own published figure from the FoodKeeper data, one of the 9 it keeps per food, reproduced unchanged and never an estimate of ours. Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, each kind keeps its own windows, and the page names the kind its answer is for. The dates and multipliers are ours, computed from those ranges.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page. How the site is built is on the method page.
Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Lettuce, iceberg, romaine, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in.
USDA index terms: iceberg, leaf, romaine, spinach
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.