Aside from durability and efficiency, the implicit purpose of decanting is visual enjoyment, and for Jessica Ball, MS, RD, that’s just not good enough. In a recent column for Thrifty on Yahoo! Life, Ball does a cost-benefit analysis of the TikTok trend and looks at the various costs involved in decanting. Ultimately, according to Ball’s estimates, decanting will end up in the red.
Regardless of the high price of most storage container sets (the OXO set mentioned above costs over $ 100), decanting is also time consuming. As Ball points out, when you get on the transfer train you commit to a lifetime increase in work – by emptying all of your groceries twice (once when transferring your dry and wet goods, and again when using them.) . Ball also challenges decanting for sustainability reasons. Storage bins do nothing to reduce retail waste. In fact, they contribute to this: storage sets themselves come in packaging, and even high-quality brands are thrown away at some point.
If decanting turned out to significantly extend shelf life and thereby reduce food waste, maybe there could be a reason for this. But as Ball shows, the underlying cost of the trend is beyond justification – no matter how appealing those plastic and glass storage sets may be.
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