How long can Raw Living Spirulina stay frozen in the freezer?

We recommend no more than three months use by date when frozen in a standard home freezer with minimum opening and closing of the doors.

Each time the freezer is opened, warm air goes in, which, if done frequently, will eventually cause the freezer to go through a defrost cycle, causing large ice crystals to form on foods.

These cycles damage foods, especially the Spirulina nutrient-suspended animation state.

If you have a separate extra storage freezer, this will give you much more protected time frozen.

And to contrast this, if the Spirulina were frozen with liquid Nitrogen, it would be protected to 99.9% for up to 5 years.

NIH Reference study:

Depending on the size and location of the ice crystals, freezing damages cell membranes and breaks down the physical structure. Therefore, the product’s final quality upon thawing may be lower than the corresponding fresh product.

In food plant tissues, cellular compartmentalization leads to the crystallization of local freezable water both at the intracellular and extracellular levels. The difference in osmotic pressure could migrate unfrozen water to the frozen area in the cell and cell organelles. In particular, in cell plant foods, water moves from inside the vacuole through the tonoplast into the cytoplasm and then into the intercellular space across the cell membranes and cell walls [43]. Under these conditions, the liquid water is pulled out of the supercooled cells by determining the dehydration of the tissue (known as freeze concentration) as well as cell separation in the middle lamella region, causing cell wall rupture, cell shrinkage, and collapse of the cell wall [44]. The cellular membranes lose their osmotic status and their semi-permeability.