I've long ago stopped cooking or putting hot food in plastic containers.. not because of this but because of the possibility other harmful substances leeching from the plastic in to my food.
Sure, there are some plastics labeled "for safe" and "BPA-free", but that doesn't guarantee some other plastic that's used doesn't contain harmful substances or cause as yet unknown side effects that just haven't been found by researchers yet. This goes double for new plastics which haven't had much research done on them yet but that manufacturers can honestly claim don't contain BPA.
Those kinds of assurances just aren't good enough, as this study shows.
More than 50 different chemicals are now pumped into consumer products in place of BPA. These BPA-free alternatives can be as bad as — or worse than — the original.
In addition to not storing warm things in plastic, I also avoid storing liquids (e.g. food in sauce, stews etc) because I think its easier for plastic to contaminate the food. I am no expert so I may be over-reacting or completely wrong that dry food does any better in plastic.
regardless of food context/state of matter, any chemical reaction occurring between food stuffs and it's voluminous container is leaching the plastic as the volume tries to reach chemical equilibrium. The air between the "dry" food and the container is just a bridge to the food-plastic at that point.
Of course you won't see that happen in real time in a way that's like "Ah, now it's unsafe." But rest assured knowing it's ALL unsafe, depending on how you feel about life.
I don’t think you’re overreacting if you think any invention newer than 100 years has a high probability of being detrimental to our nature in some way.
The old inventions are just as likely (if not more) to be dangerous, we've just had more time to learn which ones are dangerous, which makes it easier to stay away from the dangerous ones.
Terrifying honestly, my aeropress experiences have always concerned me with if the mug can support the force. I know there isn't supposed to be a lot of force but I've used a few of these brewers and my experience is they're not super consistent! Hopefully glass is easier. I knew a barista who had a mug explode while using an aeropress, now imagine the brewer is itself glass as well during an event like that.
I helped a guy pick out cycling gloves one time when I was a mechanic. The palm of one of his hands was a wreck. I don't know if I pried or he volunteered it:
Slashed the hell out of his hand trying to push a stopper into lab glass. It broke and momentum carried his hand into the glass.
You might get lucky if a cylinder of glass breaks across the diameter in your hand. You will not get lucky if it breaks lengthwise under your hand.
Oh that is awful! Total tangent but I started doing group rides again recently and am surprised by how few people wear gloves. After my first fall tearing up my hands I decided I would not let that happen again. And since then, it's really nice when going down not having to plan for where/how the hands land! This past ride someone went down on some really awful shoulder debris and luckily her hands were fine but man gloves are like $20...
If you're falling a lot you should think about some bike handling exercises. Low speed maneuvers will likely help. And when you hit rough ground, relax. Twitching the bike while in gravel will just make you go down faster. Just relax, hold on and pray for traction to improve before you reach the point of no return. I've avoided my worst accidents that way. One in particular flummoxed the guy I was riding with. He didn't say anything for a full minute after. That was, uh, quite a recovery (If I'd gone down it would have been a five man pile-up, probably with him at the front of it).
I haven't ridden seriously for years but my partner thinks I'm crazy for driving one handed. I had lots of practice doing low-speed maneuvers one-handed (end of the ride, it's hot, I'm thirsty). I could emergency brake one handed (once dual pivot brakes existed) For a brief moment I could do a track stand one handed. Driving one handed I'm more stable than most people are with two (also, grew up driving stick, so one-handed is de facto if not de rigeur).
I don't know if they still do this, but pros used to wear silk shirts under their jerseys to reduce road rash (source: Phil Liggett). I suspect any current gen synthetic sports undershirt (under armor, Kuhl, DSG, etc) would do. Two smooth layers of clothing will spin past each other instead of gouging you.
I'm plenty capable I mean I've had like 4 or 5 unexpected ground falls in 20 years. Hung over rushing to class no hands trying to put a water bottle in my back pocket, someone stepped out from behind an on trail overhead bridge support column, braked hard for someone doing something unexpected and illegal while I was riding downhill on cobblestone. Shit happens, lessons to be learned in every case but protected hands always welcome.
I've never fallen no-handed but it was nice having gloves while developing that skill too ;)
I watched two guys riding too fast through pedestrians hit so hard one guy lost five spokes. And one day some guy coming the opposite way from me on the bike path suddenly started flipping end over end (I think his chain fell into his front wheel but I, too, was late for class so I checked for concussion and fucked off). I just managed to squeak past him but if it had happened twenty milliseconds earlier I would have been part of his drama.
After those two incidents I decided I was safer in the street. Fuckin college kids man.
I regret to admit I was a bit faster than I should have been and probably caused some heart palpitations. I'm 30+ now and shaking my fist at the local college kids.
Worst crash I had was a header when I was like 15, mechanical failure (I was learning to "fix" my own). Fortunately adolescent invincibility and a chin first impact allowed me to avoid serious harm, but I took helmets seriously after that too!
Sounds like an awful morning even if you get away injury free. I'll only use it on my beefiest mugs with walls straight vertical from mouth to counter. Watching people use one on a dainty mug with weird surface geometry and more of a cup shape gets me squirming in a hurry.
Glass may impart more force upon the mug but it is certainly not likely to break itself. You would have to imagine they will use thick pyrex which you could use to drive a nail.
Then the fact that the inner cylinder is stainless steel means that if the glass shatters, you still have something supporting your hand. The inner cylinder might save you from life-altering lacerations to your hand. Might.
I'm not going to be the one to trust it. I've seen how much pressure people apply to aeropresses, and friends don't let friends push that hard on future shards of glass.
Yeah I'm less concerned about the brewer breaking under normal use, I imagine they've done due diligence there (though personally I would wait a year or so) but I'm more concerned if the mug shatters and then you have all this force shoving the brewer into the counter next is that enough to break it? Especially as the it hits a granite counter at a weird angle maybe with the flange or filter cap instead of the perfect circle of a mug on the normal mouth surface.
Same here! I only drink from stainless steel food safe bottles and store/heat food in glass containers. The Aeropress is the only food-related plastic thing I can't get rid of, until now.
I was thinking you could probably machine metal to fine enough tolerances to make an all metal Aeropress but I don't know how you can do this with glass. How do you get a good seal around a glass plunger?
The Aeropress Clear is made out of Tritan. The Premium (from the link) "will feature a construction of glass, stainless steel, and aluminum instead of the usual plastic."
I stopped using Aeropress years ago because of this. Hot liquids and plastic do not go well together. Switched to pourover and using a ceramic pourover cone, less effort and takes about the same time.
I should look if that coffee dude on youtube ever did a video on making fast cold brew. Like can you use one of those protein shake balls and just agitate the grounds to get a regular dose of caffeine in five minutes instead of twelve hours?
Doesn't work for camping of course. Half the point of hot beverages and soup when camping is so you don't have an Oregon Trail-style misadventure.
