Editorial and sourcing policy

Which sources we accept, how we resolve conflicts, and what we do when there is no answer.

Updated 2026-08-10 · Free · No sign-up

Source hierarchy

For any claim, we prefer sources in this order:

  1. USDA / FSIS / FoodSafety.gov and the FoodKeeper dataset
  2. FDA, and manufacturer labels for medicines
  3. University extension services — UC Davis Postharvest, NC State, Iowa State, Penn State, Utah State, UMaine and similar. These are the best published source for produce spoilage.
  4. Manufacturer guidance for a specific branded product, where it is a factual statement about their own product

We do not use content farms, recipe blogs, SEO aggregators or AI summaries as sources — including the sites that currently rank for these questions. If the only thing available is one of those, we publish nothing and the page keeps its category-level guidance.

How conflicts are handled

When two authoritative sources disagree, we publish the more conservative figure and say on the page that sources differ, with both cited.

A worked example: coconut water after opening. One producer publishes 4–5 days for a raw, high-pressure-processed product; another publishes 24–72 hours for a heat-treated one. The page shows 24–72 hours and explains that the difference is the process, not the brand.

Where our hand-verified figure diverges from FoodKeeper — soy sauce is the standing example — the page states the conflict explicitly instead of silently overriding a government source.

What we refuse to do

We do not fill gaps. Two products we researched, tamarind and hoisin sauce, have no authoritative source we could find; both keep general guidance rather than a claim we cannot stand behind. Five more carry only class-level evidence — for instance, guidance about fats and oils generally rather than about ghee specifically — and are held back for the same reason.

We do not paraphrase a source into a stronger claim than it made. Storage advice is rendered as storage advice, not converted into a spoilage sign because that would read better.

We do not generate spoilage signs with a language model. There is no route by which model-written text becomes a fact on this site.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather remove a claim than defend it. Mail hello@stillgoodfor.com with the page and, if you have it, the source that contradicts us. Pages carry the date their data was last updated.