Common Sense Evaluation

L.V. Anderson claims she holds the secret to using the storage bags to their maximum potential and hails her trick a ‘game changer’.

Maybe I’m just picky, but I’d be pretty disgusted if someone used their mouth to seal my food.

Enjoy!

No matter what you call them — plastic baggies, sandwich bags, Ziplocs (the widely accepted brand-name moniker, à la Kleenex) — everyone’s fought with a zip-top storage bag as you’ve desperately tried to squeeze the air out of it.

So when we spotted this simple trick to getting a plastic bag as close to vacuum-sealed as humanly possible (read: sans extra kitchen gadget), we were intrigued. Slate‘s L.V. Anderson demonstrates a trick she learned from her mom — instead of trying to squeeze out excess air with your hands, leave a small opening in the middle of the seal and then suck the extra air out with your mouth. It’s definitely one of those “mom knows best” tricks that you probably can’t believe you haven’t been doing this whole time.

Sharon Franke, director of the Kitchen Appliances Lab (which often tests food storage products and techniques) in the Good Housekeeping Institute agrees that this is a handy trick to know as you pack lunch. She’s also heard that sometimes people place a straw into the bag’s opening to suck the air out — that way, your mouth doesn’t actually have to touch the plastic. “But regardless of what you do, you don’t create a tight vacuum,” she says. “Some air will always get back in before you seal up the bag.”

Still, for everyday food storage needs, “close” sounds like good enough for us mere humans.

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