Do Spaza Dish Covers Keep Food Fresh?

The question that I get most about our dish covers is, do they keep your food fresh like plastic?

As mother nature would have it, fresh is related to time. The theory that plastic can 'lock-in freshness' was discovered around an advertising agency's boardroom table and not in a science lab. 

Let's take a carrot for instance. The carrot is fresh when it is pulled from the earth. From that moment on, it becomes less fresh. 

A breathable cover, such as a Spaza Dish Cover is advantageous because it allows for evaporation and evaporation aids in cooling.

You may have a vague memory of this from a science test moons ago. The process of evaporation requires heat energy and the heat energy is lifted away by the molecules as they change from liquid to vapour resulting in the cooling of the surface. This is also how our bodies work to cool us down when we are hot.

Wrapping food in plastic will keep it moist and even add moisture due to condensation. The opposite of evaporation, condensation makes liquid droplets out of vapour- vapour from plastic in this case. Those droplets can carry toxins from the plastic to your food.

Imagine you have prepared a salad and the temperature of the fresh produce has risen to room temperature. If you seal your salad with plastic, you are locking in the room temperature. Once in the refrigerator, your salad sits and waits for the bowl it's in to get cold enough to start cooling down its leaves. In the meantime, the salad tries to cool itself down by sweating and the vapours turn to droplets.

A refrigerator is a very wet environment so your food won't dry out instantly. Depending on what it is, it may dry out after a few days, in which case it is not fresh anyway. We did a test with penne noodles and olive oil under a dish cover in the fridge. It was good for 3 days and after 6 days it was dried out but the dog loved it.

The efficient cooling of your food with a breathable dish cover and produce bought often and from as close to the source as possible should result in good quality, fresh-er food.