Compostable fast-food packaging can emit volatile PFAS
cen.acs.org
cen.acs.org
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 crazy.
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.
That's not proof. A ten year drug trial may fail to show problems that take 20 years to surface, but that doesn't mean the drug is safe.
I suspect a lot of these chemicals fall into that hard-to-find-problems category. Only when they are an overwhelming part of our environment for decades or even generations will we start to understand the effects.
So this is not just a matter of money. It's a hard problem.
Outside of this example, proving a negative on this scale is a 1000x larger problem than proving there are no leprechauns. No one has proven there are no leprechauns. It is logically possible to prove a negative, but we simply cannot observe all of the places a leprechaun might be hiding at the same time. The best thing we can do is list off all the places we know there are no leprechauns. This is very different than "proof".
This is not true at all. The European Union has been the principal regulatory body for the world for a few decades now, with other countries reactively shaping their policies in the wake of EU regulations.
I don’t think it as much an enforcement issue as a standards issue - we shouldn’t presume anything is safe without strict standards for the science proving it.
Back in the day, the disposable container was food. You'd get a portable pie (meaning a meat pie, usually) in what was called a "coffin" - basically a bread bowl or pastry shell that was mostly thrown away after you'd eaten the inside of the pie. Summer rolls and spring rolls have their own wrapper. Meat on a stick was pretty common. Rice balls could contain fish or vegetables. Samosas would have vegetable or meat fillings.
In Germany it's 25 cents for plastic and aluminum. 8cents for glass.
A lot of people just throw the glass away in public bins, because a) glass is heavy and b) 8 cents is too little incentive.
The 25 cent cans most people return. If it was 1€ a glass bottle you bet your ass people would return them.
You can bet your ass we return them.
Typically metal is sorted out of every trash flow, it's really easy to detect and separate. Glass and metal are both 100% recyclable. If the incentive covers the cost of recycling / recovering the materials, it does not matter if people throw them away, they are just throwing away their own money.
> Summer rolls and spring rolls
Are served on a dish. May be picked up from a dish by clean hands, but may not be moved more than 5 ft away from a dish.
> Meat on a stick
Is on a stick, usually disposable. Which is barely a “packaging”, too, certainly a bamboo stick is not an edible packaging, not to mention metal skewers.
> Rice balls
Are always eaten from non-edible containers, e.g. Saran wraps, bamboo leaves. Nori is not a packaging. Use of disposable gloves while making is recommended too.
> Samosa
Is served on a dish.
I think that yes, the main problem is all the entitled fucks demanding "what they paid for"
Carry this, carry your own reusable bags. But also get rid of the car which could hold these things for you.
Why is there such a push to make life miserable for people?
You don't need 2 tonnes of metal and 100+hp to carry "your own reusable bags"
Get saddlebags for your bike.
Our collective addiction to the conveniences of modern life is leading to the proliferation of carcinogenic materials and destroying the environment. Generations upon generations lived without these spoils uphill both ways without complaint. If the slightest suggestion of lifting some weight and going for a walk is enough to induce abject misery, it might be a good time to re-evaluate the way we do things.
Microplastics are absolutely hurting the environment, and are contributing to things like endocrine disruption.
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
Cooking in plastic (or any "original package") has a food safety point in restaurants. Keeping it sealed until the outside is sterilized reduces possible contamination. Immersion also makes for easier and faster heating.
Huh? This article is about academics doing research.
Just use paper for Christ's sake and quit it with all these shenanigans. Brown, recycled paper, maybe some wax. And glass for bottles and things. It's all you need.
https://www.worldcentric.com/leafplus/
I assume the new coating is some kind of polymerized plant material.
That’s a bold assumption.
This is worth noting as well.
Obviously, many landfills now collect and use the methane, but many don't and it contributes to greenhouse emissions.
Like many innovations to go green, it's complicated and often hijacked by corporations to sell products.
Compostable packaging isn't the solution, reusable packaging is!
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.
"I don't want to use oil when frying eggs."
I know all the arguments that follow, I'm just sayin'.
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.
It’s also annoying that people lump PTFE with other PFAS when it is pretty clearly less of an issue (note: not completely trouble free) in most cases.
Nope. I bought it because I absolutely hate flossing, and I absolutely need to floss, so I bought Oral B Glide as an effort to get myself to floss.
The two might have things in common during manufacturing, but as a final product delivered to a consumer? Utterly different.
It’s amazing when you look at this measure it says that Glide has 240k ppm (24% of entire product mass) was organic flourine!!
https://www.mamavation.com/beauty/toxic-pfas-dental-floss-to...
The actual FA:
https://www.ehn.org/pfas-floss-2658203711.html
And the OP:
https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/Fast-f...
"levels of organic fluorine, a marker for PFAS" - yah, that's basically an outright lie. Flourine is also a marker for Teflon (PTFE) which is 100% not a problem.
This is junk science taken to it's ultimate level.
