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> For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.

Glass bottles for newborns as they can be easily sterilised, and be sure they have a silicone nipple that also forms the seal to the glass of the bottle.

Once they get old enough to use their own, use the playtex disposable liners. No sterilisation or cleaning required, so you only have to do the nipples, which by this age can be just soap and water.

http://www.chemicalsubstanceschimiques.gc.ca/challenge-defi/...

The Think Baby non-polycarbonate bottles appear the best for a rigid bottle, but personally I wouldn't trust something that's going to be washed extremely frequently, scrubbed with brushes or thrown in a dishwasher. You use them for up to 3-4 years, so I wouldn't trust reusing a bottle as it will age.

The playtex liners was below the detection threshold on their test, which was to put boiling water in them and then hold the temperature at 60C for 2 hours. For me that's more than safe enough for the 35C milk I'm putting in it for my kid to drink within 2 minutes.

I honestly think disposable is the way to go, because it eliminates the risk of the materials degrading. These tests are on new, not 1 year old, so the only ones that are valid in every use scenario are the disposable ones.

you completely lost me on the disposable defense.

manufacture produces much more stress than your cleaning would, causing much more to be free on the surface

the argument is chemical degradation with age, not physical abrasion. You leave plastic out in the sun and reactions occur that can depolymerize the plastic, releasing monomeric components. In the case of polycarbonate, those components include bisphenol.

aluminum is toxic to humans, and has to be coated to not leak into your food.

Aluminum is not toxic when it comes to the levels that might end up in your food. Aluminum hydroxide is an FDA approved antacid.

Aluminum cans are coated not to keep the aluminum out of your food, it's to keep acidic food from corroding the aluminum.

I think you're right, people in third world countries use lots of aluminum in their cookware (Thailand, while not being third world) is a good example of a place which uses it a lot in cookery.

Just don't use aluminum citrus squeezers or cook your tomato sauce in aluminum pots (as their useful lifetimes will suffer, and the food might take on a weird taste.)

It would also seem that most of the danger from aluminum cookery, where there is such, comes from impurities in the recycled aluminum (lead, and other hazardous metals).

We use a lot of aluminum cookware in the US, too. Just take a look inside restaurant kitchens.

That's true, but aluminum cookware is not as pervasive as it is in 3rd world countries, also, I'm willing to bet, the aluminum in US cookware does not have as much in terms of impurities --not guarantees on cheap imported cookware though.

But the assertion was that aluminum itself is toxic, so the presence of impurities is irrelevant.

yes, because all these third world countries have a good record of keeping a good log on what's going on...

No but, cynically, they do provide the populations to study the effects of these things on people.

Maybe their populations are dying of something else before the effects would become clear.

Call me paranoid, but all "FDA approved" means is that I won't die right away

That's what "perfectly healthy" means too, though.

Aluminum has been consistently linked to Alzheimer's disease, and is toxic at those levels [1]:

> very small amounts of Al are needed to produce neurotoxicity and this criterion is satisfied through dietary Al intake

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21157018

So do we eventually go back to wooden or leather water vessels?

I wonder if those will see a comeback of sorts by the 'lets go back to the past for inspiration' folks. Not that the past does not have good things but lots of paleo things are just not that scalable... I mean, imagine all the leather we'd need..

I'd guess that more people own leather shoes and/or gloves than Nalgene bottles, and couches / jackets / automobile interiors surely use more leather than a canteen would.

Thanks for the recommendation. I've bought myself a glass bottle and I've never looked back. I'm going to be purchasing larger ones for water/juice storage in the fridge and probably a hydro flask for movement.

The transition from plastic to glass isn't that hard at all, you just have to be slightly more careful when it comes to carrying one. Simply throwing the bottle across the room to somebody becomes dangerous as compared to throwing a plastic water bottle.

This year I'll be moving to storing my leftover food in glass jars, [0] le parfait do really good ones (they are expensive but worth it in my opinion). I'm still figuring out how I will store frozen meat I get from the farm.

[0] http://www.leparfait.com/

I own a Klean Kanteen, which is also stainless steel, and I really like it. But when I bought it and looked into the matter, a lot of people were talking about how stainless steel water bottles made in the far east could contain traces of other metals that may not be as safe.

> For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.

Use stainless steel baby bottles. There are couple different companies that make them, we use Klean Kanteen. There is some plastic (the ring to tighten the nipple down) but the liquid never touches anything but stainless steel and silicone.

For anyone else who was wondering about their Nalgene, they're BPS free, apparently: http://nalgene.com/why-nalgene/ (funny smells aside)

> For baby bottles... I guess the search is on for the next best type of bottle.

Is it possible to make stainless steel baby bottles?

I know it's certainly possible to make glass baby bottles.

It's a minor point but bottles that provide any insulating value are sort of worrying to use as the risk of giving a baby a hot drink increases and glass baby bottles are sometimes thick glass. It turns out that getting up for the 9th time, totally exhausted, makes reliably noticing anything hard. Disclaimer: I have only used one glass baby bottle ever

Allow a drop to fall on the bottom of your wrist, that'll tell you quite quickly.

If your child is tolerant, just don't heat the bottle. After trying various warming schemes with screaming twins waiting for food, we just began giving them their food right from the fridge and they didn't complain. Haven't warmed a bottle since.*

* for various reasons we fed with formula only and premeasure formula and water before bed for quick mixing in the middle of the night.

We gave our kid formula with room temperature water for the entire duration of him being on formula. We never heated it ever, and he was fine with it.

How much would you kill for a barista style formula dispenser? :-) First world problem, I know, but I always imagined, 'click-click' and getting exactly the right amount. New fridges have water dispensers where you can set the ounces on the door, and they dispense exactly that amount. I wonder if they can set the temperature precisely too? I guess just another way our kids will not face the same set of challenges. (Not necessarily 'have it better' just applying their energy differently with a whole different set of expectations to go along with it)

Nestle has already done it: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/may/26/nestle-l...

This was exactly the solution we got to. The do-gooders were incensed at the system. Not having to heat it up or fart about at night (once the child is trained) is excellent. And as a bonus, our tap water is very clean, so sterilized bottle and tap water for formula. Refrigerated is even better, well done! Question. Twins, have you ever slept?

With my first two children, they took it at room temperature. Third was born in the winter and tap water was considerably colder and he wouldn't take it.

I would heat an exact amount of water for a specific time in the microwave to get a specific temperature. I started reducing the time in the microwave by one second a day and he never noticed.

Why do you heat drinks for the baby? I never understood why. It's the same nutritional value, and it becomes really messy when you're outdoors if they expect it.

Glass or ya know, glass...

We have about 10 Life Factory bottles on rotation for twins. They have silicone sleeves, and have only had one break over the course of a year (it fell from a small distance without a cap and hit the exposed top and shattered; others have fallen without incident).