How long doesString Cheeselast in the fridge?

The methods the USDA actually rates for this item

The USDA rates only 1 of its nine storage methods for this item, and the refrigerator 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 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.

• Unopened · in the fridge5 months

Turning the range into a date

Counting 5 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 fridgeUse by5 months after the day you bought it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 5 months in the fridge. String Cheese does spoil, but a bacterial limit runs in days and this window runs past six weeks: 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 String Cheese past its 5 months 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 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?

Among the 29 items the USDA files under Dairy Products & Eggs, this item ranks 5 by how long it keeps outside the freezer. Margarine holds 6 months, Vegan Cheddar Cheese holds 4 months. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 83% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 4 weeks to 6 months and bracketing its 5 months.

• Margarinekeeps 6 months sealed in the fridge
• Vegan Cheddar Cheesekeeps 3 days in the fridge once openedup to 4 months sealed in the fridge
• Butterkeeps 1 month sealed in the fridge
• Eggskeeps 3 weeks sealed in the fridgein shell
• Whipped cream, aerosol cankeeps 3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Pimento cheese, packagedkeeps 4 weeks in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

14 other products are rated in exactly these places — refrigerator from the day of purchase — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Herring, Whipped cream and Cream cheese. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 8 shown, 1 keeps longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Herring at 6 months.

• Herring4 months sealed in the fridge
• Whipped cream3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Cream cheese2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Dips2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Lettuce1 week sealed in the fridgeiceberg, romaine
• Radishes10 days sealed in the fridge
• Swiss chard1 week sealed in the fridge

The rest of the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf together with 28 others, and 4 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Powdered milk at 5 years down to Pudding at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Margarine, Vegan Cheddar Cheese and Butter, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Dairy Products & Eggs the same product ranks 5 of 29. The middle of the shelf is Whipped topping, at 2 weeks.

• Margarine6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
• Vegan Cheddar Cheese4 months3 days in the fridge once opened
• Butter2 months1 month sealed in the fridge
• Eggs5 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped cream4 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Pimento cheese4 weeks4 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Coffee creamer3 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Buttermilk2 weeks1 week sealed in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 5 months, Dairy Products & Eggs offers 3 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Nacho cheese at 2 years against this one's 5 months, and the rest are Ghee and Powdered milk. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 23 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Butter and Eggs among them.

• Nacho cheese2 years2 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Ghee2 years1 year in the fridge
• Powdered milk5 years3 months in the pantry once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 544 — 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: cheese

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.