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 crazy.
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.
That's the root problem. It's "release first" maybe ask questions later. Imagine if food or drug - which also end up in your body - were done the same way.
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.
Of course you can proof the safety of a chemical compound for human consumption (at least to the best of current technical abilities and within an acceptable margin of error). This is done for i.e. drugs thousands of times each year. Yes it costs money and time, but that is about the only serious objection. You could also go to a risk based model, where the burden of proof for groups of chemical compounds shifts based on experience with similar compounds, potential environmental impact, local and global measurements, etc.
The FDA approves medical treatments, many of which are chemicals. They approve treatments based largely on how effective it is as treatment. It's safety profile is studied and considered in a broader context. Many drugs approved by the FDA are incredibly blatantly unsafe. The FDA spends non-trival amounts of effort communicating risks associated with chemicals to doctors and patients.
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".
Scientists show the safety by searching diligently for unsafety and not finding it.
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.
> Many other nations piggy back on their findings.
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.
> Many other nations piggy back on their findings. We need a massive increase in enforcement.
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.
They are permissive because the same people who own stock in the manufacturing industry of these containers and food industries also own stock in healthcare. They make money off of the suffering.
You know, we really don't need this disposable culture. Everyone just expects to get a disposable container everywhere they go (in the West, anyway). But we don't need disposable everything. People can carry their own set of utensils, and even their own food packaging; it's not uncommon for people to bring their own tupperwares to restaurants (wrap it in a decorative cloth to be fancy). Restaurants could also give out more robust packaging that costs more, or take a deposit to encourage returns. Personally, I keep the stronger plastic chinese take-out containers.
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.
And there’s the Chesterton’s fence principle. There must be reasons why restaurants provide utensils and packaging. “Because consumerism we can just stop” is not enough.
> 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.
I thought this was where we were heading with the explosion of popularity with food trucks since they often provide so much quantity of food in "food container" like a burrito, but instead delivery took off.
I somewhat agree, but it's probably more complex than that - We have a country-wide system of reusable aluminum and glass containers that can be returned for refund and a significant portion of the population can't be bothered and just chucks them in the trash (or worse, the gutter). Lots of people don't respond to incentives well.
We buy milk from local dairies in returnable glass bottles (available from some area supermarkets, it's not like we're going to the farm). The deposit is, indeed, $1-$2 (depending on the dairy and size of the bottle).
> We have a country-wide system of reusable aluminium and glass containers that can be returned for refund and a significant portion of the population can't be bothered
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.
If a doctor told you to stop smoking and lower your blood pressure, would you berate him for pushing to make your life miserable?
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 everywhere, and you can't use those plastic dishes without some of them coming off -- into water, into the air, and into your food (and therefore your body).
Microplastics are absolutely hurting the environment, and are contributing to things like endocrine disruption.
In Japan there's no public trash cans. To my astonishment, I quickly adopted to planning my day around whether I'd need to carry trash around with me. It actually worked out fine. In this same way, adapting our lives to whether we'll be carrying around utensils or a tupperware is also fine. From my experience, it doesn't make life miserable.
Man, I have to fight people in bakeries because the majority simply ignore my repeated requests for skipping the plastic bag. Some are fucking mental and simply refuse to comply. Most are incredibly stupid and will never get it. Very few understand immediately.
I think that yes, the main problem is all the entitled fucks demanding "what they paid for"
So, when you order from the average restaurant, you get a meal made of pre-portioned frozen ingredients containing sometimes questionable substances and you also get poisoned by the packaging. And the restaurant industry is complaining. Makes sense. (If you are a German-speaker, ZDFbesseresser is a worthwhile channel to watch. We basically all but stopped going to or ordering from restaurants.)
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.
Only speculating but something tells me mineral water is often bottled while it's at still hot.
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
Sous vide is long waterbath at around 55 C or lower. Not a typical plastic safety issue temperature.
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.
That's because they were never designed to be enviroentally friendly. They were designed to be able to be marketed as environmentally friendly. Big difference. If someone sees it disintegrate they'll think "good, biodegradable" even if that's not actually what's happening. The manufacturers don't care. They know, most of the people raising the hubbub about it don't take the 5 minutes to understand what theyre screeching about, they don't have to appease the environmentalists, they have to appease the pantywads, the kind of people who don't buy animal tested cosmetics but flush them down the drain all the same.
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.
I believe one of the other issues with compostable packaging is when it ends up in landfill, rather than being composted. It breaks down significantly quicker than other packaging in an anaerobic environment resulting in a spike of methane emissions.
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!
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.
They’re chosen because they have other practical qualities that were desirable. Often we don’t fully realize the drawbacks of materials we use with our food until many years after they are widespread.
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.
It used to be a big selling point of Glide that it's made with Teflon/Gore-Tex: it was originally made by Gore and had the Gore logo right on the package.
I’ve switched to using Radius silk floss - it’s better in almost every way compared to the various brands we’ve tried. Only annoying thing is the packaging but it’s plastic free also.
Yea silk floss is really nice. Food caught between your teeth sticks better to the silk than to glide, and getting the silk between your teeth requires slightly more pressure, which feels nice to me.
