Vacuvita: A Vacuum Seal for Food Freshness

Food saver

Last month we introduced you to the Vacuvita vacuum seal system.  It’s new on the market and a great way to preserve your food for a longer period of time.  

Why is a vacuum sealer important?  A sealer keeps your food fresher by taking oxygen out of food.  Food spoilage is caused by microorganisms living in food, but without air, their growth slows, thus food lasts longer.

Think of the Vacuvita Home Base as the modern bread box.  It’s big enough to store your bread, a dozen bagels, and much more.  It’s self-contained in that by pressing a button, the Vacuvita Home Base can suction out any extra air within one minute, greatly minimizing the speed at which food can spoil.

Vacuvita expanded its line with Food Storage Containers and Bags.  By connecting the hose from the Home Base to the Food Storage Containers or Bags, you can suck out any air and vacuum pack your food in both the containers and zipped-for-freshness bags.

We have been using the Vacuvita vacuum sealer and accessories for the past month and we are excited to tell you more about it.

What Vacuvita Vaccum Seal Can Do

From our previous article on Vacuvita, we mentioned that the average family wastes 1300 pounds of food a year!  Hard to believe, isn’t?  But when I think of the past 3 times I bought strawberries, I ended up throwing most of them out.  I just didn’t eat them soon enough.

Could I have used Vacuvita?  Definitely.  And next time I will!

Food Containers & Bags

In addition to the Vacuvita Home Base, you can buy Vacuvita Food Storage Containers and Bags.  You can buy the Food Storage Containers as a set with the Home Base, as a Complete Container Package without the Home Base, or the containers individually.  

There are three sizes:

1.  Large – 1 gallon (4 liters) – ideal for bulky fruits and vegetables, baked goods, or storing uncooked rice and pasta
2.  Medium – 2 quarts (2 liters) – great for bagels, marinating your meats, holding meats you plan to cook later in the week, or for keeping ground coffee fresh
3.  Small – 1 quart (1 liter) – perfect for leftovers, chopped fruits, fresh herbs, single meals, leftover cookies

Ideas for Vacuum Sealing in Food Containers and/or Bags

Refrigerator

• lunch meats
• pizza toppings
• lettuce
• tomatoes
• celery
• cucumbers
• spinach
• grapes
• strawberries
• melons
• leftovers
• restaurant takeout dinners
• open soups
• fresh pasta
• marinated meats
• and so much more
• spices
• coffee

Freezer

• avocados (peeled and pitted)
• leftovers
• vegetables
• fruits
• baked goods
• cakes
• breads
• rice
• meats
• homemade ice cream
• spices
• coffee

Room Temperature

Home Base + Food Storage Containers + Bags

• nuts
• chips
• crackers
• most breads
• baked goods
• coffee
• teas
• flour
• sugar
• uncooked pasta
• dry mixes
• packaged cookies

This chart shows you all sorts of ideas of how you can store vacuum sealed containers and bags on the shelf, refrigerator, and freezer.

I have tons of gluten-free products that take me a long time to eat.  With Vacuvita vacuum sealing, I keep my cookies in their original package and seal the bag.  Now my cookies will be fresh when I’m ready to eat them.

Here are my gluten-free cookies in a Vacuvita Food Storage bag before I vacuum sealed them.

After vacuum sealing.  As you can see, the bag scrunched up quite a bit.  I was concerned my delicate cookies were squished!

…but as you can see, the cookies are unharmed.

If you’ve never tried Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Pumpkin Pancake Mix, you’re in for a treat!  The problem is that I am the only one in my household who uses it.  So I only use about a fourth of the box at a time.  Vacuum sealing the box will allow me to enjoy the mix longer.

It’s harder to tell from this picture, but this is how the box looks after vacuum sealing.  To open, I simply unseal the bag.  After I’m done taking out some mix, I will vacuum seal it again.

What Vacuvita is Not

Before I start with how you can use Vacuvita, I want to start with what it’s not.  It’s not a miracle worker.  That is, if you put…

• nearly moldy strawberries in Vacuvita, you can’t bring them back to life
• fresh homemade breads and baked goods (without preservatives) won’t last weeks
• storing store bought bread in the Home Base and opening it every day to take out a piece of bread, won’t last as long due to air getting to it on a daily basis
• something that needs to be refrigerated in the container but you don’t refrigerate it, it will spoil

As someone who has Celiac, an autoimmune disease that attacks your body when you consume wheat, barley, rye, or malt, I thought Vacuvita would give me freedom from needing to freeze my bread and baked goods.

One of the first items I tried in Vacuvita was my gluten-free bread.  I was so excited by the thought of getting a fresh piece of bread from Vacuvita when I wanted, rather than needing to defrost it first from the freezer.  Almost all of gluten-free bread is stored and bought from a freezer at the store.  It just doesn’t have the long-lasting preservatives of its gluten bread counterparts.

The problem is, I don’t eat gluten-free bread that much.  By the time I decided I wanted a piece (about 9 days later), when I opened up the Vacuvita Home Base, I saw that one of the slices had spots of mold growing.

As an experiment, I kept the bread there and opened it again a couple of days later.  More spots had grown on the one piece of bread. 

I remembered reading in the Vacuvita instructions that not all bread will last long in the Vacuvita vacuum seal process.  Had I packed the bread in a Vacuvita container or bag and then froze it, it would have stayed fresher tasting for longer, as opposed to keeping it in its original bag in the freezer.

I also found out the shelf life would have been longer had I left my bread in its bag before putting it into Vacuvita, it would have lasted longer.

Vacuvita Home Base + Storage

Features:

• Keeps food safe from oxygen, moisture and other things that cause food to break down faster
• All containers and bags are BPA and BPS-free
• The Home Base lid opens with a touch of the button and automatically vacuum seals your food for you
• The Home Base provides vacuum sealing to Vacuvita containers and storage bags
• Vacuvita Storage Containers and Bags can be used in the fridge or freezer
• The Storage Containers come 5 colors and in 3 sizes: in 1 quart, 2 quart, and 1 gallon
• The Vacuvita app helps you keep track of what you’re storing in each container and bag as well as when you stored it
• Containers utilize a small see-through window so you can see what’s in it without a lot of light coming into depreciate the quality of the food
• Uses low voltage and little energy when creating vacuum pressure

Pros:

• A great way to make your fruits, bread, and homemade goodies last longer
• Moist cakes, cookies, and brownies stay moist
• Vacuum sealing couldn’t be any easier with just a touch on the Home Base
• Crackers and chips stay fresh and crunchy for weeks later with the Home Base
• Containers are dishwasher safe and BPA and BPS free
• You can prepare a fresh salad and keep it fresh in the refrigerator for days…even the avocado will look good!
• Due to vacuum sealing, you can marinate meats in 30 minutes since the pores of the meat open up, as opposed to 4 hours or more
• The resealable Storage Bags are amazing – taking the air out of them is as simple as placing the adapter hose from Home Base on top of the bag
• Use the Storage Bags for Sous-vide cooking, they work great
• You can keep food items – like chips, cookies, crackers, etc. in their original packaging before you vacuum pack
• The Vacuvita apps helps you keep track of what items are in which containers and how long they’ll last

Cons:

• The containers are not transparent, except for a small window, labeling is the best way to identify food
• It doesn’t extend the shelf-life of gluten-free bread of fresh gluten-free baked good for much longer
• Is a bit pricey

 The Vacuvita Home Base is available through their website for $299.  A set of Food Storage Containers costs $49.  The Food Storage Bags come in medium and large and sell for $12.95 and $14.95 respectively.

A Mom’s Perspective