Zip-Lock food bags

[fillindablank]

I am not necessarily saying that Zip-Lock food bag product claims are false but the bag itself is a total scam for food and most other purposes where you would use it once and throw it away. They are hard to seal unless they have that handlething like a real zipper, they are more expensive than alternatives and have to use heavy plastic to make the zip work. On numerous occasions I have put them in the fridge only to find out later it wasn't actually sealed.

The thing that makes them a scam is that there are other food bags on the market that are easier and quicker to use, are cheaper and use less than half the plastic for the same size bag. The food bag I use is a red box with an alligator on it, I forget the name. It is just an open ended bag of thin plastic. I can close one of them and put it in the fridge in a couple seconds and I know it's sealed. You just squeeze the air out, hold the end and give it a spin, fold the neck under and put it in the fridge, perfectly sealed every time.

If you believe that global warming is real and we are ruining the environment with disposable plastic, you can help by not using zip-lock bags for food and you will save money too. Zip-lock bags are OK for re-usable uses but for food I never use them, they are a scam.

[Moonbear]

There's a difference between being a scam, which is a product that doesn't work as claimed, and just being a more expensive brand name version. Personally, I have never had the difficulties you describe of not being able to seal a ziploc bag, and they certainly are going to be a better seal than something that is just tucked under and still left open. Yes, there are other cheaper brands. Ziploc is the original brand, and there are many others that are less expensive now. So, mostly, yes, you pay for the brand name if you choose that brand. None of that makes it a scam. It does what it says it does, which is to hold the food you put in it with a tight seal.

[fillindablank]

There's a difference between being a scam, which is a product that doesn't work as claimed, and just being a more expensive brand name version. Personally, I have never had the difficulties you describe of not being able to seal a ziploc bag, and they certainly are going to be a better seal than something that is just tucked under and still left open. Yes, there are other cheaper brands. Ziploc is the original brand, and there are many others that are less expensive now. So, mostly, yes, you pay for the brand name if you choose that brand. None of that makes it a scam. It does what it says it does, which is to hold the food you put in it with a tight seal.

Notice I didn't put a little trademark logo after the term zip-lock. My comment is in reference to every variation and maker of these things INCLUDING the original.

1) They claim they are easy to use and they aren't, some brands are hard to get to close even when new. If you have never had a problem sealing one then you are about the only one, even the brand name ones are hard to seal every time. So that is a claim that doesn't hold up.

2) If you put it away and it isn't sealed, IT ISN"T SEALED. Another claim that doesn't hold up.

3) If you are conned by advertising into buying something that doesn't work as good as something that is cheaper and more environmentally friendly, that's a scam in my opinion.

4) If you use the method for the open top bags I use, IT SEALS PERFECTLY EVERY TIME (unlike zip-locks). It is exactly the same as using one of the twist ties that come with them except that the weight of the bag contents keeps the twisted top sealed instead of the twist tie and you don't have to fumble with the twist ties.

Conclusion: zip-lock food bags are for the uninformed and the uninformable.

[negitron]

I've never really had trouble sealing them, either. I guess manual dexterity isn't for everyone.

[Kronos5253]

I am not necessarily saying that Zip-Lock food bag product claims are false but the bag itself is a total scam for food and most other purposes where you would use it once and throw it away. They are hard to seal unless they have that handlething like a real zipper, they are more expensive than alternatives and have to use heavy plastic to make the zip work. On numerous occasions I have put them in the fridge only to find out later it wasn't actually sealed.

The thing that makes them a scam is that there are other food bags on the market that are easier and quicker to use, are cheaper and use less than half the plastic for the same size bag. The food bag I use is a red box with an alligator on it, I forget the name. It is just an open ended bag of thin plastic. I can close one of them and put it in the fridge in a couple seconds and I know it's sealed. You just squeeze the air out, hold the end and give it a spin, fold the neck under and put it in the fridge, perfectly sealed every time.

