Fenugreen FreshPaper Aims To Prevent Your Food From Rotting

We’ve all done it: We come home from the grocery store with armfuls of fresh fruits and veggies, only to sadly throw out whatever’s wilting in the crisper a week later. Or we excitedly collect our produce box from the local CSA, then suffer a massive anxiety attack while trying to eat everything before it goes bad. In countries where refrigeration is scarce, the problem of how to keep the available produce fresh from farm to fork is obviously much, much worse. All in all, spoilage contributes to about a third of the global food supply going to waste each year, stuffing landfills while leaving hungry mouths empty.

Kavita Shukla didn’t set out to solve this problem. In fact, she was in middle school when she had the brainstorm that led to the invention of Fenugreen FreshPaper, small squares of spice-infused paper that can extend the shelf life of produce up to four times longer than usual. Like so many innovations, this one has a great origin story: Shukla, who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents as a toddler, had gone back to India to visit her grandmother, and accidentally drank some tap water while brushing her teeth. “I really started to freak out that I would get sick,” she says. “My grandma went in the kitchen, and she mixed up this solution of different herbs and spices, and she said, ‘Just drink this and you’ll be fine.’ I was really skeptical, but I drank it. And I didn’t get sick. And then I got really curious about how it worked.” Shukla spent high school “meticulously” rotting fruits and vegetables (“which obviously made me really popular,” she laughs), and eventually came up with the idea of fusing the preventative mixture into paper. She patented the concept of FreshPaper her senior year.

The exact blend of herbs and spices used in FreshPaper is proprietary, of course, and the only ingredient Shukla will reveal is fenugreek, a spice commonly used in Indian cooking. (It also provides the name of her company.) So how does it work? “It basically works by inhibiting bacterial and fungal growth, as well as the enzymes that cause fruit to over-ripen,” Shukla explains. “The concept is that you can just drop a sheet into a drawer or carton. Sometimes people put it into a fruit bowl. Our customers call it a ‘dryer sheet for produce.’” Each certified organic and biodegradable sheet lasts about two to three weeks, until its distinctive maple-like scent begins to fade. “That’s how you know it’s no longer active,” Shukla explains.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: Fast Company