Whether its fruits and vegetables that never make it from the farm to your dinner table or food that goes unused at local restaurants or someone's lunch that was forgotten about in an employee lunch room, much of our food ends up in a landfill.
"About 40 percent of the food in the U.S. never gets eaten, winds up being about $165 billion worth of food," said Dana Gunders from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
This little product known as Freshy promises to reduce that waste.
"What it does is reduces oxidation in food, retains moisture and also reduces the growth of bacteria," said Carlos Fuentes, the president of Freshy, LLC.
And that means if Freshy does its job, it should extend the life of food in your refrigerator. To put it to the test, we solicited the help of Dana Gunders, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
We purchased lettuce, broccoli, steaks and apples and put half in a refrigerator with Freshy and the rest in a refrigerator without. We also bought two refrigerator thermometers to make sure both were at the same temperature.
"The magic temperature you want to go for is 40 degrees. Anything above 40 is really going to make your food go bad more quickly," said Gunders.
We left the food in the refrigerator and then we checked back in five days later. This broccoli in the refrigerator without the Freshy didn't do so well.
"We have our broccoli. It's pretty limp," said Gunders.
Now let us compare that with the head of broccoli with the Freshy.
"It's a significant difference I would say," said Gunders.
But Gunders stresses the limp dry broccoli is still edible and could be made crisp again by soaking in a bowl of ice water. We didn't find too much difference in the lettuce. Freshy suspects the lettuce did not come from the same lot. The apples in both refrigerators also fared about the same after being cut in half three days into our test. Freshy said we should have cut the apples from the beginning.
"So definitely if you try that again, you will see a marked difference once you cut the apple," said Carlos Fuentes.
The meat with the Freshy is less brown that the meat with -- a sign that the meat aged faster without the Freshy.
"Whatever magic liquid is in that Freshy, may have made some difference on the meat products," said Gunders.
Freshy is supposed to last a year. So is it worth the $20 investment?
"I think I would say why not. I think it does help these products," said Gunders.
Yet, she says her endorsement is less than enthusiastic because of lack of information about how the Freshy works.
"It's an electrical optical frequency that comes out of our product and that frequency acts on water," said Fuentes.
Fuentes compares it to a heat lamp at a buffet and he says the results speak for themselves.
"To me I'm always a little weary about buying things because I don't know what's in them," said Gunders.
If you're interested, Freshy is available on Amazon and at Freshyworks.com. It will soon be sold in retail stores for $20.
