Extend Freshness with DEBBIE MEYER™ Green Bags®

[Ivan Seeking]

How DEBBIE MEYER™ Green Bags® Work
Fruits, vegetables and flowers release ethylene gas while ripening after harvesting or picking. Ethylene gas accelerates ripening, aging and rotting. DEBBIE MEYER™ Green Bags® absorb and remove this damaging gas, dramatically extending the life of fruits, vegetables and flowers.

https://www.greenbags.com/?cid=402572

On face of things this claim sounds reasonable to me, but really I have no idea.

They claim to be good for ten uses.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

oh yes my mom uses these! She claims they work, but I don't know. The product claims it works by absorbing gases emitted by the fruit. So how would that help bananas that get left out in the open?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

According to this:

...Be careful what fruits and vegetables you store together. Some produce releases ethylene gas. This gas speeds up the decay process of ethylene sensitive vegetables and fruit. Gas releasers that should be refrigerated separately include apples, apricots, cantaloupe, figs, and honeydew. Gas releasers that should not be refrigerated but should be stored separately include avocados, unripe bananas, nectarines, peaches, pears, plums and tomatoes...

http://www.ehow.com/how_2196971_slow-rotting-fruits-vegetables.html

and according to the Green Bag site

THE STORY BEHIND THE BAGS
Scientists involved in Antarctic exploration were searching for ways to prolong the freshness of produce. During their research, they found a region in Japan where for thousands of years farmers have been storing produce in mountain caves with amazing results.

The caves were dark, consistently cool, and dry. But it was discovered that the key to the remarkable preserving properties of the caves was a clay called "oya," and the cave mountain was made of it. The oya absorbed the ethylene gas that produce gives off as it matures. Green Bags combine ancient knowledge thousands of years old with space age technology for preserving produce.

...What is the natural mineral that makes DEBBIE MEYER™ Green Bags® work?
Oya™ mineral form of Zeolite. This mineral is all natural and 100% non toxic...

A Google for Zeolite immediately pops up with this

...Liquid Cellular Zeolite is a breakthrough product that works at the cellular level by trapping heavy metals and toxins and safely removes them from the body.

The actual Zeolite molecule looks like a honey-comb and since the ions are negatively charged by nature, when Zeolite is ingested into the body it acts like a cage attracting all positively charged heavy metals, toxins and allergens into the cage like a magnet. After these positively charged elements bond with Zeolite they are removed with no harmful side effects. This process is called oral chelation.

Detoxifying your body by chelation with liquid cellular zeolite is very safe and can quickly improve your body’s immune system health. Liquid Zeolite is the leading oral chelation therapy worldwide and the number one selling product to detoxify your body...

http://www.zeolite.com/

which I thought was interesting.

Under Zeolites we get this from wiki

...Zeolites (Greek, zein, "to boil"; lithos, "a stone") are hydrated aluminosilicate minerals and have a micro-porous structure.

The term was originally coined in the 18th century by a Swedish mineralogist named Axel Fredrik Cronstedt who observed, upon rapidly heating a natural mineral, that the stones began to dance about as the water evaporated. Using the Greek words which mean "stone that boils," he called this material zeolite.

More than 150 zeolite types have been synthesized and 48 naturally occurring zeolites are known. Zeolites have an "open" structure that can accommodate a wide variety of cations, such as Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+ and others. These positive ions are rather loosely held and can readily be exchanged for others in a contact solution. Some of the more common mineral zeolites are: analcime, chabazite, heulandite, natrolite, phillipsite, and stilbite. An example mineral formula is: Na2Al2Si3O10-2H2O, the formula for natrolite.

Natural zeolites form where volcanic rocks and ash layers react with alkaline groundwater. Zeolites also crystallized in post-depositional environments over periods ranging from thousands to millions of years in shallow marine basins. Naturally occurring zeolites are rarely pure and are contaminated to varying degrees by other minerals, metals, quartz or other zeolites. For this reason, naturally occurring zeolites are excluded from many important commercial applications where uniformity and purity are essential...

