Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Going Green

So, last week I bought two green peppers to eat on my salads. I would have preferred red peppers but they were twice the price and so I bought green. Four Days later they had both gone bad!!! Should I go shopping every other day, should I assume that my food will not last longer than 3 days max, I don't want to make that assumption, but it really seems to me that the cheaper the food, the faster it goes bad. (A really good example would be the fact that the $1.00 cherries and $0.77 Strawberries I wanted to buy today all had mold- I was able to find some that didn't look too bad after 5-10 minutes of searching through mounds and mounds of bags and pints, ARGH).



So, the morning after throwing the peppers away I found myself daydreaming about some new product I saw on an infomercial. As I only saw about a minute of the comercial all I can tell you is that it was for hard plastic containers that were the next step up from "Green Bags". Both items claim to be made with special plastic that negates the gasses fruits and vegetables create that cause them to spoil. They make everything- absolutely everything- from Peppers to Pasta, from Brussel Sprouts to Brownies, last longer. If I only had those containers I would never have to throw away food that I would have loved to eat (were it not furry). On Monday we found ourselves at Target, (they had a Sale on DVDs), and on an end cap some "As seen on TV" items caught my eye. There they were, "Green Bags", 20 bags for $9.99. So I got some, I figure if they work, then they will pay for themselves, and if they work, then maybe the containers would actually work too, and maybe, just maybe, I would be able to save up the money I save from not throwing away produce and get some containers that would save our bread, and cookies (but I guess cookies don't stay around long enough to go bad).



I don't have a camera right now, but if I did you would see a test going on in my kitchen. I left one of every item out of its bag, just like they normally would be, stored in the fridge or on the counter- where ever I normally store them. And I will see how fast they go bad as compared to the items in the green bags. I will let you know what the results of my very scientific test are.

5 comments:

Deon said...

My friends son actually did this for a science experience and he found that the Hefty Fresh Extend bag just thought I would let you know ;)

Tennille said...

I'm so glad you're doing this experiment. I always want to buy those bags--let us know how it goes!

Christy said...

I've been wondering about those bags! Keep me updated! You should write in to the "Human Lab" on Studio 5.

Shanna said...

I have plenty of produce that goes bad. Let me know what you find out. It would be interesting to hear from a perspective of someone I know. Get Gephardt did a story on this a month or so ago where they did the "Let Bill buy it" They found that they didn't work any better than other bags. But different people could come up with different results right? Good luck with your experiment!

Unknown said...

You have to remember that everything you buy in the store has been picked days, if not weeks in advance. Usually food is picked before it's ripe in the hopes that it will last long enough for it to be sold.

Just on a side note, not allowing food to ripen "on the vine," so to speak, does not allow the food to develop all of it's nutritive properties it would normally develop if you were able to pick it fresh when it was ripe. The only exception to this is a banana. The only way to avoid this dilemma is to grow the fresh produce yourself.