I think it was just a couple years ago that I learned soup still often counts as hydration (obviously not so much if it's super salty). Another way to get sterilized water into your body, before public sanitation.
Depends on how you brew and what features you like in the brewer.
If you're using it at home, can sacrifice a little more space, and are doing more of an immersion brew then maybe go for a Hario Switch or french press. The Switch looks a lot like a cone brewer but has a ball valve at the bottom. There is still a wee bit of plastic involved but less than aeropress. You can grind for and/or use filters designed for faster draw down, personally I use a cloth filter which is a bit of faff as you need to rinse it out and store it in the fridge in a cup of water. Paper filters on the switch, in my experience, lead to over extraction unless you grind coarse etc etc.
If again you're at home and are really more into the high extraction pseudo-espresso kinda cups and you have more counter space, mental space, and wallet space to give to coffee then maybe go for a Flair lever espresso.
If you're not at home I don't think you're finding something without plastic.
Only the first 2 versions of aeropress had BPA in them (the clear/light blue). Lab testing showed they didn't leech? The smoke colored ones don't have BPA, and the newer more expensive clear ones are made of something else without the issue (not sure all of them are glass). Some people used polyester filters with the aeropress that probably leech tons of microplastics.
I use a glass chemex with paper filters pretty frequently for larger quantity, and a Cona vacuum pot which is 100% glass for special occasions. Oh and a crofton (from aldi) carafe with a stainless insert for making cold brew.
I quit aeropress for precisely this a couple years ago. Having tried many different methods, I've settled on using a stainless filter and brew into a measuring cup and let it settle out for a minute or 2. It's easy, and not worried about putting so much pressure on the rim of a mug with boiling liquid. Also have moved to smaller insulated glass cups rather than larger mugs, which would never work with aeropress, helps cut down on caffeine intake.
I use the Aeropress all the time and I've had this thought before as well.
You can perhaps mitigate the risk by making sure to brew at the "right" temperature (like 185F, not boiling). It is also possible to do cold brew in the Aeropress (even a much faster version of cold brew, where you use room temperature water and stir vigorously for a few minutes).
I have a Hario single cup funnel that I bought for the express purpose of filtering the fines out of cold brew. The ring on the top fits perfectly into a Luminarc pitcher, like they were made to go together.
It's the ceramic model, so not very portable I'm afraid.
Agree I replaced all coffee makers, vaporizers, etc that have plastic anywhere near heat. I also make sure that tea bags are paper only not those mesh plastic ones which ironically cost more. I even took the plastic utensil rack out of my dishwasher after reading that most dishwashers are heavily contaminated with microplastics that just get coated on your dishes.
It is pretty frustrating trying to go plastic-less even with just food products. The glass storage containers for instance all seem to have plastic lids and seals...
As aeropress user for many years, I don't think there's noticeable amount of microplastics coming from it, paper filter would also help with filtering out ANY debris. But, now microplastics are even in air you breathe, coming from anyone using artifical fibers near you.
I think maybe microwaving the aeropress is a bad idea for microplastic concern, but using near boiling water from a kettle in them may not be as bad. Less local heating and no potential to have any parts climb over boiling point.
It's about how much microplastics is too much. After two years of use, I don't see a lot of plastic being eaten away comparing to a new one, so I don't think it's much of a deal.
> Sure, there are some plastics labeled "for safe" and "BPA-free"
BPA has been identified as a hormone disruptor. My question is, how many other plastics have been investigated to rule out hormone disruptors? Safe means more than zero evidence of harm.
Why we don't use glassware? It's perfect for food.
1. Easy for cleaning
2. Good glass container will look new for years with proper washing
3. It breaks. So it requires full attention of person handling it. We all want to live in present moment, don't we? Use glassware and you will be in the present moment more often ;)
Dishes marketed under the Pyrex name are no longer borosilicates. The brand name was sold off (and in fact the company that bought it was recently discussed in HN as they also bought Instant Pot, and have gone bankrupt).
True, which is why any buyer must search for glassware that is said to be "borosilicate" and not search for "Pyrex", which has become a meaningless trademark.
When you hold it in the hand, real borosilicate glassware is very easy to distinguish from other glassware, because it is noticeably less heavy.
It's unclear what the advantages of borosilicate are from this discussion. Is it merely the lightness? Either-or would seem to solve the problem of microplastic release on microwaving.
As mentioned, it handles large temperature swings better than the more common soda lime glass. This can be useful if you have say a casserole in a glass dish that you prepped and stored in the fridge or freezer. When you go to bake it, if you have a borosilicate dish, you can take it out and put it straight in the oven. Soda lime glass has a much higher chance of shattering if you do this.
The downside of borosilicate that no one seems to mention is that it is a good bit more fragile when it comes to mechanical shocks. So, if you accidentally hit it with something while it's in the sink, there is a much higher chance that it shatters there.
We use plastic containers largely for convenience. They're durable, malleable, and don't shatter like glass. They're also lighter and thinner, and cheaper. This makes them useful for things like takeout containers or any situation where you need to transport food.
Borosilicate is more durable than regular glass. It's generally less prone to shattering, and it's also more tolerant of rapid temperature changes.
As far as microplastics go, I don't think it's any better than regular glass, but its properties do make it more suitable for the things we may want to replace plastic for.
> Borosilicate is more durable than regular glass. It's generally less prone to shattering, and it's also more tolerant of rapid temperature changes.
You sure about that? I always heard that borosilicate was significantly less durable (30% is the figure I remember, not sure if that's 30% less or 70% less) and all the thermal shock resistance came from lowering the CTE.
I don't know if that was a half truth from a soda-lime salesman or if nostalgia googles are giving borosilicate credit it does not deserve.
There are more than two decades since I use only glass vessels for cooking, eating, drinking or storing food, so I have been using many dozens of them.
About half of the glassware that I have been using has been from borosilicate glass and the other half from tempered soda-lime glass. I would have used only borosilicate glass, but it is more difficult to find every size and shape that one may want in borosilicate glass.
Even if not frequently, glassware has been dropped from time to time on floors or in kitchen sinks. Such shocks would have shattered traditional glass, but in most cases both borosilicate glass and tempered soda-lime glass survive.
From an approximately equal number of shocks during the years, I have broken a single borosilicate glass object, a double-walled drinking glass with extremely thin walls, while I have broken somewhere between six and ten tempered glass objects.
The only reason why someone may say that for a certain type of glassware borosilicate glass may be less durable is because it is frequent to make borosilicate glassware with thinner walls, because of its better toughness, while the objects made of tempered glass are invariably made with thick walls, to reduce the risk of breakage.
At equal wall thickness, there is no way for a tempered glass object to be more durable than a borosilicate object.
Moreover I have never seen a borosilicate glass object damaged by thermal shock, but I have broken a tempered glass teapot when attempting to cool it after boiling water in it.