[and in particular] Zeolites have the potential of providing precise and specific separation of gases including the removal of H2O, CO2 and SO2 from low-grade natural gas streams. Other separations include: noble gases, N2, O2, freon and formaldehyde. However at present, the true potential to improve the handling of such gases in this manner remains unknown...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite

So at this point the original claim sounds plausible, but we need some better sources and more specifics.

 

[Moonbear]

I don't know about you guys, but when a woman gets flowers, she doesn't exactly want to stuff them into a bag to keep them fresh.

Watching the ad, what do they consider "traditional" storage? She's showing a rather rotten looking head of iceberg lettuce, claiming it was just 8 days of storage. I've NEVER seen iceberg lettuce turn that nasty in such short time. Same for carrots...I'd have to leave them sitting on the counter at room temperature to get that nasty that fast. They look like they've been dehydrated. The carrots didn't have lots of fuzzy root hairs growing out of them, which is the effect of ethylene on roots (roots don't ripen, fruits do), so ethylene isn't the culprit there. And I don't know of any effect of ethylene on lettuce LEAVES. Again, lettuce doesn't have a ripening process.

She claims the strawberries were PURCHASED the same date, but doesn't say how long after the purchase she's comparing them, or their condition at the time of purchase. If I buy one box of fairly green strawberries and one of overly ripe ones with a moldy one already in the bottom of it (yes, if you don't look carefully, you will get moldy strawberries straight from the store), the overripe ones will look like that in a couple days while the green ones will just be ripening up nicely for eating.

Here's a nice article on ethylene, including a historical account of how it was originally identified as a ripening agent.
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1415-47572006000300020&script=sci_arttext

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

good points MB, sales tactics are tricky!

 

[hypatia]

Green bags

I saw this on TV a few nights ago, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. Then came the thread in GD about wasting food. Has anyone tried these?

https://www.greenbags.com/?page=index

Edit by Ivan: Post merged with existing thread.

 

[LowlyPion]

What about the other color bags?

"What is the difference in the different color DEBBIE MEYER™ Green Bags®?
The different colors have a different effect on different foods. The colors are as follows:

Green – Fruit/Vegetables
Yellow – Breads and grains
Red – meats
Blue – Cheese"

They have Zeolite bags for Meat?

No thanks. I'm thinking 10 times longer doesn't apply to meat that I would want to eat.

 

[cherubec]

I have ordered these bags and found they don't work as advertised. I was very disappointed in the product. I should have known that this just a way for someone to make money by fooling the public. I would not recommend anyone ordering these bags, they will be throwing their money away.

 

[wqerrk]

Zeolite impregnated plastic?! Somehow I am doubtful, very doubtful.

Bananas may emit some ethylene during ripening, but they are also purposely exposed to ethylene to ripen them. Once I bought unripe bananas from Stop&Shop that were extra green...a week later they were still green and downright hard - inedible. I was a bit perplexed. Next store visit, I asked the produce guy about it. He said they had gotten a batch that had missed the ethylene treatment. I was unaware of this, but apparently, bananas that are unexposed or improperly exposed to ethylene never ripen properly.

Putzing around on Google, I see several hits referring to ethylene as a "plant hormone"...errr, as a chemist, I've never heard of a low molecular weight gas being called a hormone but perhaps it's kosher in food producers' parlance.

In any case, marketing aside, I have zero Faith that "green bags" are worth even a nickel.

A beer a day keeps the doctor happy.

 

[Moonbear]

Putzing around on Google, I see several hits referring to ethylene as a "plant hormone"...errr, as a chemist, I've never heard of a low molecular weight gas being called a hormone but perhaps it's kosher in food producers' parlance.

Try picking up a biology textbook. It's perfectly correct to call ethylene a plant hormone.

