Once ice cream and frozen dessert products leave the storage freezer in the manufacturing plant, they typically go through a shipping and handling system (“cold-chain”) designed to deliver the products to the consumer with the highest possible quality. The shelf life that assures this quality is almost totally dependent on temperature and temperature fluctuations that the product has been exposed to in distribution. Limitations of shelf life are mostly related to ice recrystallization or other structural rearrangements that lead to structural or textural defects. Microorganisms do not grow at freezer temperatures, enzymatic reactions occur only very slowly, and flavor changes are rare; therefore, the “end” of shelf life is usually a textural consideration and it can vary from many months at −30 °C to a few days at −14 °C before changes would begin to become noticeable. It is critically important that manufacturers build into their products some resilience to the rigors of heat shock and temperature abuse, so that shelf life remains sufficiently long to get product through the distribution network and when product is warmed to eating temperatures, as in scooping cabinets. Besides ice recrystallization, air coarsening and shrinkage, lactose crystallization and sandiness, gumminess and flavor changes are also discussed.