If you believe that global warming is real and we are ruining the environment with disposable plastic, you can help by not using zip-lock bags for food and you will save money too. Zip-lock bags are OK for re-usable uses but for food I never use them, they are a scam.

That's why they make the zip-lock part 2 different colors. When it's sealed it makes a different color. I've never had any problem with sealing them.

Also, global warming is real, and unfortunatly there's nothing we can do to stop it. All these green efforts that everyone speaks of just slow down the inevitable. Global warming is going to happen no matter what we do, and I heard somewhere (don't remember where, and haven't looked for a link yet) that we're past a point of no return for helping it in any case. So any amount of efforts we make are too little too late. These efforts should have taken place many many years ago, not now, and even so we may still have had global warming in the scale that we do today because it's a natural process.

That's like trying to keep the poles from shifting every few million years.

[Integral]

Notice I didn't put a little trademark logo after the term zip-lock. My comment is in reference to every variation and maker of these things INCLUDING the original.

1) They claim they are easy to use and they aren't, some brands are hard to get to close even when new. If you have never had a problem sealing one then you are about the only one, even the brand name ones are hard to seal every time. So that is a claim that doesn't hold up.

2) If you put it away and it isn't sealed, IT ISN"T SEALED. Another claim that doesn't hold up.

3) If you are conned by advertising into buying something that doesn't work as good as something that is cheaper and more environmentally friendly, that's a scam in my opinion.

4) If you use the method for the open top bags I use, IT SEALS PERFECTLY EVERY TIME (unlike zip-locks). It is exactly the same as using one of the twist ties that come with them except that the weight of the bag contents keeps the twisted top sealed instead of the twist tie and you don't have to fumble with the twist ties.

Conclusion: zip-lock food bags are for the uninformed and the uninformable.

My recomentation to you is that you should not buy zip lock bags. Leave them for us that can figure out how to use them.

[turbo-1]

Zip-lock bags can be very handy and my wife and I use them sparingly. We far prefer to use reusable containers (Tupperware, Rubbermaid, and clones) though. When my wife buys scallops and other stuff from a deli, they often come in "disposable" plastic tubs that can be washed and re-used. We use those to send care packages of prepared food to my 83-year-old father. He doesn't like to trash stuff either, so he washes them when he is done with them and every few weeks, he drops off a bag of the "disposable" tubs.

Do you ever eat yogurt? If so, don't get the tubs with the peel-off foil lids. Get the tubs with tight-fitting plastic lids so you can seal small portions in them. They are handy for a single person or someone who takes a lunch to work. You can fill a yogurt tub with home-made spaghetti sauce, dump it onto some macaroni noodles that you boiled the previous night and packed in another container, "nuke" it and you're eating a better lunch than any of your co-workers who bought "Healthy Choice" etc.

Finally, when the "disposable" tubs eventually develop a crack, rinse them out and toss them in your plastic recycling bin. Zip-locks aren't a scam - it's just that outside of their strengths (like maybe packing trail-mix around) there are lots of much cheaper alternatives that can be reused over and over with less impact on the environment and on our waste-stream.

[Moonbear]

I've never really had trouble sealing them, either. I guess manual dexterity isn't for everyone.

Indeed, one person's lack of manual dexterity is not a product flaw.

I also don't understand how a Ziploc bag is less environmentally friendly than an open top plastic bag sold with twist ties. Nobody was claiming they were environmentally friendly anyway, so I also don't understand how that fits into this rant about the bags somehow being a scam.

Try filling one of those open-top baggies with pureed pumpkin before putting it in the freezer and you'll see they are nowhere near sealed.

[berkeman]

Yes, there are other cheaper brands. Ziploc is the original brand, and there are many others that are less expensive now. So, mostly, yes, you pay for the brand name if you choose that brand.

I did have one bad experience with a Supermarket's store brand ziploc-style bags, though. I bought a box of something like 100 to use for ice bags at a triathlon where I was volunteer BLS standby. Those dang things were nearly impossible to seal. Last time I buy the cheap store brand :grumpy: (Raley's supermarket store brand, in this case.)