A couple decades ago the employee at my local headshop raised the pipe I was looking at to shoulder level, and dropped it onto the wood floor. When it emerged entirely unscathed it felt like a magic trick and he said "it's pyrex" and ever since then I truly believe the material is magic.
That pipe lasted 20+ years until I lost it, meanwhile I broke at least 10 pipes of thicker normal glass. I dropped it in the sink and on the floor countless numbers of times when I braced myself for the sad cleanup, but it always survived.
What pipes did you have made from “normal glass”? If they were blown pipes that contacted heat, they were almost surely borosilicate (Pyrex/Simax/Duran/Kimax) as well. The only smoking items typically made from soda lime are water pipes which use a removable slide, which is borosilicate. (I was a boro glassblower for about 15 years).
Boro got heavy use in scientific glassware for more than one reason (durability, neutrality, etc)
Soda-Lime glass is the standard glass your think of and it's weak af.
Pipe makers would show off their Boro pipes by throwing them at the ground and having them bounce and stay intact.... Theres a reason that was the way to show off the product compared to traditional glass pipes...
Pipe makers used to show off their boro pipes by Throwing them at the ground.... Something you could never dream of doing with traditional glass (soda lime).
I never made the claim that it was. I was very clear and said tempered soda lime glass is more resistant to physical shock than regular borosilicate glass. I am not comparing borosilicate glass to regular soda lime glass. I've cracked a Chemex before dropping it too hard on a counter. I had a tempered glass coffee table when I was a kid and that survived kids standing on it, plates dropped on it, you name it.
Dishes marketed under the Pyrex name are no longer borosilicates.
They're still glass (tempered soda–lime glass), which is what the OP was talking about, so you're just being needlessly pedantic without adding anything to the discussion.
Also, Pyrex is still borosilicate in Europe, since soda-lime is hard to get there.
Tempered soda-lime glass is still preferable as a food-contact material to almost anything else, but it is much less pleasant to use than borosilicate glass, because it is much heavier and if you abuse it the tempered glass cracks relatively easily (e.g. if after boiling water in a tempered glass teapot you immerse it for cooling in cold water from the tap, the chances of cracking are high, while a borosilicate glass teapot is impervious to such a treatment; I know this from personal experience with both kinds of teapots).
Most of my glass containers don't experience those kinds of thermal shocks though, at least non-baking glasses. Most of the containers I'm thinking about which these days have a "pyrex" brand are food containers and measuring cups which might get microwaved. True, if I've got a nice glass casserole dish I might want that to be able to handle the "go from the freezer to a 400F oven in an instant" but most of my glass isn't like that.
In that case, I'm not sure whether the borosilicate is obviously the better choice. My biggest concerns is not having the container break in my lunchbox rather than the thermal shock. Which is generally more durable to physical shocks, borosilicate or tempered soda-lime? And then, for the given durability, which is more cost effective?
Both borosilicate glass and tempered glass are much more resistant to shocks like dropping on a floor than traditional glass.
The chances of being not damaged by a shock depend both on the material and on the wall thickness.
Because they are intrinsically less resistant, the tempered glass objects are typically made with thicker walls.
The end result is that the borosilicate glass objects with thin walls have about the same mechanical shock resistance like the tempered glass objects with thick walls.
Nevertheless, because the soda-lime glass has greater density than borosilicate glass, combined with the fact that the tempered glass objects have thicker walls, makes the tempered glass objects much heavier.
Their great weight makes the tempered glass objects more prone to being dropped during handling.
The borosilicate glassware is more expensive, but the difference is not significant, especially for objects that may remain usable for an entire human lifetime, if used carefully. I have never hesitated to buy some borosilicate glassware because it was too expensive. The main problem has always been that there are few suppliers so it may be difficult to find the exact size and shape that you search.
Soda lime glass isn't hard to get, it's the "default" glass used around the world for everything from drinking glasses to window panes. If you buy a can of sauce or bottle of wine, that's almost certainly soda lime glass.
In Europe, Pyrex still uses borosilicate glass because it's better and because Europeans are more discerning consumers than Americans. That's my theory anyway. American pyrex cheaped out by switching to soda lime glass.
That doesn't seem to contradict me; maybe they closed the soda-lime glass pyrex plant because those product models weren't selling as well?
Europe makes huge quantities of soda lime glass for a myriad of other applications, soda lime glass simply isn't hard to get in Europe. Wine bottles to windows, all that stuff is soda lime glass; borosilicate glass is a specialized glass that isn't used for most things besides cookware, labware, and sometimes lenses.
> Also, Pyrex is still borosilicate in Europe, since soda-lime is hard to get there.
How is soda-lime glass “hard to get”? The main reason why it's still borosilicate here is because the brand has been licensed to a different company, and their management hasn't chose to stop selling borosilicate.
It's more complicated than that: in Europe, the brand has been licensed to La Maison française du verre (which is the latest name of a company that has changed names many times in the past decades) which is still selling borosilicate dishes.
Soda lime glass isn't ideal for cooking, but I've never had a problem with soda lime glass bowls in the microwave. Any manner of bowl, from covered glass bowls in the pyrex style to small glass bowls meant for serving soup/etc, none has ever shattered in the microwave.
I wouldn't want to trust my casserole in the oven to soda lime glass though. Best to have real pyrex aka borosilicate glass for that.
You can extract a lot of money from a company by torching its reputation. It takes people a while to catch on that they can't trust a company anymore. Buy a company, remove all the costs that give them their competitive advantage, then profit off the reputational arbitrage until it's burned to the ground.
The problem with modern Pyrex and similar glassware is that it usually comes with a plastic lid.
I'm with you in that I only use glassware to store food. But it's a bit annoying to have to put a little plate on top of the Pyrex as a makeshift lid in the microwave.
My wife has an extensive collection of vintage Pyrex with lids, but she doesn't trust they're microwave safe.
There's plenty of places that sell glass dishes with glass lids. I hadn't even heard that plastic lids were thing until I read your post so had a look on Amazon and even on there it seemed to be ~50/50 mix of plastic and glass lids.
You don't need to go vintage either. The Pyrex dish I bought around 5 years ago, to replace another Pyrex dish that I accidentally dropped, came with a glass lid. And the set it was replacing, which was maybe around 10 to 15 years old, had glass lids too.
As for being microwave safe, I thought the whole point of Pyrex dishes were that they could be thrown in the oven, microwave, under a grill and pretty much everywhere? Or does this vintage set have visible signs of age, which makes you concerned?
Rather than putting a plate on top in the microwave, I have resorted to using a lightly dampened paper towel, gets the job done just as well and one less dish for me to clean.
FWIW the USDA says plain paper towels are fine to wrap food while microwaving [1]. But I agree with the notion of wanting to minimize exposing food to toxins. I try to limit my microwave usage all together and prefer the oven for reheating food.
