For the food in your refrigerator to stay fresh for as long as possible—no ice crystals on the lettuce or bacteria breeding in warm spots—the refrigerator temperature should hover right around 37° F. In the freezer, a temperature of 0° F will keep foods thoroughly frozen. Knowing that, the reasonable step would be to set your refrigerator to those temperatures. But the temperature controls on many refrigerators only allow you to choose from a series of numbers—say, from 1 to 5, with 1 being the coldest and 5 the warmest.
Wise Owl Safety Takeaways:
- When a new batch of refrigerators comes into our labs, we start by setting the ambient temperature in our climate-controlled chambers to 70° F, which simulates the conditions in most kitchens.
- Temperatures inside the GE GFE26GSHSS French-door refrigerator, one of our highest-scoring models, stay right around 37° F mark in the fridge and 0° F in the freezer when it’s set to these temperatures.
- It’s important to note that we don’t penalize refrigerators for inaccurate settings. The aforementioned LG, in fact, has a slightly higher overall score than the GE.
“we start by setting the ambient temperature in our climate-controlled chambers to 70° F, which simulates the conditions in most kitchens.”
