[HN Gopher] PlasticList's Advice for Food Companies
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PlasticList's Advice for Food Companies
Author : Jimmc414
Score : 56 points
Date : 2025-01-02 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Plasticlist Report - Data on plastic chemicals in Bay Area
| foods_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42525633 - Dec 2024
| (188 comments)
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| Why are wood cutting boards outlawed for commercial kitchens.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Although very beautiful and functional, they require proper
| sanitation and careful maintenance. Being, in fact, the wood is
| a living and porous material, it is not advisable to sanitize
| the cutting board daily, as this could risk the proliferation
| of germs and bacteria.
|
| https://www.euroceppi.com/en/blog-en/why-cant-wooden-cutting...
|
| Makes sense to me, I never process meat at home on a wooden
| board. Only plastic and dishwasher after use.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| But couldn't a knife hitting a plastic board shed micro
| particles into your food?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Sometimes you just need to use the least bad option. I tend
| to use my wood board for dry or veg foods, and 100% always
| use the plastic board for meat products.
| stevage wrote:
| Until I read this article, this thought had never occurred
| to me.
|
| Not that I use a plastic board anyway.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| not to mention all the microplastics released in the
| dishwasher when it runs! this sounds like a bad idea to me.
|
| I personally have a dedicated wood cutting board that is
| for meat only. I cook my meat to safe temperatures anyway
| so i'm not too worried about sanitizing it perfectly. I
| just do my best with hot water, soap, and a sponge.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Not really, at least judging by the state of my plastic
| boards. Contrary to wooden boards, they're completely
| unsuitable for dishwashers. Who knows what were these
| wooden boards treated with to make them "food safe".
|
| I hope you don't use any polyester if you're so concerned
| about my plastic board. Just imagine all that plastic
| from washing polyester. Or maybe you have a car with
| seats made out of plastic bottles fished out of the
| ocean?
| lurking_swe wrote:
| yeah, a wooden cutting board isn't great for a dishwasher
| either.
|
| I dislike polyester in general, with the exception of
| exercise shorts and sneakers. I buy cotton or wool if
| possible. Polyester just feels cheap to me, and avoiding
| it also means i have less microplastics exposure. :)
|
| There's no hiding from microplastics. I do take some
| steps to avoid them where it's easy, instead of purposely
| adding more to my body.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Anything waterproof is going to be either leather or
| polyester. There's no getting around it today.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Waxed cotton?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waxed_cotton
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| There's apparently so much plastic already in me that I
| don't care. What I care is not having that chicken fluid
| soaked into the wooden board.
| ska wrote:
| Food safety. It's ironic that in a home setting they can often
| be better than plastic (people typically don't clean plastic
| well enough, or replace often enough), but you can't sanitize
| them like you typically would in a commercial prep area, so
| they are disallowed/discouraged (based on jurisdiction).
| throwup238 wrote:
| Some jurisdictions also ban wood cutting boards in general
| but allow some made of closed-grain hardwood with like maple
| or walnut.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| That's a shame. Hard close grain would damage very sharp
| knives I would think.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Are folks not simply throwing their plastic cutting boards in
| the dishwasher after finishing prep? I basically always do,
| especially after cutting meat...
| newsclues wrote:
| Not everyone has a dishwasher.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Hmmm. It's only in the last four years or so that I've
| even had one, you'd have thought I would have remembered
| that ...
| lurking_swe wrote:
| yay for microplastics (and maybe phthalates) all over my
| utensils, plates and glasses!
|
| on a serious note, I try to avoid putting ANY plastic in a
| dishwasher unless it's silicone. what's wrong with buying a
| cutting board that is used for meat only? do your best
| scrubbing it down with hot water and soap, and it's not an
| issue. Especially if you cook your meat to a safe
| temperature anyway.
|
| Even better, avoid a plastic cutting board to begin with:
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c00924
| 0_____0 wrote:
| At least the dishwasher is doing its best to remove
| surface contamination from its contents.
