Store Food in Transparent Containers
I love my vintage oven baked thermoplastic dishes. They look great on the table, in the fridge, and in photographs, but there is one small problem with them: I rarely eat the leftovers contained in the multi-colored, stackable glass rectangles.
The reason for this is actually pretty obvious. To quote culinary genius Dave Arnold (who appeared on our podcast late last year ): “You can’t see it. If you do not see it, then it does not exist, and if it does not exist, do not eat. ” People eat with their eyes first, and your eyes are more likely to gravitate towards things that look like food in your refrigerator rather than opaque shapes. This is why storing leftover food in clear packaging – like glass bowls with plastic lids, glass jars, and Arnold’s ever-healthy soup container – is the best strategy if you really want to eat the food you are storing. Vision-obscuring storage systems are essentially a death sentence (for that last piece of chicken). “If you wrap it in aluminum foil, throw it away,” explains Arnold, “as soon as it’s wrapped in aluminum foil, and it’s kind of stuffed into your refrigerator, and you put something else on it, it disappears.”