Disposable Plastic Sandwich Bag Alternatives that Actually Keep Food Fresh

I try to use reusable products over disposables as much as I can to reduce our household waste. I have a ton of workable replacements for plastic wrap but I cannot find a decent reusable snack bag.

The zippered and Velcro reusable snack bags just do not keep food fresh. Call me a snob but stale by lunchtime pretzels and sandwich bread are not something I’m into, especially when I’m in an area that everyone around me can order a fabulous meal and I’m stuck with the food allergy safe food I brought from home.

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I hadn’t considered trying a reusable silicone zipper food storage bag  until the folks from Linnai reached out to me and asked if I wanted to give them a whirl. (Spoiler alert: I like them so much that I have no problem recommending them to you and using my affiliate link to do it.) I can’t tell you how many times I wished I remembered to bring a food storage baggie with me when I’m traveling, and since I had a vacation planned why not them a try?

I tossed the set of four BPA free food grade reusable silicone bags in my suitcase when my husband and I recently vacationed in Las Vegas. No, I wasn’t planning on stealing food from a buffet (how tacky!) but it is a good thing I did. Look at the size of the portions we ordered the first breakfast after we arrived!

My husband's planet sized pancake

My husband and I could only finish about half of our breakfasts and weren’t hungry again until dinnertime. We were so full we ended up skipping lunch.

I swear that buttermilk biscuit next to my corned beef hash is as big as a baby's head.

I asked the waitress to box up our leftovers and transferred the rest of the pancake, corned beef hash mountain, and biscuit to the reusable silicone food bags and slid the plastic handle on the top of the bag to seal it completely. I flipped the bag upside down a few times and the bags didn’t leak. That was a good sign.

As a control, I kept my toast and the rest of the pancake in the original takeout containers. I put everything but the bread products in the mini fridge in our suite and skipped off with my husband to see the sites.

The next morning we checked the bread experiments. My toast was hard as a rock and so awful I spit it out into the trash. My husband’s biscuit was just as he put it in the silicone zipper snack bag. Moist and delicious. So far so good but how will the reusable silicone sandwich bags do after a couple of days in the fridge?

Surprisingly well! The food stored in the reusable silicone food storage bags was just as fresh as if I stored it in a reusable storage container at home. It was a lucky break because it meant we could eat a decent breakfast when all of the restaurants were closed before we met our Grand Canyon tour group at 5 am that morning.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the Linnai reusable silicone food storage bags. The plastic closure is a little difficult to remove but I suspect that is because it is new. It is becoming a little easier to apply and remove after using the bag a few times. The silicone bags kept everything fresh and from drying out unlike any reusable sandwich bag with Velcro or zippers I have and now use to corral crap in my purse that isn’t food (and for the first time ever, haven’t lost a tube of lip balm before I used it all up.)

Best of all the reusable silicone food storage bags are much easier to deal with when they are empty after use when I am on the go. They are now a permanent part of my low waste kitchen!


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