Some containers are. I have bought reusable silicone sandwich bags that you can freeze or put in the oven(up to 450 degrees F) if you leave the bag unsealed.
At least we don’t know our neighbors anymore. We wouldn’t want to get invited to a potluck, bring our scalloped potatoes in a Pyrex dish, leave the leftovers with the host, and never got our dish back.
Mmmm. Cheesy scalloped potatoes. I haven’t had that for a long time. One of my most treasured possessions is a folded piece of paper on which my mom hand wrote her cheesy scalloped potatoes recipe for me.
On the other hand I find that they tend to close tight and be robust. So they are great for throwing in backpacks. Without care most plastic containers will flex and pop open. The weight isn't much issue for one or two containers in a backpack. Health concerns aside a sturdy plastic container would likely be the best option here, lighter and more durable (think Nalgene bottle quality) but those are very hard to find.
For travelling I think something like a stainless steel food jar makes more sense since it's light, has an even more robust screw seal, and is easier to hold when eating. Not as cheap though.
Unfortunately, borosilicate glassware is more difficult to find, so even if I would like to use it exclusively, besides some borosilicate items like teapots, double-wall glasses for hot or cold drinks, glass vessels with glass lids for microwave cooking, I still use other heavier items made of tempered glass, e.g. bowls, other sizes of vessels for microwave cooking and rectangular vessels with glass lids for storing food in the refrigerator.
You are right that I normally do not carry food away from home in tempered glass vessels and this is the only purpose for which I use polypropylene boxes, but when I have a borosilicate vessel of suitable size I do not hesitate to use it. Even if it is not so light as PP, the weight is manageable.
We've managed to crack one - no idea how, since they're never treated particularly roughly - but even then, it didn't fully break. I'm definitely a fan.
For Christmas I got a set of Anyday microwaveable dishes. They've been awesome! They're made out of glass with a stainless steel and silicone seal on the lid for steaming.
One of them is synonymous. Clumsiness is a learned (or lack of) behavior, whereas children can be taught to be mindful of their actions. As a child who grew up in a poor Eastern European family, I was punished for my clumsiness, which led me to become an adult who pays attention to what he does. While I empathize with individuals who have significant cognitive deficits, I generally have absolutely no tolerance for those who do not make an effort to be mindful of their actions.
Assuming it was diagnosed by your doctor, it falls under the 'cognitive deficits' section in my previous comment. Even so, it doesn't excuse one from at least trying.
My mother has a casserole dish which slips into a rattan sleeve with little leather lifting handles. You can then carry it to the table, pass it around, etc. without burning your hands. It's held up for my entire lifetime so the design seems pretty solid.
Mold is the reason wood isn't dishwasher safe? Dishwashers get very hot, I thought they damage wood by steaming it. But shouldn't the steam kill the mold?
I put my bare hands inside a microwave and pick up the paper or plastic from inside all the time!
The entire point of using a microwave is convenience. If I'm going to have to break out the oven mitts, I may as well just use the oven or an air fryer.
There are materials which are "transparent" to microwaves and don't get hot in the microwave oven but I can't remember which ones. And glass definitely isn't one of them.
Glass is mostly transparent to microwaves, which is why all microwave ovens include glass plates.
The reason why glass vessels become hotter in a microwave oven is because glass has a much higher thermal conductivity than plastic, so it becomes heated from the hot food.
Using two pieces of cloth (e.g. cut from a small towel) to hold the hot glass vessel is enough to take it safely out of the oven and this negligible inconvenience matters much less than the undesirable effects of heating food in a plastic vessel.
Agreed. My anxiety is already so high I should probably talk to a doctor about it. I just do all my cooking with glass or steel or wood just so I can have 1 less thing to be worried about.
1. Cleaning doesn't really change much if it's plastic or glass.
2. With proper care, I agree, they'll look new/good for many years. Plastics can too, but to a lesser degree.
3. It breaks.
4. Glassware usually costs more.
5. Knowing that I can't break the tub of food that I have in my bag just because I accidentally dropped my bag, releases me of a lot of stress and worry.
Don't get me wrong, I do agree that plastics are toxic, but when I go to the store I always look at the prices and pick the cheapest option available, I wish I had the option of just being able to take what looks nice and pay without even knowing how much I pay, but sadly I can't, _yet_, afford that.
If you just go for the cheapest anyways, why are you buying containers at all? I'm in a position that I can afford whatever containers I like, and I use glass for anything that'll be reheated but use plastic for freezing. We re-use butter/yogurt/sour cream containers, and after 2-3 uses toss them in the recycling.
Most folks that cook a lot don't use non-stick pans much anyway because they just don't last very long. I keep a couple around for eggs and pancakes, but that's it.
The usual recommendation for skillets is carbon-steel and cast iron because the seasoning does provide some non-stick properties. I have the full gamut with carbon steel, cast iron, non-stick and stainless steel, and find myself mostly leaning on the carbon steel. (I don't have any other materials since I cook on induction.)
But here's a catch: that seasoning? Basically a plastic. It's polymerized cooking oil. You can decide if you care. But you'll also polymerize oil when cooking on stainless. Basically: if you want to go ultra-paranoid, don't fry things.
Unlike steel, cast iron generates dust when abraded. Dust that is really bad for you. Known to cause lung issues, etc.
I machine it all the time (both ductile and non). It is usually is machined dry with vacuum because it will clog coolant systems. It basically turns into a horrible mud when mixed with coolant or water
I happen to filter the coolant system so i can machine it wet, but that's not all - i also run a dust extractor to avoid these issues.
Cast iron is popular, but i've seen no science that suggests it should be used. There is no evidence i've seen that it's particularly better at anything, none of the "seasoning" thing is a real rust protectant for
either cast iron or steel (and steel will usually rust slower), though it is non stick in the same sense that things are harder to stick to burned things :)
Steel won't generate the same kind of horrible dust when you abrade through the seasoning.
I don't season anything though - if i want to protect something from rust i dry it. If seasoning was a super good rust protectant we'd use it as one in other cases.
If i want something to be non-stick i spray a light coat of oil on it.
When during normal cooking am I going to be abraiding the surface of my cast iron to the point I'm aerosolizing significant amounts of dust off the pan?
I don't even normally scrape it enough to significantly wear down the seasoning. When am I going to scrape it so much I'm going to scrape off a significant amount of the actual pan?
How hard do you scrape your pans when you cook?! Does your pan end up half a gram lighter every time you cook or something?
And even then, if I am scraping it enough to actually abraide some of it, it's not being aerosolized. It's gonna get worked into the fats and oils I've got in the pan. Which, sure, some small amount eventually flings out, but by that point it's such a tiny minute amount.
Maybe if I was a chef it might be enough to actually care a tiny slight bit. But like, cooking with it a few times a week, I can't imagine I'm getting much of any bits of the pan in my lungs. I'd be more worried about the stuff burning in the pan over the bits of the pan being a problem.
