—John Childress, Arp, Texas Food deteriorates somewhat over time while frozen (while still remaining safe to eat), but if you don’t count that small difference in quality, you can figure it this way: When you first bought the item, it had a month of “best” time left. So whenever you take it out of the freezer, it should have about that same amount of time left. In the instance you describe, the new date would be May 1.