We have been considering buy one of these FoodSaver sealers for a few years now. But we just kept putting it off. They are not cheap. We finally bought one. We bought a FoodSaver V2440 Advanced Design. We paid over $100 for ours at the local warehouse store. But ours was packaged with a bunch of accessories, and had some extra features. And the bags are are not cheap. Fortunatly our cames with a couple rolls of FoodSaver sealer bag stuff. We have already gone through one of the rolls.
But I think in the long run it is going to save us money, and even allow us to eat healthier. So far we have used it to seal a few different things. I made a 4x batch of low fat chili. It was almost as easy to make a 4x batch as a normal sized batch. And since I could buy the ground beef in a bulk pack, it brings the per serving cost down. Anyway, I mad the huge bath of chili. We ate what we wanted for dinner. I originally thought that I could just pour the chili into the bags, vacuum seal them, and freeze them. Well after watching the instruction DVD that came witht he FoodSaver, we learned this was not the right way. So I pour the chili into plastic containers, and froze those. Then the next day, we popped the frozen chili out of the plastic containers, into the sealer bags, and then vacuum sealed those. It the plastic containers we always have to worry about freezer burn. But not in the FoodSaver bags!
Another night I made meatloaf. Actually, I multiplied the recipe by four, and made four meatloaves. We ate one meatlaof for dinner, and froze the other four. After they were frozen, we removed them from the metal pans, placed the into FoodSaver bags, and vacuum sealed them. Now we have three meatloafs in the freezer ready to be reheated.
And I used it again last night when I bought a 3 pack of steaks at the warehouse store. We ate one steak for dinner, and I vacuum packed the other two, and froze them.
Our FoodSaver until even came with a couple vacuum canisters. I used the larger one to store brown sugar. Hopefully this will keep it from drying out.
The unit works great, and is easy to use.
Now on to the cost of the bags. For about $30 at the warehouse store, I can buy a box of 4 rolls of FoodSaver bags. That’s three rolls of the 11 inch, and one roll of the 8 inch. But this morning on eBay, I bought 6 rolls of the 11 inch bags for about $30 with shipping). They are not FoodSaver brand, but are Black & Decker. They say they will work in leading brand food sealers (aka FoodSaver). And at $30 for 6 rolls, it brings the cost down to about 27 cents per foot of bag material.
I have also ordered some FoodSaver universal lids. Many times I have made spaghetti, only to use a partial jar of sauce. The jar goes into the refridgerator, only to be thrown out later, because it has started to turn into a science project. With the universal lids, I can seal these jars, and keep the spaghetti sauce fresh for longer.
I think we will get a lot of use out of the FoodSaver! We will be able to make larger batches of the low-fat healthy foods we like, and freeze them. That will make them cheaper, and more convenient!

Posted by Rob in Reviews on February 23rd, 2007 |