Some of what your saying makes sense, but it sounds like you're carrying experience in metal working too far into cooking.
> though it is non stick in the same sense that things are harder to stick to burned things :)
The usual way I've heard this explained, which seems reasonable, is that steel and iron are porous, and what causes sticking is the contraction of those pores when heated. A smooth covering prevents that sticking, and polymerized cooking oil provides that.
> I don't season anything though - if i want to protect something from rust i dry it. If seasoning was a super good rust protectant we'd use it as one in other cases.
Funnily enough, I have. I built a bookshelf that uses raw steel beams, and I seasoned it to protect it from rust. 3 years in, it's still rust free (amusingly, except for the inside of the pipes).
But I don't think anyone really argues that it's the best way to do things in non-cooking applications, just that it's food safe (again, the point of what we're discussing) and works. Seasoning does demonstrably prevent rust... For furniture you'd more often spray it with a protective coating, but I don't think anyone's recommending spraying pans with polyurethane. ;-)
OK, but the flip side of this is: why would you ever opt for cast iron over carbon steel? There are reasons --- cast iron retains heat better (though both retain heat better than all other cookware, and the reason cast iron retains more heat is that it's stupid heavy). But most things people use cast iron for in cooking, they should be using carbon steel for (or enamelware) instead. It's just way better.
Pushing back on 'DannyBee though: the narrative about cast iron vs. nonstick is easy to understand: nonstick pans are shitty, expensive, and overused; lots of people cook in nonstick exclusively (:scream-emoji:) and don't realize their pans have been worthless for years because the coating is all scuffed up. It's not a health thing so much as a "nonstick pans are evil" thing.
I mostly use carbon steel. But putting on my cooking nerd hat, there's one situation where I pull out cast iron, because it's annoyingly heavy:
It has more thermal momentum, thus when I am pulling stuff out of my sous vide cooker, it's better at quickly adding char (because the temperature drops less than in carbon steel or anything else).
(The only other reason I use cast iron is for the cases where the pan size is just more practical than my carbon steel pans.)
I will admit that I'm conflicted by this since there's also a distinctive way that my 3.5 kW induction wok cooker chars stuff in a very limited amount of time, but that involves me removing the smoke detectors from my kitchen and the two rooms adjacent.
They'd call it metallic carbon metal steel if they thought it would sell better. All steel has carbon, if it doesn't it's not steel.
It's like saying that pure salt has "no added sugars or preservatives" Of course it doesn't, it's salt, not a salt-sugar mixture, and you don't need to add a preservative, it is a preservative.
People use "nation-state" to mean "sovereign country", when it is in fact a specific kind of entity: a coterminous political and cultural/ethnic territory.
Colloquially, the word "nation" can mean something as simple as "country", but when you use the term "nation-state", you're going out of your way to invoke the technical definition.
On the other hand, "carbon steel pans" is just what they're called. Can't dunk on me for my metallurgical naivete; gotta take it up with Lodge.
"The usual way I've heard this explained, which seems reasonable, is that steel and iron are porous, and what causes sticking is the contraction of those pores when heated. A smooth covering prevents that sticking, and polymerized cooking oil provides that."
Not blaming you, but this is just wrong and a fundamental misunderstanding of steel and iron.
Cast iron (and steel) does not have pores. It is not like wood. SAE 304 (stainless steel commonly used in cheap pans) does have micro-cracks in the surface. These can be removed through honing or surface polishing, and the substructure is weird. Let's put it aside for a second, and stick with cast iron, carbon steel, and other stainless because 304 is just super strange stuff at the microscopic level.
Cast iron simply has no pores at all, just surface roughness. The average surface roughness is not that high (125 microinches or better)
Liquids theoretically fill the surface roughness of either but not like massively. You can see on the stainless there just isn't a lot to even fill.
For all of them the overall flatness changes when heated, and the surface roughness changes slightly, but that's it. Not a lot. it definitely does not expand pores, or change the surface roughness by a factor of 10, or any of this.
This is why cast iron is used to make precision laps - to surface things like lab grade surface plates to like 0.000005 inches and such: it stays flat once machined and surfaced, it has lots of thermal inertia, and doesn't get screwed up by things sticking to it once polished[1].
If your goal is to make it so nothing sticks, by adjusting the surface roughness, you could also just sand it outside with a respirator on to like 2000 grit or 4000 grit and never worry about it. This would cost you about 5 minutes of time, maybe 10, and you can do it by hand if you want (though it's like 1 minute with an ROS).
I can show you a non-seasoned, "polished once 8 years ago to 8000 grit" cast iron griddle that has 0 rust, and is quite non-stick.
Manufacturers would do this except now they get you to do it for them, because people won't buy it unless they can season it to "add flavor" and such.
The whole thing has become a silly cargo cult honestly. The number of people who now think that like cast iron and steel have pores is also way too high :)
Besides sanding, there are other ways to change surface roughness that don't involve burning cooking oil onto something that doesn't need it. They also last much longer.
Also note that depending on temperature that people season at, they can release really toxic stuff. 300C (572F) is totally achievable on most stoves, by people just leaving them on to season, and will generate some very toxic byproducts.
"Funnily enough, I have. I built a bookshelf that uses raw steel beams, and I seasoned it to protect it from rust. 3 years in, it's still rust free (amusingly, except for the inside of the pipes)."
Visibly, or did you check under the coating?
Most seasoning just hides rust. It's still rusted, and as it gets removed it's just taking the iron oxide with it so it looks like it's not.
[1] Here's a fun side video of someone making precision laps out of cast iron using nothing but the 3 plate method, timecoded to when he puts the optical flat on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whyw5v7L70c&t=810s
The lines are straight because this cast iron is flat and not rough to at 1/10th or 1/20th the wavelength of light used here, which translates into an average roughness below 25-50nanometers.
You do not need to go this far to get a non-stick pan out of cast iron :)
Once you build up your seasoning on cast iron, you're not really touching it anymore, much less scratching it, much less machining it. On top of the fact that the pan isn't dry either.
Also eating iron oxide is fine, it's breathing it that is bad.
Can you provide a source on the cast iron dust issue. I've heard that cast iron is actually recommended for anemic people who are low in iron. Are there other chemicals besides iron in the "dust"? How's would this dusty be formed unless you are purposely scraping there hell out of it with metal utensils? (And wood is generally recommended for cooking utensils anyway)
I think it's worth noting that the seasoning, while still a plastic and an oxidized oil and not necessarily good for you (probably bad or neutral), is not necessarily the same levels of bad for you that PFAS like teflon are when ingested. PFAS are called "forever chemicals" because they've been observed in our blood stream and don't naturally break down.
I tried carbon steel but I couldn't get the seasoning right, and it flash rusted every time I washed it. Also, to someone used to non-stick or stainless steel, it often looks kind of dirty - its difficult to distinguish between "good but unattractive seasoning" and "you didn't wash your pan well enough".
