Fresh Paper Keeps Food Fresh

We’re supposed to eat our fruits and vegetables, right? But so often, our good intentions end up in yucky, moldy lettuce and dessicated strawberries with gray fuzz in the back of the refrigerator. In fact, food waste is a mind-boggling problem on an international scale–25% of the world’s food supply is lost to spoilage. And in the U.S., the figure is higher: at least 31%. The environmental, financial and health impacts of fresh food spoilage are enormous.

Enter Kavita Shukla, a young girl who accidentally drank some tap water while visiting her grandmother some years ago in India. Her grandmother gave her an old home remedy – a mixture of spices in water, which kept her from getting sick. Kavita never forgot the experience, and she wondered what it was about those spices which stopped the growth of bacteria and fungus in her tummy. After years of research and development, in 2010 she launched her invention, FreshPaper™, a simple piece of paper that keeps fruits & veggies fresh for 2-4 times longer, because it’s infused with all-natural, organic Indian spices. (The company’s name, Fenugreen, is derived from an active ingredient, the Indian/Middle Eastern spice fenugreek). Often described as a “dryer sheet for produce,” one small (5″ x 5″) FreshPaper sheet can simply be dropped into a fridge drawer, fruit bowl, or any other container filled with produce. Biodegradable, compostable, and recyclable, Fresh Paper by Fenugreen is now sold internationally, changing how the world keeps its food (and all the labor, expense and natural resources embodied in it) fresh.