[turbo-1]

My sister-in-law cooks for a deli at a local market, and since she (like my wife and their other siblings) takes turn looking after their elderly mother, she often takes over ready-made meals that she has made. The deli uses black polypropylene (I think!) dishes with clear domed lids, so we've gotten a lot of those, used. When we make up a brined pork roast with gravy and mashed potato, my wife and I make up numerous meals using those "disposable" containers and freeze them. My father's freezer and my wife's mother's freezer are stocked with nice home-made meals that can be attractively presented on a china plate, and microwaved for a quick easy and healthy meal. My wife and I don't like microwaving anything in plastic, so we have a routine for these: Thaw under refrigeration, transfer to glazed porcelain or earthenware or equivalent, microwave and serve. This takes a lot of the heat-stress away from the "microwaveable" containers so they last a long time. Wash, rinse, and repeat. OK, we don't use Prell. ;-)

[Ivan Seeking]

The great ziploc-bag debate. :biggrin:

From the controls side of things, it is possible that fillindablank is a victim of product quality control issues. Products like this are often produced in several different places with systems of varying quality and age. I can imagine that he [she?] could have just been statistically disadvantaged [bad luck] and purchased products from one or a number of bad lots. It is also possible, using a completely random example, that 20% of the bags from a particular factory near fillindablank have three times the chance of a quality issue as compared to any other source in the country. If a factory has one problem machine out of five, things can go that way. The final step is the quality control management. One factory may simply allow sloppier tolerances than does another... or maybe the nightshift quality control manager sleeps on the job, :biggrin:

I was once in a Granny Goose potato chip factory that would scare the feathers off of a goose! Quality control variances can be quite dramatic.

[turbo-1]

We should consider Ivan's take. My brother is the foreman/head set-up guy in a small plastic extrusion plant that is thriving in this economy because of quality control and attention to detail. (BTW, did I mention that the plant is SMALL?) His boss is kinda off-the-wall but he takes on "impossible" jobs and he and his staff pull them off so they have back-logs of work when others are laying off and curtailing.

I remember when Zip-locks first came out that they featured a tactile "zip" sensation that didn't inspire confidence because they implied a discontinuity in the seal. Others came out with smoother seals that used color-combinations, etc. Still I don't like using plastic bags unless there is a compelling reason. They are impossible to properly clean and dry (to my standards, at least) and I'm not going to subject family and friends to health risks based on that.

[BigFairy]

I always fumble...i dont mean too, but i can just about say that when i try to zip it almost never 100% works.

[turbo-1]

Darn! I peeled and sliced bags of apples this morning filled a dozen Ziploc brand quart bags with them, so my wife can use them to make her morning fruit smoothies. Somehow I guess I just got lucky and they all sealed perfectly. I had a little extra sliced apple left over after the last bag, so I unzipped a few and put the extras in them. Not a big deal.

I still don't like using plastic bags, but we simply don't have enough spare plastic containers to freeze apples when they are coming into season.

Edited to remove reference to rude "liar" comment which was deleted by the time my post hit the thread. Seriously, if most people couldn't muster the coordination to use zip-lock type bags, SC Johnson and their competitors wouldn't be making fortunes off them.

[Ivan Seeking]

We have one member who claims to have had issues with this product. Let's all respect that and lose the personal insults.

[alxm]

I don't quite get why 'sealing' bags are needed? In the USA, Zip-lock and others totally dominate, but in a lot of other countries, it's almost unheard of. People make a knot. Done.

Global warming is real, but I don't consider plastic much of a priority. Burn the plastic, and you get up to 80% of the energy of the equivalent amount of oil. As long as oil (most oil, by far!) and coal is being burned without having first served as a useful product, it's silly to go after plastics.

Plastic litter OTOH is a real problem. People should be tidier.