Weird. I've never had carbon steel rust at all. I suspect you're cleaning it too intensely in an attempt to get what you perceive as dirtiness out. The checkered seasoning is kind of a badge of honor for cooking nerds. Here's what mine look like:
It’s pretty easy to make a stainless steel pan non-stick. I cook eggs and pancakes all the time without any sticking. The trick is you have to let the pan come all the way up to your desired cooking temperature. When the pan is hot enough, water vaporizes instantly creating a gas buffer between your food at the pan, aka the Leidenfrost effect. You can tell if the pan is hot enough by splashing a little water on it. A pan hot enough to cook on without food sticking will have the water form round beads of water that slide around the pan rather than splashing or boiling. While there is definitely a minimum cooking temperature this works on, you don’t necessarily need to cook at a higher temperature. You just need to let the pan preheat at your desired cooking temperature for longer.
The main reason I like it is beacause after it is "seasoned", or after some regular use, it has a lot of the qualities of non-stick yet has none of the chemical coating.
A. it's a layer of burned, polymerized cooking oil. It is in fact a plastic. It is not particularly better for you. It's only non-stick in a weird sense that anything else that hasn't been cleaned is non-stick.
B. it does not really prevent rust - if it did, we would use this instead of rust protectants :)
C. Cast iron, unlike steel, generates mostly dust when it abrades. It is often machined dry with vacuum because it otherwise clogs up coolant systems (it makes a sort of mud).
The dust is very bad for you.
So everytime you scrape through that coating and abrade it, or microabrade it, you are probably getting cast iron dust in the air/lungs.
I'm sure this will end up studied post PFAS and will be discovered to have been a similarly bad idea.
Use steel - it "seasons" just fine (it turns out burned cooking oil will happily stick to lots of things), and doesn't have this issue.
Hmmm. I'd like to reconsider my cast iron pans if that's necessary. But first, I don't abrade them. Second, they don't seem to be rusting. And third, if you're going to season your carbon steel, then it seems like it should be fine to season your cast iron, too. Do I don't really understand what you're getting at.
You don't want to breathe a bunch of iron/rust dust, but that doesn't happen with iron cookware since it's never a dry-abrading situation.
I once rented an old house with some old iron pipes... While it was a problem for doing laundry without turning clothes orange, when I investigated the health risks it wasn't a problem unless you consumed huge enough amounts to get iron poisoning. Iron is an essential nutrient after all...
As far as I know, non stick surfaces are mostly (always?) made out of PTFE (brand name Teflon), which is a little unusual in that it starts releasing toxic gases when it's heated way before it shows any signs of structural damage or deformation. This gets dangerous to humans from about 240C, but even at 220C PTFE will release trace amounts that can be toxic to birds.
With this in mind, I'm baffled about how many products with non-stick surfaces are marketed as safe up to 240C, considering that household ovens are often bad at controlling temperatures and can swing 20-30C above and below the set temperature.
I 100% agree about cooking with non-stick pans at high heat. Several years ago I switched to a type of non-stick pan that is supposed to be safer and I stopped frying foods [1] and instead simmer in vegetable broth. I take a regular stir-fry Asian, Japanese, Korean, etc. recipe and using the same ingredients but no oil, simmer everything in veggie broth and the results are delicious. I add a tablespoon of cold quality olive oil to the food a minute after I turn off the heat.
[1] my wife likes fried food and she uses an iron frying pan.
I mainly used stainless steel myself, but I have been losing weight in the last year and it's just too easy to cook with minimal (or no) oil in non-stick pans. Oil easily adds a lot of calories to everything.
I'm the same, find the prevalence of non-stick bizarre, they still need to be washed and are basically degrading the moment you use high heat. You can't use metal or do stirfrys making them half as useful.
Would also include plastic utensils in that. So many people I know have half melted plastic spatulas etc. Wooden and metal utensils work fine and barely cost any more. I have a nice old teak ladle that's lasted me for a decade while friends are throwing out their bubbled horror show plastic after 12 months.
So you should not go outside anymore as car tires are the largest emitter of microplastics?
The causality and health implications are laughable here that it has anything to do with the bottle. This seems like a new thing to outrage imo.
Is there any real evidence that consuming these is a problem though?
Last I checked the evidence was shaky that this is even problematic for humans and read like a who's who of sketchy medical claims, up there with seed oils killing your testosterone.
The really annoying thing is that when you bring up the generational decline of testosterone in men no one really cares. Then RFK Jr brings it up - quite validly - and now you have the entire Democrat-pharma industrial complex lumping it under "far-right conspiracy theory, probably funded by Russia and MAGA white supremacists who hate women and Muslims".
The irony is that it's a problem that is clearly already having consequences already. It's quite likely it's behind some of the current issues both at the fringes (rapid onset gender dysphoria) and broadly in politics (see the correlation between male testosterone levels and voting patterns). It potentially wipes out humanity way before anything with climate change, but since it affects men, the West just doesn't care.
There's also a correlation between increasing levels of obesity and decreasing levels of testosterone. And a likely explanation, in that fat cells metabolize testosterone to oestrogen, plus, obesity is linked to lower levels of SHBG which binds to and carries testosterone in the blood. So it's probably that too.
Also from what I've read, I think ROGD mostly affects young women and girls? It's not so much a male phenomenon. I don't think any of the research so far has linked it to plastics consumption, seems more to be a socially contagious, culture-bound syndrome, like anorexia is.
> It's quite likely it's behind some of the current issues both at the fringes (rapid onset gender dysphoria) and broadly in politics (see the correlation between male testosterone levels and voting patterns).
Can you expand on this? Are you attributing political movement to the left in young men to lower testosterone levels?
It would surprise me if it wasn't a factor. Probably not quite as clear-cut as "less T => more left" but I do view the left as more "nurturing" than the right. Not gonna die on this hill though, humans are complicated :)
If you're going to assert statements that wild you should provide valid sources for them, otherwise it should be fairly easy to dismiss them as paranoid and baseless conspiracy theories. Your own ideology should not inform how you interpret objective facts, although I know this is often difficult to achieve for people on the far-right end of the political spectrum.
That first paragraph was so good... I can't believe it was followed by the second one.
Anyway, about the first, there are people studying a possible link between plastics contamination and the testosterone trend. AFAIK, nobody has got anything yet. And given that there are other very likely culprits, I do think stating the link with plastics is way too premature.
There is no evidence in the linked text that possible "reproductive issues" from sperm count reduction would be something overall bad. One possibility is that the total number of humans born will decrease somewhat and that global population will be somewhat lower compared to an alternative scenario with less microplastics. Every human has needs that require energy and resources so a scenario with lower global population might be better in terms of making sure all born humans get what they need.
