Hidden Dangers in your kitchen and how can it affect your health and make you fat

A recent study published by the Huffington post suggested that women who work in plastic manufacturing facilities have a 5 times greater cancer rate vs. those women that don’t work with plastic. 1

What about chemicals from plastic that you consume with your food and drinks on the daily basis?

Plastic is everywhere even in your food, bad news.

More bad news is that very small amounts of these chemicals found in plastic are required to put your health at risk.

But the GOOD news is,

You can eliminate many plastics from your life and from your house.

Start with your kitchen.

Why Plastic? What is wrong with plastic?

Toxins, Endocrine Disruptors And Carcinogens Migrate From The Molecules Of Different Plastic Containers To Their Contents. 22

One if the best documentaries I have come across on how plastic effects our health is: Plastic Planet.  Here is the trailer:

Get the full movie if you can.  This film had a profound effect on my family and me.  I was on a week long mission to eliminate every last bit of plastic from my kitchen. It didn’t work!   But I eliminated about 95%.  Good enough. 

 Plastics labelled – BPA Free doesn’t cut it

You may reason that as long as your plastic is BPA (Bisphenol A) free, you are safe.

Fair assumption, but the research shows that there over 400 chemical compounds used to make plastic.  Only a dozen or so have been tested.  Many of those tested, like BPA, Phthalates and Dioxins are concluded to be highly toxic.

What are our chances that other chemical compounds that haven’t yet been studied and analysed are safe for you and me? I have my doubts!

Plastic makes you fat!  How?

There are endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) found in Plastic.  These chemicals closely mimic hormones, so your body can’t tell them apart from the hormones your body makes.  These EDCs literally instruct your body to store weight, as if there was a famine.

Heating Plastic

The chemicals found in plastics are released into your food more than fifty timesfaster by exposure to heat.

For example, eating hot food with a plastic spoon or fork, eating hot soup from a plastic bowl, cooking or warming your food in a plastic container in a microwave, using a plastic spatula or spoon to cook your food, drinking hot liquid from plastic cups or paper cups lined with plastic, boiling your water in a plastic kettle, making coffee in a plastic coffee machine, and so on.

How exactly do we get these chemicals found in plastic into our system?

Eating

We use plastic utensils, cutlery, trays, micro-wave safe containers, plastic lunch containers, canned food, milk and other paper containers that are lined with a thin plastic film.

Please note, that by caned food I am referring to food used in cans, not glass.  These foods are often poured hot into plastic lined metal cans.  The effect: long after the temperature has cooled down, the plastic continues to release chemicals into our food.  And it releases these chemicals even faster in the case of acidic foods such as tomatoes, fruit, beans, and juice.

What about ready made meals in plastic containers or in plastic bags, those that you just pop into the microwave or immerse the plastic bag into hot water to cook? You cook your food in plastic. Stay away from these!

Dishwasher

Washing your plastic utensils in the dishwasher will unlock a chemical release, meaning that even with subsequent normal use, these utensils will continue to release toxic chemicals.

These include cooking and eating utensils, spatulas, ladles, plastic cups, plastic plates, your baby plates, spoons as well as plastic lunch and microwave safe containers.

Drinking

Plastic coffee mugs and water bottles leach out BPA into your water, they do it even faster, much faster, when the plastic gets hot.  Have you ever left a plastic water bottle in your hot car and when you drank the hot water it tasted like plastic?  I did, and if you really paid attention, your water really did taste like plastic.

Baby bottles

These are just as harmful as any other plastic bottles. And as you already know, if you wash them in the dishwasher they will release chemicals into your babies water much faster.

Drinking water from Plastic bottles makes you fat

Plastic bottles are made from chemicals like Bisphenol A (BPA) and are disturbing our endocrine systems by mimicking estrogen hormones in our bodies. It tells our bodies to start storing fat.  Your body is given a signal that you are in a starvation period, so it will store all the calories that it gets by slowing down your metabolism.

So, if you think you are going to lose some weight by drinking water from plastic water bottles, think again.  You will probably put some weight on instead.

Paper cups

Your paper cup, that you get your tea or your coffee in every morning from the local coffee shop is lined with plastic.  It is very hard to see but if you soak a piece of this paper cup in hot water, you will be able to peel paper layers off the plastic base, the one that is in direct contact with your coffee or tea!

Other coffee cups are made from what it looks like stiff foam.  These are also made from plastic.  They are just as unhealthy.

Now Lets See What We Can Do to Reduce Plastic in our Diet

You will not be able to eliminate all plastic from your house and your kitchen, but if you eliminate the majority of the most harmful plastics this is a good start.

So do yourself and your family a favour, eliminate as much of the plastic from your house as you can.  Plastic that touches your food, plastic that you use for cooking and eating.

Start with the easiest things first like utensils that touch hot food. Start with items that you have already put in the dishwasher many times before: plates, cups, ladles, spatulas… Start with your babies dishes.  This is the shortest route and it is relatively inexpensive.

Continue with replacing other plastics, like small appliances: kettles, coffee machines, microwave dishes…

All of the above are easily replaced by glass, ceramic and stainless steel.

Bottom Line

Continue clearing your kitchen from plastic step by step and replacing it with stainless steel, ceramic and glass.  Concerning stainless steel water bottles please see more on Stainless Steel Bottles

The more plastic you eliminate from your house, the more you reduce the toxic load on you and your children.

It is important that you become aware of the problem now, so that you can make a conscious effort to avoid the chemicals derived from plastics that end up in your diet.

Environment

In addition, plastic has a huge and detrimental effect on our environment.  By eliminating the majority of plastic from your life you will also be helping the environment! Two great goals at once!   How cool is that!

Note:shared from proorganicliving.com