If you've ever opened your fridge to the smells and sights of spoiling food you've probably felt the disappointment of having to throw out groceries you spent your hard-earned money on. But there are steps you can take to make sure it doesn't go to waste.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Welcome back everyone. If you've ever opened up your fridge to the smells and
00:04 sights of spoiling food, you've probably felt the disappointment of having to
00:08 throw out groceries you spent your hard-earned money on. But as ABC's Rena
00:13 Roy tells us, there are steps you can take to make sure it doesn't go to waste.
00:17 When getting home from the supermarket, it's tempting to quickly put away your
00:22 groceries. But according to Daniel Broklowski of Consumer Reports, how you
00:27 organize your refrigerator matters. It's absolutely worth just spending a few
00:31 more minutes putting things in the right places to really maximize the life of
00:37 your food and really save you money. Broklowski says each section of your
00:42 fridge has varying climate conditions. For example, in temperature performance
00:46 tests, they notice the door usually gets a few degrees warmer than other areas. He
00:51 advises storing things like butter, condiments, juice, soda, water and even
00:56 cooking oils there. We really advise people to not use it to store things
01:02 like milk and eggs even though it's really tempting because they have
01:05 dedicated compartments for those items in the door. But don't put your milk and
01:10 eggs there. Then there are the crisper drawers. Many crisper drawers have
01:15 humidity controls that you can either switch them to high humidity or low
01:19 humidity. But even if your refrigerator doesn't have those adjustments, you still
01:24 want to think about separating your high humidity items and your low humidity
01:29 items. Low humidity items include apples, avocados, grapes, mushrooms and
01:33 peppers. Keep those separate from high humidity items like broccoli, carrots,
01:38 green onions and leafy greens. The lower shelf, usually located in the middle of
01:42 the refrigerator, tends to be much cooler. Broklowski recommends storing
01:46 more temperature sensitive items there like milk, eggs, raw meat and fish. And
01:51 since the upper shelves are a bit warmer, they're best for jelly, peanut
01:55 butter, yogurt and leftovers. The upper shelf is good for leftovers because
01:59 they're already cooked. Um and so you don't have to worry as much about them,
02:05 you know, spoiling as if they were a raw item. Rena Roy, abc News New York.