I've been picking up the rigid foodsaver containers at garage
sales when they're 50-cents or less.
I'm starting to wonder if that was a mistake.

Plastic bags:
When you put food in a plastic bag and suck out the air,
it's not about the vacuum at all. The vacuum merely facilitates
making the plastic contact the food tightly all around.
The fact that there was a vacuum is mostly irrelevant.
You don't get freezer burn because there's nowhere for
the water to go if it sublimates.

Rigid containers:
My handheld foodsaver vacuum can reach 15" of vacuum. It sucks out
about half the air.
So the food is sitting loose in the rigid container with
half the air still in there.
Yes, half is better than all, but does it really make any
practical difference for typical food storage?

It can't be anywhere near as effective as making the plastic
contact the food on all surfaces thus excluding almost all the
air and preventing sublimation.

I have a decent vacuum pump and did the thought experiment of
using that to suck out virtually all the air.
But that merely forces the water to vaporize into the open space.
And if you keep sucking out the water, you end up with
total freezer burn. So, no amount of vacuum is very useful in
a rigid container????

So my conclusion is that the rigid vacuum containers are hype and of
no practical value for increasing food storage self life.

Counter argument anybody?


I also have the quick marinator, but have never used it.
The instructions are less than useful, make no claims
and tell you nothing more than to suck out the air.
The picture on the box shows lots of tall food in a very thin
puddle of marinade. How can this do anything????

If!!! you cover the food completely with marinade.
And IF!!! the vacuum causes air bubbles as the air leaves
the food.
And IF!!! you release the vacuum to let the food suck in
the marinade to replace the air that was sucked out.
You MIGHT!!! get some benefit from the marinade penetrating
the pores of the food.

I don't see any of this happening.
More hype and placebo effect? Must taste good, cause I
used a hundred bucks worth of FoodSaver stuff to prepare it.