I just received a sample box of Hefty's Kitchen Bags with Unscented Odor Block Technology. I usually change my kitchen trash bags once or twice a week, so I haven't actually used the trash bags yet, but I am curious to see if the odor blocking technology truly works. Has anyone tried these bags out? If so, let us know and there could be a $10 Sur La Table Gift Card for you. There's also a $1.00 off coupon for these bags below if you want to try them out.
Kitchen trash can start smelling up the house pretty fast unless the trash bag is taken care of regularly. Unfortunately, it takes time to fill up my 13 gallon trash bags, and I don't like throwing out bags that aren't full (unless I just threw away some uncooked seafood like shrimp shells or fish guts). I try to control the odor through the use of a lidded trash can (and not cleaning out the fridge until I take out the bags), but sometimes opening the lid for a couple seconds is enough to flood the kitchen with an overwhelming smell.
I don't like scented bags because the chemical fragrances used are generally overpowering (if it wasn't overpowering, then they wouldn't be powerful enough to overcome the trash smell) which means they compete with food smells. Artificial potpourri fresh perfume mixed with hickory smoked barbecue ribs isn't my idea of a good combination. I don't know how Hefty's Odor Block Technology works (I wasn't able to find any technical information with a few quick searches on the internet), and I don't know IF it works. But if it does, that could be pretty cool.
If you want to try out the bags for yourself, Hefty has provided a $1-off coupon available by logging into Facebook and liking them at:
http://www.facebook.com/Hefty.TrashBags
The facebook link should be producing coupons (which I'm told are unique) for the next month or so. Once you try out the bags, let me know if they work/don't work or if you like/dislike them by posting a comment to this article. If you post as a registered Cooking For Engineers forum user with a valid email, then you'll have the chance to win a $10 Gift Card to Sur La Table. I'll contact the winner via email for their mailing address.
Written by Michael Chu
Published on October 27, 2010 at 10:07 AM
We use these for our daughters diapers. They don't do much good at stopping the smell open but they keep the diaper pail from getting as stinky as with other bags. That thing can get pretty ripe. Honestly there isn't a bag on the market that keeps things smelling completely fresh when we open the pail but with these at least the pail itself doesn't smell as badly when it's empty.
That's a great point. I've been using the bags for about a week now and haven't noticed a decrease in odor when I open the trash can. When I take the trash out tonight, I'll be sure to sniff the can.
Like the other commenter, we use these (or the Glad version) for diapers. I think they work very well. Compared to grocery bags, which is what we use as the temporary holding place, these really save the day. I can't think of anything that needs odor block more. As for the kitchen use, I don't notice a huge difference from regular bags.
If it's like "odor block" products that I have seen in the facilities industry, it actually prevents you from detecting the smell - i.e. it acts on your smell receptors. I think they can tailor these to specific odor molecules these days. The one I once trialed was effective for certain bathroom smells. We (who experimented with it) noticed that it did drastic things to how food tasted, particularly cheeses. After trying the product, we decided that we wanted to be able to detect bad smells if they happened (we wanted to not be ignorant of plumbing or ventilation issues) so we never adopted it. This was back in the 90's.
There's no "Scent" that is, purposefully applied perfume on these bags, but there definitely is a SMELL, of a chemical nature that comes off these bags after they've been in place for a little while and that I can detect and that makes my allergic wife positively ill so she can't be in the same room with one.
If, as a previous post suggests, this technology "works on your odor receptors' that means what really is, is a neurotoxin that knocks out an entire sensory modality. Smell may not seem an important sense and some people might even rather do without it, but that doesn't mean that it's safe or even reasonable to "block" the most primitive, sense and the one most fundamentally involved with the basic wiring of the brain.
It's comparable to ugly people wearing a perfume that strikes everyone around them blind, or a noisy industry chemically deafening people in its neighborhood. This is a real bad road to go down.
nice post..... :)
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