Review: Auto Vacuum Food Fresh storage device

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: kitchen appliances, food storage, health news

A new item has appeared in retail catalogs that promises to extend the life of your foods through vacuum technology. You place breads, fruits or other food items inside the container, close the lid, and a small pump works to remove the air from the chamber, thereby reducing the oxidation of the foods and extending their shelf life. This is how it's described, anyway. Real-world tests show the unit to be something very different (keep reading).

For this review, I purchased an "Auto Vacuum Food Fresh" machine and set it up on my kitchen counter. I placed some grapefruit inside the unit, plugged it into the wall and closed the lid to see what would happen. A small pump began operating, apparently removing air from inside the unit. After a minute or two, the pump stopped automatically and the lid was, indeed, somewhat sealed. To test the seal, I opened the lid and heard the sound of air rushing back into the container. This was an indication that some air had actually been removed by the pump.

The balloon test

To test the unit further, I partially inflated a small balloon then placed it inside the container with the grapefruit. Since the pressure of air inside the balloon is fixed at atmospheric pressure, once I closed the lid the balloon should have expanded as the air was removed from the chamber. In reality, I found that the size of the balloon hardly changed at all. This indicated that the air pressure inside the chamber was not much different from the air pressure outside the chamber. (My guess would be no more than a 10 - 15% drop in air pressure, but that's just a guess.)

Or, to put it another way, the chamber certainly was not a vacuum. A vacuum is, by definition, empty of everything (including air). But my simple balloon test revealed there was plenty of air inside the Auto Vacuum Food Fresh device. The pump, it seems, isn't very strong. Yes, it removes a little bit of air from inside, but nowhere near all of it. Certainly not enough to consider it a complete vacuum.

This made me wonder what the effect would be on storing foods. So I left the grapefruit inside the chamber and waited a few days.

You can read the rest of this review, complete with photographs showing the problems with the device, by visiting http://www.newstarget.com/PhotoTour_Food_Fre...

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