How to consume less plastic
Microplastics gush out of our taps and flake off cookware. They find their way into the yolks of eggs, and deep into meat and vegetables. But if we take certain steps, we can eat less of them.
You can't see them, but they are there, hundreds of miniscule particles of plastic lurking in your steak. As it cooks in a hot pan, these unwelcome guests liquify, oozing into the meat before solidifying again as it cools down on your plate. And they're not just in steak. Unwittingly, you are eating them all the time.
These interlopers in our food are microplastics and nanoplastics, particles of less than 5mm or between 1 and 1,000 nanometres respectively. But how do they get into our food? And, in a world infused with bits of plastic, what can we do to reduce exposure in our diets?
If you take a closer look around your kitchen, you'll start to recognise where microplastics enter our meals: they flake off the spatula you use to cook breakfast, leak from the plastic water bottle you put in your child's backpack and float in the cup of tea on your desk. They're also buried deep within the foods we eat, from hamburgers to honey.
Once you start looking for them, the exposure points for microplastics can quickly feel overwhelming. But, importantly, it is also possible to make changes to reduce the amount of microplastics we are exposed to in our kitchens.
"There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in your house that's really easy to address," says Sheela Sathyanarayana, a professor of paediatrics and adjunct professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Research Institute.
"I do feel like it gives people a sense of control over their own lives, and we do have that a little bit more than we might think."
Microplastics are in fruit and vegetables, honey, bread, dairy, fish and meat from hamburgers to chicken. They are inside the yolks of eggs (and in the whites too).
One study of 109 countries found the amount of these plastics people typically consumed in 2018 was more than six times what it was in 1990. Microplastics can get into our food when plants take them in by the roots, or animals consume them in feed. (Read more about how microplastics infiltrate the food system.)
"If you farm on a piece of land that was previously industrial and the soil is contaminated, [there is] potential for those plants to accumulate the contaminants in the soil," says Sathyanarayana. Once that the crops are harvested, there are many more opportunities for contamination during processing. "Factories use a huge amount of plastic to be effective and to have high throughput for their products."
For some foods, it is possible to get rid of some of the microplastics before you eat them. One study in Australia found that people were typically consuming 3-4mg of plastic per serving of home-cooked rice, and up to 13mg per serving of pre-cooked rice. The microplastics were just as present in rice that was packaged in paper, as in rice that came in plastic packaging. However, the researchers found that rinsing the rice reduced the microplastics served up by 20-40%. Washing meat and fish, too, can reduce microplastics – but not eliminate them.
For other foods, rinsing is impossible. Salt often contains microplastics due to contamination at mining and processing points. A 2018 study found that 36 out of the 39 salt brands analysed contained microplastics. Sea salt had the highest levels of microplastics, likely due to the high levels of microplastic pollution in the world's lakes, reservoirs, rivers and oceans.
Both Sathyanarayana and Annelise Adrian, a senior programme officer with the plastics and material science team at World Wildlife Fund, are proponents of switching to fresh, whole foods or, at the very least, avoiding ultra-processed foods whenever possible. "The more ultra-processed a food is, the more likely it is to have high plastic contamination, because there are so many touch points in a factory making that food," says Sathyanarayana.
Reducing the amount of plastic in the food chain will take more than changes within our individual kitchens. Globally, if the amount of plastic debris polluting the environment was cut by 90%, it could halve the amount of plastics consumed by people in the most affected countries.
"Plastic is a cheap, great material," says Vilde Snekkevik, a marine biologist and microplastics researcher at the........
© BBC
