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Ok, I'll 'fess up: I am a sucker for some of those "made-for-tv" items. Not because I believe all the wild claims, but because I'm always on the lookout for stuff that can make my life easier. I now have a Magic Bullet, some Mighty Putty, and Hercules Hooks all gracing my home. Yes, I am indeed that bad. (One I'll never get is the Ped Egg, though. Those things freak me out. I can't imagine someone taking a cheese grater to their feet. Aggh!)

And now, we can add Debbie Meyers Green Bags to the list. Reading online reviews of them give wildly mixed results: some people rave emphatically, others rant just as passionately. So I thought I'd do some strawberry experiments with them and share my results with you.

What they don't tell you in the commercials: these things are sensitive as heck to moisture. I learned pretty early on that drying the inside of the bags helps a lot, so I took to putting in folded up paper towels in the bags and replacing them to improve their performance.

For this experiment, I used two similarly-sized strawberries that appeared to be a comparable state of ripeness for each condition:

• Control, storing the strawberries in a ziplock baggie
• Greenbag only, keeping these in in just the bag
• Greenbag with Paper Towel, which I replaced each time I took a picture (i.e. every couple of days)

Day 1 - Greenbag Strawberry Experiment

Here's heading into day one, the day after I purchased these strawberries from my local market.  I selected my subjects and placed them in their groups. Looking pretty similar at this point. They were all kept in the same area of my fridge to keep the environment as consistent as possible. (I did not wash any beforehand to minimize the moisture issue.)

 Day 2 - Moisture Begins its Work

You can see the moisture building up in both the baggie and the "naked" green bag already. Since I was photographing them, I replaced the paper towel for the paper-toweled subject.

 Day 5 - Noticeably Different

By day 5, the ziplock strawberries are not faring very well. Made a mental note while taking this pic, next one I'm not going to remove it from the bag. Yuck.

The Greenbag-only strawberries are keeping up fairly well with their paper-toweled brethren, but are starting to ripen just a bit faster, as you can sort of see from the strawberry on the far right from the naked green bag. It was starting to become soft. Again, I replaced the paper towel in the paper-toweled subject.

Day 7 - Clear Differences at the End

By the time we got this far, you can tell some significant differences in the groups. I did NOT remove the strawberry mush from the control baggie in the name of science photography.

The Greenbag-only berries, while not edible at this point, did fare better than the ziplock baggie.
(Pictured on a paper towel here for photographing, but not stored with one).

And finally the Paper-Towel Bagged Berries looked better overall. One of the two actually appears edible after a week. 

 Since I'd heard reviewers complain about the taste, I figured I'd "bite the berry" on this one and try the remaining strawberry. So I washed it off and took a bite.

Bleh! It was almost devoid of strawberry flavor, and tasted plastically and kinda icky. Not something I'd want to whip up into a fabulous, low-carb strawberry treat for sure!

Conclusions

I've used these bags with several foods, and found the Greenbags do seem to extend the life of fresh fruits and vegetables, to a point. It's certainly nothing as amazing as purported on the commercials, and the longer you wait to eat the food, the more likely you'll note a loss of flavor resulting.

For bags of salad, I do pop the opened bag in a Greenbag and it seems to buy me a few more days before it gets too far gone to enjoy. I understand salad bags come with a coating to help preserve them already, and I hope the Greenbag adds to this overall effect. But don't expect miracles from these puppies.

If you use them, I'd suggest not washing your food until you're ready to prepare it as opposed to when you get it, and keep a folded paper towel in the bag, changing it out every couple-three days, depending on how much moisture is accumulating in the bag.

:star: :star: I give them two stars. They help a little, but are not the single-handed savior of your food budget as billed. You may be able to extend the life of some of your perishables by a few days without ill effect. When the ones I've purchased are gone, I won't be replacing them unless I find an especially good price.