 

[wqerrk]

Try picking up a biology textbook. It's perfectly correct to call ethylene a plant hormone.

Okay then - for a biologist I suppose! But as a chemist and in my mind's eye, "real" hormones are much more complex molecules with long, intricate syntheses, at least a ring and maybe a chiral carbon or two...ethylene?! pffft

Since the Green Bags® are for use with food and the FDA cannot give a GRAS approval to a product on testimonials alone, you would think there must have been a bevy of food safety tests that needed to be performed before any marketing. For one thing, zeolite ingestion could well be unhealthy. I would really like to know more about their manufacture and the some of the basic research that the product grew from, including safety checks. I'm looking.

 

[LowlyPion]

Since the Green Bags® are for use with food and the FDA cannot give a GRAS approval to a product on testimonials alone, you would think there must have been a bevy of food safety tests that needed to be performed before any marketing. For one thing, zeolite ingestion could well be unhealthy. I would really like to know more about their manufacture and the some of the basic research that the product grew from, including safety checks. I'm looking.

First I'd say that you have to first demonstrate that the zeolite - claimed to be impregnated in the plastic - is adhering to the food in any way for it to qualify in some way as an additive.

But that said, as to zeolite toxicology, I see numerous promo-sites touting liquid zeolite colloidal suspensions, suitable they claim, for chelating heavy metals and other toxins from the body. Now that I suppose is directly under the purview of the FDA and I'm not seeing any contraindications to its use.

 

[GCT]

https://www.greenbags.com/?cid=402572

On face of things this claim sounds reasonable to me, but really I have no idea.

They claim to be good for ten uses.

I just went to Walmart the produce section has green bags...wonder if it's the same thing.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I just went to Walmart the produce section has green bags...wonder if it's the same thing.

yeah I noticed Trader Joes produce is wrapped in colored bags now too.

 

[GCT]

By the way, the product is not too promising according to the following research

http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/datastorefiles/234-90.pdf

 

[Moonbear]

Okay then - for a biologist I suppose! But as a chemist and in my mind's eye, "real" hormones are much more complex molecules with long, intricate syntheses, at least a ring and maybe a chiral carbon or two...ethylene?! pffft

Size or complexity has nothing to do with something being a hormone. It has to do with how it signals a cell to have a function.

I just went to Walmart the produce section has green bags...wonder if it's the same thing.

A lot of grocery stores have green bags in their produce sections, and have for a while. Since it's mostly around the leafy green vegetables section, I suspect they are primarily meant to keep you from noticing how not-so-green the produce is before you get it home. You may or may not have noticed that the lighting is also slightly different around the produce cases...everything there looks just a bit greener than it does if you take it a bit out of the produce section to look at it (sometimes you just need to take a step back from the case when it's only illuminating the refrigeration cases). I don't know if they're really the same thing, or just tinted green by some other process.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Last night I noticed that my mother-in-law is using Green Bags. She tried a side-by-side test using lettuce, which the Green Bags passed with flying colors.

 

[baywax]

They have Zeolite bags for Meat?

No thanks. I'm thinking 10 times longer doesn't apply to meat that I would want to eat.

Then you haven't tried canned moose. That'll stay on the shelf for years and still provide the best meal you've ever had... if you eat moose. Yah yah... shades of Sarah Palin...

 

[madhatter106]

this is one of those things I don't understand. produce doesn't last in my house for more than a week, not because it spoils but because we consume it. we go to the local growers co-op to restock. it's cheap and fresh. I also live in the socal so it's not a farm community by any stretch.

As to keeping them, the herbs sit on the counter in lowballs with water and for the lettuce I'll bag it and fill the bag with CO2, where do I get the CO2? simple fill it like a balloon when you exhale. that keeps it longer than anything I found for free, since I consume veggies daily it gets re-filled daily.

I guess I don't get the point of wasting produce by buying more than you can consume before it spoils, it's not like it's not going to be at the store next week.