|
| How does your cutting board compare to tire dust, shed
| particles from textiles, and latex paint in terms of your
| exposure and the danger thereof?
|
| I really do try to triage "things to worry about" by
| severity and likelihood. At my age I'm mostly worried
| about not getting hit by cars and my mental health.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| can't avoid tire dust. Luckily i don't paint often, and i
| don't lick my walls. :-)
|
| I agree it's low on the list in terms of risk (big
| picture). I guess shopping for plastic free alternatives
| isn't stressful to me, i view it like a shopping game.
| Plus the plastic free stuff tends to hold up better
| anyway over the long term!
|
| I do wonder how rinse aid affects this too. Might reduce
| the residue left behind.
| ska wrote:
| Many people generally don't change boards enough, yes. And
| keeping plastic boards after they are quite deeply grooved
| is a problem.
|
| If your dishwasher doesn't have a sanitize cycle (or you
| aren't using it) you may not be getting hot enough at home
| anyway to be up to the standard a commercial kitchen would
| need.
|
| Of course you may not have a dishwasher at all.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The thing about replacing them frequently is that that goes
| against the principle of using something until it is worn
| out. (That is, reducing the amount of plastic we use.) I'm
| not sure if this is a problem, or if there are better
| solutions (I use wooden chopping boards for vegetables and
| fruit of course).
| secstate wrote:
| An excellent point. Most modern germ theory says all bacteria
| is bad. This, despite the fact that our guts are full of
| bacteria and that you simply cannot avoid ingesting bacteria.
| Nevermind that plenty of wood cutting boards are full of
| beneficial bacteria that keeps listeria and e. coli at bay.
|
| Edit: Also there are literally some forms of cheese that you
| cannot make in sanitized stainless steel. The combination of
| bacteria you need needs to be impregnated in the wood.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > Most modern germ theory says all bacteria is bad.
|
| I've never heard anyone say this.
| everdrive wrote:
| Seems like it would be simply enough for a household to just
| have at least two cutting boards:
|
| One for anything which is not likely to harbor dangerous
| bacteria. (eg: vegetables, bread, etc.)
|
| One of meat, which gets cut and then gets cooked, and so
| theoretically a bit of bacteria is no issue in any case.
|
| I can see how this would be much tougher for a commercial
| kitchen, though.
| maxwell wrote:
| Commercial kitchens use color coded cutting boards AFAIK.
|
| https://www.webstaurantstore.com/3053/cutting-
| boards.html?fi...
| Aurornis wrote:
| No, you need to clean and disinfect to kill bacteria
| regardless.
|
| Cooking meat does not kill the toxic byproducts of bacteria.
| Many bacteria produces enterotoxins, which survive cooking
| and cause what we know as "food poisoning".
|
| You would not want your cutting board harboring and growing
| these bacteria under any circumstances, even if you're
| cooking the product you're cutting.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| It's interesting that, if you go to a wet market in many Asian
| countries (e.g. Hong Kong) you will see the butchers cutting
| meat on wooden chopping blocks where the cutting surface is
| _grain up_ - typically a circular section of a log. I thought
| "surely this is the worst possible orientation for the wood?" I
| think they clean the blocks by using hot and cold water to
| expand and contract the wood, and scraping it with the blade of
| their knives.
| NumberWangMan wrote:
| I believe that if you're doing some heavy chopping, that
| orientation keeps the cutting board in good condition for the
| longest time, as you're not cutting through the wood grain
| and taking chunks out of the board.
|
| Separately I've heard that while bacteria can live in wood
| cutting boards, they tend to stay where they are rather than
| migrate out of the board and into the food -- but I can't
| back that up with any actual references.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Plastic cutting boards are mostly just plain undyed
| polyethylene (HDPE)- which is just a fully saturated perfectly
| straight hydrocarbon, similar to saturated fat or wax and lacks
| the kind of reactive functional groups that make other plastic
| polymers toxic. I think it is quite unlikely that HDPE in
| particular is toxic or endocrine disrupting to humans in the
| way a lot of other plastics seem to be.