True, possible, possible, depends. But on the other hand current levels of global resource and energy use have harmful effects on existing humans and animals. For example climate change increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires that kill billions of animals. Increasing the human population by billions more, which is the path we're on unless some factor or other decreases population growth, likely increases such effects. That matters if we want to investigate if the consequences of microplastics are overall bad or good.
Understanding the issue requires evidence and arguments about how good or bad the effects are. The problem is that several commenters here jump to conclusions without evidence.
On current projections human world population peaks at 10 billion in 2086 [0]. If, for the sake of argument, microplastics were to lower reproduction somewhat so that "only" 9.5 billion people came to exist in 2086, would that be bad? We're already putting a lot of pressure on many of earth's scarce resources in ways that have harmful effects on the welfare of many existing humans. Increasing population increases that pressure.
It’s not just about the containers if you look at the big picture. Micro plastic is everywhere nowadays and if you set yourself to avoid it you’ll have a hard time. Even opening a plastic bottle releases micro plastic in the environment and now all supermarket food comes in plastic. Also the accumulated plastic seems to be reaching us already from the food chain, with marine food being full of micro plastic which goes to our bodies.
But maybe it’s worth avoiding it at all cost? That’s the big question.
I'm glad that civilization has gotten it together enough to produce this study. Clearly it took an exorbitant amount of planning and resources to do, and we shouldn't expect studies like this that often. But at long last, we now have hard evidence that microwaving food in plastic containers is bad, many decades after they were introduced as "microwave safe."
As the burden of proof for something being unsafe is on us, the consumer, rather than the companies introducing novel elements into the food supply, this is an important milestone. Things are safe until proven otherwise, and it's up to us to do the work to prove we aren't just being paranoid about any health issues that arise.
But now we can rest easy knowing that we're set up to get these misleading "microwave-safe" labels removed... a few decades from now.
(/s. Anyone could have done this study at any time - all they did was to microwave water in plastic containers to see what would happen. I guess literally nobody has ever done that before, certainly not the companies labeling their products as "microwave safe." Maybe in another few decades, someone will look at what happens with Teflon coated pans.)
The limiting factor has always been access to expensive scientific equipment to actually run the experiment, then access to a reputible publishing channel.
Scientific lab equipment, a las, is still a field ripe for more work on democratization. Mind, even that suffers from things like the War on Drugs making possession of lab paraphenalia (accurate scales, glassware, and other things needed for taking accurate/controlled measurements) a risky proposition. In fact, one could say, the System is tilted against the Citizen Scientist unaffiliated with an organization from the get-go.
Because many people use plastic Tupperware in the microwave. I've never purchased a piece of tuperware that said it would release microplastics into the food if I put it in the microwave.
I don't know what it is lately but I feel like a lot of things labeled as "myths" and "woo woo" seem to be coming out as actually harmful, forever chemicals, fluoride in drinking water are others that come to mind.
I remember there was a bit of a trend to rubbish using microwaves, as if it harmed the food or something, but it is curious that those people actually had a point, at least when the microwave was combined with plastic containers.
My opinion, it's better to always have an open mind.
Meta-analysis study from China says fluoride in drinking water lower IQ by 7 points on average in children, with more fluoride causing higher effects [1]. Probably politically infeasible to do such a study in the US because of left-right polarity but I'm sure once it gets widespread acknowledgement in a couple of decades, there'll be people saying how it was obvious all along.
Other studies too from a quick google search. Pregnant women drinking fluoridated water lowers children's IQ by 3-4 points [2]
> I've never purchased a piece of tuperware that said it would release microplastics into the food if I put it in the microwave.
One thing to be skeptical or open minded or whatever but this statement is just stunningly naive. That you would only consider it if the company selling it tell you that. There is a thing called using your brain to come to independent conclusions. I'm probably just pissing into the wind here because I realize the current discourse it that you must listen to your betters and believe only the experts or whatever.
I think they're using that statement as an indication of the average consumer's behavior, not necessarily their own. In fact, their very next sentence makes it clear that they aren't just swallowing the official line wholesale.
Maybe you should go see a doctor about that knee-jerk problem.
Agreed. I haven’t microwaved food in plastic for 20+ years. It just always seemed gross. My biggest beef with plastic containers is that once washed with cheap dish soap (e.g. Dawn) the plastic container and any food stored in it always an forever smell and taste like the fragrance in the soap. I don’t find this to be a problem when using 7th Generation dish soap, which I consider to be far superior.
>I don’t find this to be a problem when using 7th Generation dish soap, which I consider to be far superior.
I feel i'm about to fall into a rabit hole where i read way too much about dish soap. Is this a joke or is there really such a thing as 7th generation dish soap?
Well they will shed tons of microplastics and the placticisers will gradually leach out due to heat and the harsh dishwasher soap. That eventually destroys your plastic stuff, but the stuff shed goes down the drain and becomes someone else's problem (except you'll get some back when you eat fish, for example).
The same thing happens with your clothes, which these days include a lot of plastic fabric, buttons, etc.
Good question. The only plastic dishes we have are the lids to our glass leftover containers. I always wash these by hand as it seems to me that the extreme heat of the dishwasher degrades the plastic (and probably causes god knows what to leach out of the plastic) and causes the lids to crack (kind of like plastic left out in UV light) and to fail seemingly sooner than they otherwise would.
Interesting, I view Dawn as name-brand, maybe premium product and thought it was well-regarded, though maybe that's all those advertisements with oil-soaked animals getting cleaned up doing a number on me.
Never had a complaint or noticed a residual odor, though.
Definitely. I have never, ever microwaved (or otherwise heated) food in plastic. My intuition just screams that it's disgusting and stupid and I honestly can't understand how people can do this.
I don't even store cold food in plastic containers any more because I found out you can buy glass ones. They are so much more convenient and clean.
I’ve switched to glass bottles for my daughter pretty early on, but most of the bottles used for breast milk pumps are plastic (e.g. https://www.medela.com/breastfeeding/products/collecting/sto...), and are supposed to be boiled after each use for disinfection. I really wonder how durable they are and how much microplastic ends up in that breastmilk…
It was already known that some kinds of plastic release microplastic particles when heated. I assume this is why we have some plasticware that is labeled as being suitable for microwave oven usage, but at quick glance at the abstract doesn't seem they considered this difference. It would be interesting to know the amount of micropastic released by "microwave suitable" plastic vs common plastic.
"microwave suitable" just means "this won't melt if you put it once into the microwave".
Almost as bad as "flushable wipes" which technically can be flushed but should never be as they clog the plumbing and sewer systems. By the same definition airpods and wedding rings are flushable too.
I've read that the controversy re: flushable wipes is a case of mistaken identity, both on the part of consumers (who might assume all wipes are flushable) and sanitation engineers (misidentifying baby wipes etc as flushable ones, which should be way disintegrated).
If wipes marketed as flushable were such a clear and direct problem, the iron-clad lawsuits would have wiped (heh) them off the market by now.
