Protecting Your Precious Produce

It’s a common problem, the forgotten pint of berries. I’m ailed with it all too often, remembering my fruit in the fridge two days too late, long past the point where maceration can’t even save their sorry, shrunken selves. Now there’s a new product that may be able to help.

FreshPaper, created by Kavita Shukla and inspired by her grandmother’s mix of special herbs that helped her avoid childhood illness, looks unassumingly like square paper towels. But treated with botanicals and spices, such as fenugreek, these towels slow the growth of bacteria to help halt spoil and lengthen the life of your precious produce.

But do they work? Evidently, they do: “One sheet of maple-scented FreshPaper helped my basket of very ripe strawberries last more than a week in the fridge. A sheet tossed into a plastic bag with cilantro helped the herb last about 10 days.”

They’re environmentally friendly, too. Reuse them for up to three weeks, and when you’re done, they’re completely compostable. And at only 50 cents per sheet, they might be worth the investment. Especially with the bounty of summer produce headed our way.

Saving Food, One Sheet of Paper at a Time from The Washington Post