101–110 of 160 posts
I use these, are these horrible? https://www.costco.com/snapware-pyrex-18-piece-glass-food-st... What should I use instead?
The reality is that US regulatory agencies have been extremely permissive for many years. Many other nations piggy back on their findings. We need a massive increase in enforcement. What we will see with cheaper and more available testing is that PFAS are everywhere. It is hard to find waterways or soils, even in remote areas, that are not contaminated. It is really tragic and the extent of the pollution can make you…
It will cause things to move much slower. But I'm thinking we are at the point where we need to move to burden of proof to being safe instead of it being unsafe.
But even if individual chemicals are proven to be safe, there's the issue of combining with other chemicals in the wild.
In the case of these containers...I grew up when the local takeout (e.g., Chinese) used paper containers. We survived. These newer "high tech" solutions are silly.
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It's not just teflon. It's most likely also going to be it's successors. Its going to deemed safe for a while till it's not. Most properties desired while at the same time being cheap and durable will leak and will not play nice and with our cells or hormone system. Especially because the goal of most of these chemical is to be cheaper the cheap. (Otherwise we would just use glass)
Yes agreed. Teflon is shorthand for all of the fluorinated hydrocarbons in my mind. I know they’re not identical but they’re close enough and most if not all will end up being found to be toxic. The problem is a lack of a precautionary principle— manufacturers can change one molecule and re-market their product and groups like the EPA have to do extensive research on each new variant to show danger. Molecules are ass…
I'm skeptical that would have made a difference. According to wikipedia teflon pans were introduced in the 1950s, and it was only until the last decade or so that the real dangers (ie. not just the fumes from it overheating) were known.
Pick your poison. Micro-plastics or PFAS. All consumption has a trade off. Some are worse than others. Micro-plastics are causing major endocrine system disruption in youth. Testosterone levels and estrogen levels are getting all our of whack and causing gender related diversification issues that will grow exponentially over time with micro-plastic consumption levels increasing. I would pick PFAS.
Dumb question but…why do humans keep using toxic chemicals for cooking and storing food? Surely we can find something edible.
Fresh food logistics are horrible. Did fresh food online for a few years. Makes things almost impossible. The smart companies try to extent the shelf life as long as possible. And make storage easy. Plastic and chemicals are great for those. Put some chemicals in that make your company profitable while the gov deems it safe? A no brainer. Only non chemical alternative is the freezer.
Waxes are pretty natural chemicals, even when they're refined from oil. We used to use them all the time for fresh food storage. I assume they're more expensive than fluorinated packaging though.
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What do you mean? Dr Tung's is listed under '“Not Our Favorite” Tooth Floss Brands' and considered to contain PFAS (although there appears to be some dispute in the comments).
wait what? what article are you reading? DR Tungs site says "All our floss is free of PTFE and PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances)."
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We're not big on ordering food, or take out in general, but I've been thinking about just providing our own metal/glass containers instead of wasting aluminium and paper. My wife is against it. I think she finds this idea embarrassing but I don't care.
Plastic use in commercial kitchens is pretty high too. Taking boiling hot food and putting plastic wrap over it or putting it in a plastic container is pretty common. With sous vide the food is cooked inside a brand new plastic bag. The only way to avoid it is to be fanatical.
I didn't know what sous vide is. According to the wiki article, containers are either plastic or glass. It boggles the mind. Why would anyone cook in a plastic container
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It's not just teflon. It's most likely also going to be it's successors. Its going to deemed safe for a while till it's not. Most properties desired while at the same time being cheap and durable will leak and will not play nice and with our cells or hormone system. Especially because the goal of most of these chemical is to be cheaper the cheap. (Otherwise we would just use glass)
This is what I said to my wife. She got some new pans that called themselves green and healthy because they weren't teflon. They made our food taste like plastic chemicals. I said to her that the way this works is that teflon was proven to be bad, so they just move onto some other compound that hasn't yet proven to be bad. At a certain point I'd rather say better the devil we know, or stainless steel and cast iron.
The dishwasher has no problem cleaning my pans, no matter how sticky stuff gets.
Dumb question but…why do humans keep using toxic chemicals for cooking and storing food? Surely we can find something edible.
Because coming up with something light that can resist heat(food tends to be hot), moist or straight up water and fats and oils is hard. Plate or heavy container isn't that hard. But something that can be transported or even used to store stuff fore even couple days or weeks is quite hard task.
For example, tiffin carriers, or dabbas, have existed for a very long time, but require frequent cleaning, and take up more space.
When we decided that disposable packaging was an acceptable level of waste to incur, we set ourselves on a path to its ubiquity.