If you're super bored, you can watch videos of flushable wipes being tested. They disintegrate quickly, as designed.
It doesn't work for really wet foods like soup but I've been using wooden plates for e.g., microwave burritos. Since wood has a low dielectric loss, it's highly transparent to microwaves and therefore steals less energy away from heating the food than e.g., ceramic.
I'm not sure about the toxicity of various wood sealers. I've been using butcher-block sealer which has e.g., bee's wax but also some more questionable substances. I'm interested in trying shellac but it's not overly cheap.
And how many microplastics are released the second time the container's microwaved? And the third?
I'm all against microwaving brand new plastics (not a huge fan of take-out containers). But I suspect the plastic coffee brewer I've used ~1000 times has long since leached out anything that was going to leach out. I wonder if there's any research on this.
It'd be cool if there were a commercial lab I could send a some samples to measure microplastics, the same way I can send my tap water to be tested for lead.
Where did you get the 1g figure from? I'm curious to read more about the circumstances under which they found toxicity, e.g. if that's acute rather than sustained across decades.
Also, what does in vitro mean here? Do I remember correctly this means you're not dead?! Seems like an odd bit of jargon to add
I'm assuming the solvent is water. You're right that it's not specified in the abstract. "In vitro" means "in glass", but the actual meaning is in any non-living container, no matter what it's made from, e.g. in a petri dish. If it's in a living organism it's "in vivo".
Microplastics have measurable negative effects on mammalian brains. That's been shown recently.
I've never microwaved or cooked anything in plastic, and I've yelled at people who do since the 90s.
Unfortunately, I break my own teeth a lot. I've shattered three of them in my sleep. It's not fun to wake up to a giant cracking sound in your head, realize your nerve is exposed, swallow part of a tooth and need immediate dental surgery.
I started using over-the-counter night guards, which I chewed through like a fucking rabbit, little pieces of plastic all over. Finally, recently, I just paid for a "permanent" night guard.
First of all, the way this is done now is amazing. It's a 3D scan of your teeth using a tiny camera wand, and the model is built in full color directly on the screen; I even pointed out to the dental tech, on the model, a red spot where a tortilla chip had wounded me the previous week.
So they shipped me this perfect molded night guard which fits my upper teeth incredibly well, and feels like a gummy on the upper side. On the lower side, though, it has a harder shell and still takes the impact of my lower teeth. And after a few months, it's already starting to fray on the bottom.
With both these things, I have no idea what's in them. PFAS? How much of this shit am I swallowing? Wearing it all night, every night, I wonder what the hell it's leaching into my brain. I don't think there are any real regulations on what they put into them, and they're clearly extraordinary mixes of different plastics.
It's a good question. Can't say I understand the details, but I looked into this years ago and Talon is the material my dentist mentioned. This site claims:
"Safest Splint Tested: There is no discernible leaching of free monomer. Studies verify residual monomer level of only 0.14%"
That looks like the thing. I would love to have it tested independently if I'm going to keep it in my mouth every night for the rest of my life. (And I'm now afraid not to).
Bruxism is bad enough that I’d wager it outweighs any damage from the microplastics. We know people live with microplastics now, whereas bruxism will gradually destroy your joints, teeth, gums, and stress your muscles.
But apart from the guard there are some things you can do to reduce it. There’s apnea testing, and also things you can wear to monitor it and get biofeedback. Also stress reduction, quitting alcohol/caffeine/chcocolate, some jaw exercises (rocabado), massage, physio, jaw alignment and teeth alignment, etc
No. I'm not on any meds. I moved to a new town and had a dentist tell his assistant, in front of me, that I was "another meth addict", but I've never done meth. I just operate at a really high level of stress that comes out in my sleep.
Great news, my local council outlawed or out regulated throw away plastic food containers so everything is not in waxed cardboard. Which holds up about as long as the food is actually safe to eat. So win win.
I wouldn't necessarily say that. The cardboard/wax tears quite easily, and the wax tears with the cardboard. I don't think a plastic film would do that.
We're currently going through plastics being banned for snack foods where I live, and even vendors that were using "cardboard" boxes are hit because they are actually cardboard boxes lined with plastic (because cardboard + oil don't work together very well).
Wax gets soft when heated, so I'd be really surprised if the cardboard you're talking about is actually using "wax".
>> From 1 February 2023, Victorians cannot purchase, or be supplied with single-use plastic drinking straws, plates, cutlery, drink stirrers, cotton bud sticks or expanded polystyrene food service items and drink containers from any business or organisation. These items cannot be sold or given away for free.
Looks like the study was performed on a liquid, so I guess definitely don't microwave soup. Wonder if the effect is the same with a food that doesn't have as much contact with the container. Anyway, like many commenting here, microwaving food with plastic fallen in the "it just seems wrong" category for me, so it's business as usual.
Aluminum has its own problems. Paper really can't be used for anything with liquids unless it's lined with plastic or a plastic-equivalent, and that's probably a bad thing.
From what I know, glass has no drawbacks other than fragility.
I gguess he meant glass as container and Al/paper for covers, otherwise it doesn't make sense. Al foodware was removed from all school canteens decades ago where I live, that shit ain't touching my food.
Also, glass is heavy, so impractical for many uses. But yes seems largely inert unless you expose it to some weird fluorides (Things I won't work with series).
Is borosilicate glass the safest material for storing dry and wet (acidic) food or sauces? Or do I have to worry about some toxic chemical adulterant used in the process of making glass that is going to leech out (lead?)
Step one: get microscope. Step two: put mouth and teeth on plastic water bottle. Step three: look at plastic water bottle under microscope. Step four: start to reduce plastic in life based on what you have observed.
Does anyone know if this would include plastic lids on glass containers? or a plastic cover to stop whatever you're heating from splashing all over the microwave?
Hm, right! Carry it to work in plastic, heat it on a plate. I'm doing that occasionally. Weird I didn't think of that and wanted to buy glass containers haha
> The highest EDI of these particles for infants occurred when they drank microwaved water stored in a plastic container, while for toddlers, it was when they consumed microwaved dairy products in a container. These findings emphasize the necessity of collaborating with manufacturers to establish guidelines for the appropriate usage of plastic containers. Additionally, it is crucial to work with caregivers in order to raise awareness about the potential impact of these particles.
As a Level 3 plastic hater, it's a wonderful curse. Whenever I see food and plastic together, I automatically think, "Has it been heated until it reached this point?" My mind goes, "Microplastic, microplastic!"
Sure, there are some plastics labeled "for safe" and "BPA-free", but that doesn't guarantee some other plastic that's used doesn't contain harmful substances or cause as yet unknown side effects that just haven't been found by researchers yet. This goes double for new plastics which haven't had much research done on them yet but that manufacturers can honestly claim don't contain BPA.
Those kinds of assurances just aren't good enough, as this study shows.