Plastic food

Sometimes bad ideas start out in all innocence. At some point, someone thought it might be a good idea to showcase talented people in a “talent contest” on television. Somehow that has morphed into the soft-scripted manipulation of people searching for their minutes of fame as they compete in activities that were never intended for competition, from cooking to home renovation to daily living. In the same way, at some point it was thought that it might be a good idea to package food in plastic. That too is presenting problems.

Plastics often contain things called “phthalates”. Phthalates are a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and harder to break. They are often called plasticisers and are used in hundreds of products, such as vinyl flooring, glues, detergents, lubricating oils, automotive plastics, plastic clothes (raincoats) and personal-care products (soaps, shampoos, hair sprays and nail polishes). Phthalates are also used widely in polyvinyl chloride plastics, which are used to make products such as plastic bags, garden hoses, inflatable toys, blood-storage containers, medical tubing and children’s toys.

The problem with phthalates is that they have a hormone-like action in the body and have been linked to health issues like damaged sperm, premature breast development in girls, and premature births. For these reasons lots of research is going on to establish how much phthalate might be getting into human bodies.

This latest study was done by researchers from the University of Texas, who sampled 72 commonly consumed foods and beverages from supermarkets in Albany, New York. There was some level of phthalate in every product tested. The amount of phthalate found in the food was below what the Environmental Protection Agency regards as “safe” but it raises concerns over cumulative consumption and there are also those who dispute those “safe” levels. Of course the findings can only be definitely said to apply to the area specifically tested, but given the globalisation of food practices it is highly likely that similar findings would be made around the developed world.

The answer to all that, of course, is don’t buy your food wrapped in plastic and ideally grow it in your own organic garden. What you can’t grow yourself you can get from local farmers markets or food swap meets. It might not be as convenient as popping in to the supermarket, but then phthalates aren’t all that convenient for your body in the end either.

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