So realistically, what's going to happen to people? We're all inevitably going to accumulate a bunch of PFAS, so what exactly can I expect for the future of my health?
It seems crazy to me that they don't have to disclose this.
If it's in contact with the food, it will leak into the food and then in our system. We have food ingredients listed on stickers, why not packaging materials?
I can understand keeping secrets about the manufacturing process in the name of competitive capitalism, but at the end of the day the material ends up in our hands (and mouth), so we can always send it to a lab and get its composition.
We could skip this whole "let's do studies to analyze what we were eating daily for all this time" if the industry had to give us the list. If they don't know either, have them do the studies before releasing the product.
We should require disclosure for trade secret protection of chemically-based products. At least to the EPA or FDA. They can still keep the actual recipe and blending instructions secret.
You ever wonder what the ingredients are in a paper straw? Don’t look it up. You won’t like it.
https://www.costco.com/snapware-pyrex-18-piece-glass-food-st...
What should I use instead?
(Hopefully if I'm wrong someone will shout me down with the correct answer :)
does the legislation have a formal definition for "plastic"?
Figuring out what does and does not have PFAS on it to protect my family is exhausting and infuriating. I’ve emailed with manufacturers, sent stuff to labs; basically, no one seems to know how much materials like this are used on every day products.
The one "downside" is you do need adequate cushion if you're taking it on the go say for lunch or to a dinner gathering, but even a towel wrapped around suffice.
If you want recommendations, the Ikea 365+ glass containers are fantastic and very cheap. Again avoiding the "plastic lid" variant they have for extra measure.
Plastic lid is normally fine, plastics leech at high temperatures, you arent normally heating food with the lid on. .Even eith a fully steel container you need a bit of soft material lile silicone to ensure waterproof seal
I beg to differ. The IKEA 365+ non-glass containers are fantastic. The glass ones don’t stack properly and tend to have little glass shards break off when unstacking them. I can imagine a v2 being better.
I also keep my rices and legumes in bamboo boxes.
Are you in the US? I don’t think I’ve seen these around.
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)
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 assumed safe and marketable until shown otherwise by underfunded agencies. It’s insane.
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.
Tell a manufacturer "stop adding Teflon it's not safe" and they will laugh at you. Tell them "stop adding PFAS it's not safe" and they might actually listen.
> Teflon is shorthand for all of the fluorinated hydrocarbons in my mind.
That's a VERY un-smart thing to do!
Saying they are the same because of the molecule is like complaining salt is unsafe before it has chlorine in it.
The dishwasher has no problem cleaning my pans, no matter how sticky stuff gets.
Glass is safest and extremely long lasting but indeed more difficult to work with.
I really want more details here! Sounds super interesting.
The thing is, any more oil than that just stays in the pan. Fried eggs don't absorb oil.
So put plenty of oil in the pan, because it won't wind up on your plate. There's zero reason to skimp, otherwise you'll just get eggs that stick.
You have the added bonus of being able to put them into the oven, and you can get a much better sear than on teflon.
- clean well with strong soap and a metal sponge until it's one smooth silver surface
- put a few drops of flax oil on a paper and rub the pan with it (also inner sides)
- take off all excessive oil with a dry kitchen paper
- remove any non-metal handles from the pan
- open your windows
- heat your oven to the max and put the pan in for about 20 minutes
- repeat about 5 times
After using the pan, wipe with a kitchen paper. Maybe a little bit of warm water, better not. Never any soap.
Just use a stainless steel pan and a pat of butter.
There's no option to not use fat/oil if you don't want non-stick.
Cast-iron is not a great choice for eggs because it holds too much heat, so if your temperature goes too high up you can't bring it back down quick enough and your eggs will crisp/burn. And both cast-iron and carbon steel are a pain to maintain (keep seasoned and avoid rust). (Cast iron is ideal for other uses though, particularly searing meat, where holding heat is the main feature.)
Also, the idea that a cast-iron (or carbon steel) patina is somehow non-stick is a myth that keeps getting repeated. It's better than the raw metal (and therefore quite necessary for those materials) but it's nothing like an actual non-stick pan. Nowhere even close. And you still always need a normal amount of oil for cooking in them, in fact just for maintaining the patina.
Last year I tried switching to stainless but it was just too much trouble for my daily egg cooking. I just never figured it out.
I use cast iron for many/most dinners but I wanted the sloped sides and reduced weight for flipping eggs.
I still use the non-stick occasionally for things like crepes but moving from daily use to weekly or less seems like a win.
I have a Mauviel that I love, but the Matfer Bourgeat is better for eggs because it doesn’t have the steel rivets on the inside of the pan. Both are made in France and cost like $70.
This is a solid explainer on carbon steel pans: https://youtu.be/-suTmUX4Vbk
If you version of cooking is "put anything in the pan at whatever temperature and expect it to not stick" then stay with teflon because nothing will save you
Stop lumping them into the same category, they are NOT the same.
Teflon is completely safe, PFAS is completely unsafe. It doesn't get more different than that!
I would pick PFAS.