Vacuum sealing ensures freshness is retained, frozen foods keep longer

By Mariette Mifflin

If you want dried, refrigerated or frozen foods to retain their freshness and quality longer, it's crucial to remove air from the bag or storage container. A good vacuum seal will remove the air and better protect contents.

Once foods are exposed to air - even minimal amounts, they start to deteriorate. When it comes to frozen foods, freezer burn will seriously affect quality. You can reduce that risk with a good vacuum seal.

There are different ways you can remove air from food storage containers and bags. Some plastic storage containers have a built-in sealing mechanism so you can pump air out. Certain models claim to vacuum seal using this method. That can help for short term storage, but you cannot remove all or most of the air using this method, so benefits are limited. Proper vacuum sealing should remove all the air for best results.

The bottom line: Proper food processing and storage saves you money in the long run and helps to ensure foods you serve your family are safe to eat. I'm generally frugal-minded, but when it comes to handling and storing food, this is not the place to scrimp and try to save money. You will reap some savings by reducing waste. Food safety and retaining the best food quality possible, should be your strategy. Not convinced? Here are more reasons:

Why an Electric Vacuum Sealer is better:

Continuous sealing. A machine will work continuously to remove the air, whereas removing air by straw or manual pumping action, there's often some lag time which most often results in inefficient air removal. We might think we have sufficiently removed enough air, but efforts are not adequate for long term storage.

An electric food vacuum sealer is more efficient at air removal. A visual inspection of a bag of coffee beans or fish vacuum sealed with a food packaging system and one done manually would convince you that a machine does a much better job of removing air. That is very important for proper food storage. This is the best way to protect your frozen foods or dry goods.

Manually removing air will not give you vacuum sealed results. You might get a partial vacuum, but not enough to protect contents. The same type of comparison can be applied to home canning. If foods are not canned properly to form a complete vacuum seal, foods will immediately start to deteriorate and not be safe to eat.

http://housewares.about.com/od/foodstorageoptions/fl/5-Reasons-to-Use-an-Electric-Vacuum-Food-Sealer.htm