FreshWorks Produce Savers

Not only can celery be tough to sell, when it gets old and rubbery, it can be tough to eat. Rubbermaid says it has the answer to limp celery and the like and in a commercial implies that its FreshWorks produce savers keep fruits and vegetables crisp and crunchy well past the time they were harvested:

With Rubbermaid’s FreshVent technology, your produce stays fresh up to 80 percent longer, keeping it nearly as fresh as the day it was picked.

But not so fast. Did you catch the Sometimes termed “mouse print” or, more benignly, “disclosure language”, and presented in miniscule font. It is there to take back every enticing offer made in the ad.? Probably not as it only appears on-screen for roughly three seconds. Here it is:

So, the containers have only been proven to keep strawberries from going old. That’s an important distinction and one that The National Advertising Division (NAD) is the advertising industry’s self-regulatory body administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. recently found clashes with the overarching message of the ad, which is that FreshWorks produce savers keep all produce fresh up to 80 percent longer. Depictions of other types of produce on packaging, specifically lettuce and blueberries, reinforce this message, said NAD, which recommended that Rubbermaid discontinue the freshness claims.

Rubbermaid said it would appeal the decision to the National Advertising Review Board. OXO International, maker of competing GreenSaver kitchen storage products, brought the initial ad challenge to NAD.

Find more of our coverage on fruits and veggies here.