Does anyone have any experience using vacuum food processors? I am looking a the Food Saver brand, which is on sale at Fred Meyers for $79.99. They seem to offer a lot of potential advantages for packing food-space savings, less spoilage, to name two. One thing I wonder is whether the bags are odor proof. I'd greatly appreciate any advice.

Tom, I have'nt tested them with critter noses, but to mine they are odor proof! I would'nt trust that they are because food could get in the material this side of the seal, too small for you to notice but enough for a critter such as a mouse,etc to smell it.

I used to pack with someone who vscuum-packed a spare pair of socks and lightweight gloves.

Tom, I do have one. It works well for what it does, reliably producing a vacuum sealed package. They are not necessarily the lightest or most easily used package for my trail needs these days.

The Food Saver brand is much better quality (only a bit more expensive) than one I'd previously bought at Wal-Mart. My lovely bride gave me this one for Christmas.

I used sealed bags when I first started making my own dehydrated trail meals several years ago. Even then I would pour boiling water in the opened bag and simmer the meal there. That works OK but I found that quart zip top bags are easier to use.

As to the odor sealing, I wouldn't trust that a vacuum package would be enough to protect food from rodents or other critters. YMMV.

These days, I use the vacuum package to seal things for trail use that I want to be completely certain are dry, such as my emergency fire starting kit.

I know this is an old thread, but I'm new and been reading through the posts.

I have quite a bit of experience with cooking in vacuum packed bags. This is called Sous Vide cooking. It's sort of a high end foodie way of cooking foods to exact temps in a lab style water bath.

Regarding odor with vacuum bags. This is going to depend on the brand and type of bag. You can pretty much vacuum seal any plastic bag, but there are some that are going to be more of a smell barrier than others. The typical FoodSaver bag is classified as a Boil safe bag. It has a nylon outer layer to act as an oxygen barrier. This helps the begs in the freezer to prevent freezer burn. The side effect is that this nylon layer also creates a smell barrier. This is something that your typical zip lock freezer bags do not have even though that are freezer bags. You can go one step further with vacuum bags and actually purchase bags designed for foods that are smelly. When you have a commercial product it can't have a smell in the package. I simple example is Jerky packaging. If you look for High EVOH (Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol) zipper bags you can find new jerky style bags for vacuum sealing. These wont work well in a Food Saver with a vacuum (they don't have the waffle texture), but you can still seal them.

Now, do I know if the oxygen barrier on these bags is good enough to fool an animal? I don't, but its about as good as you can get. If you are really concerned you are going to want to seal your food and then clean the outside of the bag with some sort of cleaner to remove your smelly paw prints you applied while handling the bags and food.

I also have one but don't use it for backpacking. I repackage all but sealed foods that come in mylar bags into ziplocks. This gives me the ability to adjust proporitons, add seasonings, mix meals, etc. and reuse the zips for trash. We pack everything and the smallest zips are what we put TP in with all going into a 1 gallon zip. After an 8 day stint in the Grand Canyon we (wife and myself) brought our trash home and weighed it--13 oz. for all.

I used to vacuum seal almost everything believing I was saving space, but it turns out it actually takes more space.

When you vacuum seal a typical dried meal it turns into a rock hard package. If everything is sealed the result is lots of wasted air space because the packages don't mesh together as well as looser packed ziplocks.

I still use it for certain things though like hard breads, cheese, and my emergency fire kit. Plus I use it around the house a lot.

The actual Foodsaver bags are rediculously expensive and I feel like sometimes it actually costs more to save food I bought in bulk. Anyways, I have been buying from a seller on eBay who just created a store and in the most recent newsletter there's a promo code: THEVAKSHACK which gets you 15% off of your entire order at www.thevakshack.com . The bags are already insanely cheaper than the namebrand bags. I couldn't find an expiration date so you should be able to use it now. Let me know if you have any questions and I will fwd you the e-mail!

The actual Foodsaver bags are rediculously expensive and I feel like sometimes it actually costs more to save food I bought in bulk. Anyways, I have been buying from a seller on eBay who just created a store and in the most recent newsletter there's a promo code: THEVAKSHACK which gets you 15% off of your entire order at www.thevakshack.com . The bags are already insanely cheaper than the namebrand bags. I couldn't find an expiration date so you should be able to use it now. Let me know if you have any questions and I will fwd you the e-mail!

The actual Foodsaver bags are rediculously expensive and I feel like sometimes it actually costs more to save food I bought in bulk. Anyways, I have been buying from a seller on eBay who just created a store and in the most recent newsletter there's a promo code: THEVAKSHACK which gets you 15% off of your entire order at www.thevakshack.com . The bags are already insanely cheaper than the namebrand bags. I couldn't find an expiration date so you should be able to use it now. Let me know if you have any questions and I will fwd you the e-mail!

The actual Foodsaver bags are rediculously expensive and I feel like sometimes it actually costs more to save food I bought in bulk. Anyways, I have been buying from a seller on eBay who just created a store and in the most recent newsletter there's a promo code: THEVAKSHACK which gets you 15% off of your entire order at www.thevakshack.com . The bags are already insanely cheaper than the namebrand bags. I couldn't find an expiration date so you should be able to use it now. Let me know if you have any questions and I will fwd you the e-mail!

The actual Foodsaver bags are rediculously expensive and I feel like sometimes it actually costs more to save food I bought in bulk. Anyways, I have been buying from a seller on eBay who just created a store and in the most recent newsletter there's a promo code: THEVAKSHACK which gets you 15% off of your entire order at www.thevakshack.com . The bags are already insanely cheaper than the namebrand bags. I couldn't find an expiration date so you should be able to use it now. Let me know if you have any questions and I will fwd you the e-mail!

The actual Foodsaver bags are rediculously expensive and I feel like sometimes it actually costs more to save food I bought in bulk. Anyways, I have been buying from a seller on eBay who just created a store and in the most recent newsletter there's a promo code: THEVAKSHACK which gets you 15% off of your entire order at www.thevakshack.com . The bags are already insanely cheaper than the namebrand bags. I couldn't find an expiration date so you should be able to use it now. Let me know if you have any questions and I will fwd you the e-mail!

The actual Foodsaver bags are rediculously expensive and I feel like sometimes it actually costs more to save food I bought in bulk. Anyways, I have been buying from a seller on eBay who just created a store and in the most recent newsletter there's a promo code: THEVAKSHACK which gets you 15% off of your entire order at www.thevakshack.com . The bags are already insanely cheaper than the namebrand bags. I couldn't find an expiration date so you should be able to use it now. Let me know if you have any questions and I will fwd you the e-mail!