Has anyone tried these?

Has anyone tried the Debbie Meyer Green Bags, which are supposed to keep produce fresher. Her web site offers 20 bags for $9.00 plus s&h. That is pricey, of course. However, based on someone's high recommendation of them, I did pick up a package in the produce section of my local Wal-Mart grocery store. Since I was buying them directly, the total cost was not as much as buying them through the web site.

The bags are reusable for up to 8 to 10 times each. You are supposed to use one bag for each type of produce (and/or flowers if you wish to keep them fresh). You would use one bag for apples, another for bananas, etc. It's also essential to keep the produce and the bag dry, which means that you may need to wipe the inside with a paper towel from time to time.

Supposedly, the bags absorb and remove the gases that produce produces during the ripening process. Continued exposure to these gases hastens the ripening process and, thus, hastens spoilae if you do not consume all of the produce quickly. This is the same principle behind the advice we've all heard not to store certain types of produce together because the gas released by one will affect the other's spoilage rate.

I've only tried the bags once or twice so far. I must say, the bag I used for bananas did keep the bananas fresh.

Now, I need to do the math. Since I am often feeding just DH and myself these days, anything that extends the freshness of store-bought or garden produce is handy to have. For example, we would do not use a head of lettuce or a pack of blueberries as quickly as we did when we had teens in our home. I can buy one or two bananas, but it's hard to buy some types of produce in small quantities. Plus, the garden produces more than we can eat at one time.

On the other hand, these bags would be expensive to buy on a regular basis, even given that each one in a 20 count pack can be re used up to ten times a piece.

What do y'all think? Have you tried them? Do you think they work? Do you think they are a good bargain?

Of course, there are other ways of storing some types of produce in order to keep them fresh. Every year, I buy a bushel of Arkansas Black apples (yummy!) from a local orchard. One orchard owner advises placing several apples in a large size zip lock bag and add just a teaspoon or less of water. If you make sure that you re-seal the bag tightly every time you remove an apple, the apples will stay fresh and crisp for nearly a year.

Enjoy!
Elizabeth