Yah that link is a lie, and I quote: "It’s important to note that our lab is not looking for PFAS compounds directly, because it’s simply impossible to look for all of them."
"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.
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).
Looking at a lot of what you folks posted, it seems like PFAS are in just about everything, and there's no realistic way to avoid them without an absurd amount of effort. And they are unlikely to be regulated soon.
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?
> Packaging manufacturers typically don’t reveal what’s in their products
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.
It's kind of ridiculous that non-disclosure allows 'trade secret' protection of ingredients when, as you say, a lab can tell us the actual ingredients and relative quantities.
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.
I actually doubt that plant-based plastics are any better in additives than oil based ones. Wasn't there some years ago whole thing about those reusable "bamboo" polymer coffee cups. That actually they do contained not so beneficial chemicals.
We’ll yeah they have to spray cancer poison on the stuff so it’s water and grease resistant. Wax is way too expensive, especially beeswax which wouldn’t have this issue.
You ever wonder what the ingredients are in a paper straw? Don’t look it up. You won’t like it.
Those should be fine since they don't have teflon and teflon-related materials: they are non-BPA plastics with silicon seals. Just don't microwave plastic (There are a lot of "ifs" and "buts" around that, but it is better just to not microwave plastic and be safe.) Granted, you are still throwing away plastic once the snaps break. They also make similar types with bamboo lids and a silicone seal.
(Hopefully if I'm wrong someone will shout me down with the correct answer :)
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.
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 assumed safe and marketable until shown otherwise by underfunded agencies. It’s insane.
They are not close enough! You are destroying your messaging and activism by combining them in this way.
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 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.
Honestly I have no idea why people think we're going to find a safe and equally effective alternative. Most of the PFAS in use are powerful surfactants that change the surface tension of water, break up the lipids in cell membranes, and otherwise interfere with almost all the chemical processes that make life life. Everything from cell walls to capillary action are directly effected by these molecules. The same features that cause them to bioaccumulate so well give them their incredible industrial properties.
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.
I have been saying this for far too long. Surprisingly, after many legal battles the big chems like DuPont still grows every year. Guess that most people pay no attention to these subtle killers.
Glass containers are fantastic and usually cheap enough. Whether it's spice jars or leftover food containers, it all works great. Make sure the lids are also either glass, wood, or stainless steel.
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.
I got glass containers with plastic lids because I figure the lid rarely contacts the food, and I always take it off to microwave... although now that I'm thinking about it, I usually put that plastic splatter guard thing over the container in the microwave which probably isn't much better.
Used to do the same. Thankfully there are glass splatter guards out there, some of them with plastic handles on the outside. More expensive than you would hope though, I suppose because it's such a niche use, but it's not as if you're going to be buying many glass microwave covers in one's lifetime!
I put a paper towel on food in the microwave to stop splatter. As a bonus, I've found a moist paper towel helps when microwaving leftovers that got dehydrated in the fridge.
> If you want recommendations, the Ikea 365+ glass containers are fantastic and very cheap.
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 don't think the glass containers stack well if you stack them separately from their lids, but I have the bamboo and glass ones and they stack flawlessly closed. I have high shelf space though so I know that's not an option for everyone.
> Make sure the lids are also either glass, wood, or stainless steel
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
Good point. I also generally dislike plastic lids because the "snap lock" mechanic always tend to go wonky. The bamboo lids with silicone edges tend to be the least hassle.
I have a set of glass containers with tight sealing lids. A little heaver and doesn't pack together as small as plastic does when not in use, but it's a lot easier to clean
Mailing manufacturers is a drop in the ocean. The only way to shut it all down is to implement a comprehensive ban on PFAS in all food-related products. In order to achieve this, several regulatory and legislative actions would likely need to take place.
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.
The other day I tried making scrambled eggs in my cast iron pan for the first time in years. Turns out that years of use had finally got it to the point where the eggs actually cooked beautifully without sticking at all! I used butter, of course, but I'd have used the same amount of butter in any pan.
Cast iron works great for me. Another popular option is carbon steel. Both options require a bit of a learning curve as far as care/cleaning goes, but once you have a well-seasoned pan, eggs are easy.
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.
I recently switched to this guy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000K9FKC4 and, after seasoning, I can still cook my eggs in a normal-amount of butter. It's not quite as easy as non-stick but getting better with use.
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 use a stainless steel baking pan, line the insides with a foil square, and spray it with a little PAM. Put it in an air fryer for 10 minutes at 178C flip it and do the other side for 2 minutes at 160C.
Carbon steel is much better than cast iron! It takes some time to build up a nonstick coating (seasoning), but once you do fried eggs will glide around like they’re on ice.
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.
A well used cast iron pan with the proper technique will be just as non stick as teflon, and much more versatile.
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
We use one cast iron pan and just leave it on the stove. It's basically self-cleaning if you use cooking oil, just a wipe with a paper towel will get the burnt bits out from the previous meal.
To make fried eggs in a non-nonstick pan? Of course you do. You need enough so it doesn't stick. There no technique that can rescue egg stuck to a pan.
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.
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.
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.