|
| It's also basically just a very viscous fluid and I suspect
| would flow into grooves when a knife blade hits it, without
| releasing particles like harder more solid plastics would.
|
| Personally, I try to avoid having most plastics contact my food
| and water, but make an exception for HDPE.
|
| In general, each plastic polymer is very different from another
| chemically, and it makes sense to consider their safety
| independently, and not group all plastics together.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The problem is cutting boards break off little bits of
| plastic with use and your body has evolved zero mechanism for
| disposing of microplastics once they are in your system.
|
| https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2023/10/making-
| meals-... https://phys.org/news/2024-12-microplastics-
| multiple-human-t...
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I've looked a bit, and not been able to find evidence of
| HDPE getting into cells, or exhibiting biological toxicity,
| whereas there seems to be quite a bit of evidence of this
| for almost every other type of plastic. Still, I wouldn't
| blame someone for just avoiding all plastic food contact by
| the precautionary principle.
|
| The first study you linked is interesting- it does seem to
| confirm what I suspected, that HDPE does flow on knife
| impact causing it to release less plastic debris than other
| plastics, but still not zero.
|
| The second one seems to be a fairly low quality review
| article looking at what does sound like a concerning issue,
| but doesn't really consider different types of plastic
| independently. It might be useful in the sense of citing a
| lot of papers in this area that could be looked at
| directly.
| timr wrote:
| > Plastic cutting boards are mostly just plain undyed
| polyethylene (HDPE)- which is just a fully saturated
| perfectly straight hydrocarbon, similar to saturated fat or
| wax and lacks the kind of reactive functional groups that
| make other plastic polymers toxic.
|
| This is all just completely made up -- starting with the
| assertion that "plastic polymers" (whatever those are; you're
| not being specific enough to have a debatable claim) are
| "toxic" in the first place.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Everything I said are basic facts about plastic chemistry
| you can verify yourself, but I can elaborate more if that
| is helpful. I work in this area, and some of my research is
| both on discovering new plastic polymers, and new small
| molecule drugs- and trying to develop and discover new
| plastics that are not likely to also act like drugs.
|
| If you'd like a more specific example of what I am talking
| about, take for example Bisphenol A (BPA), one of the
| monomers used in making polycarbonate - which most people
| have heard of, and has now been almost universally
| eliminated from things that contact food and water for
| human consumption. It is chemically similar enough to
| steroid hormones, that it can bind to steroid hormone
| receptors (in particular estrogen receptors), making it a
| potential endocrine disruptor. HDPE does not contain
| complex functional groups that are likely to mimic natural
| hormones and bind to receptors or enzyme active sites in a
| living system.
|
| In general, molecules that contain a lot of aromatic rings,
| or reactive functional groups are more likely to exhibit
| drug like effects or toxicity. Such properties are
| systematically enriched for in chemical libraries used for
| drug discovery, but if trying to avoid unintended
| biological effects, it makes sense to exhibit more caution
| with such molecules.
| BadHumans wrote:
| > take for example Bisphenol A (BPA), one of the monomers
| used in making polycarbonate - which most people have
| heard of, and has now been almost universally eliminated
| from things that contact food and water for human
| consumption.
|
| Why did they find large amounts of BPA in more than a few
| foods they tested if it has been eliminated from food
| manufacturing process?
| altairprime wrote:
| IIRC it's because plastic cutting boards can be put into a
| sanitizing dishwasher with reliable minimum-effort sanitary
| outcomes, whereas wood cutting boards require more rigorous
| care to remain sanitary and so the US generally bans their use
| rather than allowing rigor as an option. In the US, rigor is
| historically something one can trust food producers to
| sacrifice first in favor of turnaround time, profits, etc. so
| it does make sense that they've just given up and disallowed
| it. For possible exceptions, look into bamboo cookware and/or
| sushi preparation?
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| Something this study has me concerned about is that regular
| piping hot cup of coffee served in a plastic cup. I didn't see it
| in the plastic list, bit I'm near certain it's not good for EDC
| and plastic ingestion
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