How long doesMung beanlast in the fridge?
The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately
Mung bean, sprouts keeps 4 weeks, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — sprouts, dry, food-grade bags and dry, vacuum-sealed — and they do not keep for the same time: Mung bean, sprouts holds 4 weeks to 6 weeks outside the freezer, Mung bean, dry, vacuum-sealed holds 8 years to 10 years.
The freezer changes nothing here
The USDA gives this item the same window either way: 1 year in the refrigerator and 1 year in the freezer. Freezing is not a mistake here, it simply buys nothing, and the refrigerator is the cheaper place to keep it.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage. The source also indexes it as sprout, mungbean, sprouts and dry.
Mung bean, sprouts
- In the fridge4 weeks to 6 weeks
Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags
- In the freezer1 year
- In the pantry1 year
- In the fridge1 year
Mung bean, dry, vacuum-sealed
- In the pantry8 years to 10 years
What the USDA adds in words
The USDA attaches 2 handling notes to this item, reproduced below word for word. None of them is a storage time: they qualify the figures above rather than replacing them. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.
Mung bean, sprouts, in the refrigerator. Never refrigerate wet sprouts. Transfer to a plastic bag or use a glass or plastic container.
Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags, in the pantry. Keep the beans in an airtight container as it’s imperative that they remain dry.
Turning the range into a date
Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 5 rows across the 3 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Mung bean, sprouts
- In the fridgeUse by4 weeks to 6 weeks after the day you stored it
Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags
- In the freezerUse by1 year after the day you stored it
- In the pantryUse by1 year after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by1 year after the day you stored it
Mung bean, dry, vacuum-sealed
- In the pantryUse by8 years to 10 years after the day you stored it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 1 year in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.
The figure in the fridge here is a safety limit. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. 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 Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags past its 1 year in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Insects or webbing in the package, a musty or rancid smell, or clumping that says damp got in mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure 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?
3 items in the Grains, Beans & Pasta list keep exactly as long as Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags, 1 year, so they all share place 7 of 23 rather than being put in an order the data does not support.
Items that behave the same way
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 2 days to 1 year against the 1 year of Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
Only 3 other products in the whole file carry the same set of rated places as this one, freezer, pantry and refrigerator: Croutons, Pine nuts and Whole wheat flour. That is 3 products out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Of the 3 shown, 1 keeps longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Whole wheat flour at 2 years.
- Croutons5 months in the fridge
- Pine nuts3 months in the fridge
- Whole wheat flour2 years in the fridge
Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.
- Barley6 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Farro6 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Rye6 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Spelt6 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Amaranth4 months in the pantrywhole grain
The rest of the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf together with 22 others, and 6 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Quinoa at 3 years down to Fresh pasta at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Lentils, Peas and Bulgur, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Grains, Beans & Pasta the same product ranks 7 of 23. The middle of the shelf is Rye, at 6 months. The freezer is left out of the order on purpose: it flattens almost everything it touches.
- Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Bulgur12 months6 months in the pantry
- Barley6 months6 months in the pantry
- Farro6 months6 months in the pantry
- Rye6 months6 months in the pantry
- Spelt6 months6 months in the pantry
- Amaranth4 months4 months in the pantry
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 1 year, the Grains, Beans & Pasta aisle gives 6 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Beans at 2 years against this one's 1 year; after it come Pasta, Dry egg noodles and Rice. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 13 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Barley and Farro among them. The largest step the category offers is Refried beans at 3 years.
- Beans2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Pasta2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Dry egg noodles2 years1 month in the pantry once opened
- Rice2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Quinoa3 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Refried beans3 years2 days in the fridge once opened
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 3 separate rows under this name — records 679, 680 and 681 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Mung bean, dry, food-grade bags, 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. The record carries 2 handling notes, quoted on this page word for word.
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: bag, bagged mung beans, bean, dry, dry mung beans, mung, mung beans, mungbean, sprout, sprouted mung bean, sprouted mung beans, sprouts, vacuum sealed, vacuum sealed mung beans
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.