Break up with Plastic

Break up with plastic!

 

Have you noticed that plastic is absolutely everywhere? Plastic may be ubiquitous in our world, but that does NOT mean it is safe. It is time to officially cut ties and break up with plastic! It is like that bad boyfriend that you know isn’t good for you, but he’s always there and keeps hanging around. It is convenient and easy. It seems harmless, right?

What’s the big deal you may ask? What you don’t know can hurt you. Cancers, infertility, miscarriage, hormone disruption (especially in women but also in men), obesity, childhood developmental issues, early puberty and more are on the rise in our country. There is so much research that has linked plastics to be a potential contributor to many of these conditions.

BPA (bisphenol A) gets most of the attention. Most BPA exposure comes from food and beverages. We’ve been made to falsely believe that if something is BPA free then it must be safe. I’m here to tell you not to fall for that. There are far more chemicals and issues associated with plastic than you can even begin to imagine. BPAs have been removed from many products, but they’ve been replaced with other chemical components. Some of the replacements have yet to be thoroughly tested for safety and potential issues. Phthalates are chemical compounds that can also be found in plastic containers and in so many other items everyday items we use. Phthalates are another very concerning group to avoid. They can be found not only in food packaging and fast foods but also in personal care items, medications, children’s toys, home products, cleaners, furniture and more.

Plastics from sippy cups to food packaging can leach into food and drinks, especially under heat. Plastic chemicals can mimic estrogen and significantly alter hormones, even in products that are BPA free. If you’ve been suffering from any type of hormonal issue, plastic could be a significant cause. The hardest part for most people about clean living if they aren’t sick is thinking that none of these things are impacting their life. They are fine, and there is no need for them to change anything they are doing. These types of exposures to plastics may not be putting you in the hospital today, but your continued exposure day in and day out from multiple sources may be building up in your body and unknowingly harming you. Most people don’t want to take action until they are forced, and then it may be too late to reverse the damage. I was forced to change, but I’m now so thankful for the knowledge I’ve now gained to share with others.

So, what should you do to limit your exposure? As you’ll see from my photo, there is still some plastic with the replacement products (mainly lids for the glass Tupperware).While it seems virtually impossible to remove all plastic from you life, the best solution to keep yourself and family safe is to eliminate as much plastic as possible from your home, kitchen, and office.  Here are some quick tips and strategies we’ve instituted in our home:

 

• Extremely limit or stop drinking bottled water. NEVER drink it if it has been sitting in the car in the heat. Don’t store your extra water bottles in the garage in the heat or leave them in the car for an extended period after shopping. Plastic may leach into the water you drink, especially under heat.
• Don’t reuse plastic water bottles.
• Avoid canned foods. If you must buy canned food, eat only canned food that is BPA free. Buy food in glass jars if and when possible.
• Avoid processed foods, bagged foods, and fast foods as much as possible; plastics leach into packaged foods.
• Don’t steam veggies in plastic bags in the microwave. I hate when I see veggie bags that are frozen or fresh that say steam in bag. Don’t do it! You are introducing more chemicals into your body. I’ve also never seen one of those bags say BPA free.
• Do not place hot food in plastic baggies.
• Stop drinking coffee out of those throwaway cups with the plastic lids and the plastic straws! It isn’t safe. Styrofoam is also a form of plastic. Are you a coffee fanatic?  Take your own cup with you to your favorite coffee house. They shouldn’t have an issue placing your coffee in it.
• High fat and acidic items increase the migration risk in plastic. Don’t use plastic crock pot liners. I love the idea in theory to create less mess, but please don’t cook your food in plastic. You are introducing more chemicals into your body.
• Don’t drink out of plastic cups; don’t put hot drinks in any kind of plastic cups.
• Never reheat food in any kind of plastic containers, plastic food storage containers, plastic bags or plastic freezer meal containers whether it is BPA free or not. Just because something says microwave safe doesn’t mean that chemicals from it won’t leach into your food when heated. It simply means it won’t melt the container. If you must use plastic storage containers, wait until the food has completely cooled before placing it in the container.
• Get rid of your plastic colanders, plastic silverware, plates, bowls, cutting boards, etc.
• Never cook with plastic utensils.

Look, reality is this transition can be extremely overwhelming and expensive. When you really start looking around at what you have, you may be surprised to find how much plastic you actually have. You may feel like it will be impossible to replace everything any time soon. So, don’t feel like you have to do this all in one day or even in a week. I remember freaking out when I thought I couldn’t even drink out of plastic water bottles again! I thought yeah right! That won’t happen. Even with my doctor’s orders to get rid of all plastic, it has taken some time, and we still have some plastic lingering in our kitchen that we rarely use. Slowly over time phase plastic out of your life. It can be done. It will help your health and your family’s health more than you know. The expense is actually going toward better health. Remember that if the cost begins to stress you out. It actually may prevent future illness which may save you an untold amount in the future.

So, you may be asking what should I put in my kitchen then? What brands can I buy and where can I find replacements? Let me also note that many of these items still have plastic lids, but they are the best I’ve found. These products below are here as a recommendation and a cleaner option for you. Amazon is fantastic for convenience and has very competitive pricing, but please price compare on your own.

• Glass water bottles-  My favorite brand is Life Factory.  Here is one of the exact ones I have. I have three (two of this size and one smaller one), and my husband has two. I prefer the larger one, and I prefer the flip top lid, not the straw lid.  It has a silicone sleeve around it in case the bottle is dropped. So many retailers are now on board with the glass water bottles.  You can find them at Target, Whole Foods, Amazon, Home Goods, TJ Maxx and more. There are tons available now.
• Stainless steel water bottles- My husband received one of these as a gift. He likes it a lot, but I see him use the Life Factory glass one more often. He really likes taking the stainless steel ones to the tennis court.
• Stainless steel straws-If you are a straw girl or guy, never fear stainless is here. These have been an awesome addition to my life! Stainless straws rock! I use them in my Yeti or Rtic cup every morning when I drink my hot tea to try and protect my teeth from stains. They do get very hot when you drink hot tea or coffee, so use caution.
• Stainless steel spatulas, spoons, and more-These can be found anywhere kitchen items are sold. One of my favorite places to buy them for a great price is TJ Maxx or HomeGoods. Here is our favorite brand, Oxo. Target also sells Oxo as well as Bed, Bath and Beyond. If you are like us, we get a Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon in the mail every other day. Oxo makes great quality products that last.
• NOTE ON SILICONE: We do have a few silicone spatulas and spoons. I rarely use them with heat. Even though there are a ton of silicone products out everywhere (especially for kids), the jury is still out on its safety or harmfulness. I hope more will come to light on silicone soon. We use silicone utensils for cold or room temperature recipes where we need to scrape something out of our plastic food processor or plastic Vitamix, and we don’t want to scratch it by a using stainless steel spoon. I haven’t been able to find either one of those aforementioned appliances in glass. Also note that I never put hot liquids in either plastic blenders or food processors. If I need to do so, I let the hot food cool first. It is much safer and reduces risk of migration of plastic into your food.
• Stainless steel colanders-This set has two different sizes. I highly recommend having multiple sizes. We have several, and we recently purchased a large stainless one at IKEA. We use different size colanders almost every day to rinse veggies and fruit and to drain ground, cooked meat. We batch cook our meat typically in quantities of 2 lbs-5 lbs. We use large colanders to drain the fat off the meat. I mainly use this type of colander for straining my bone broth or washing fruit.
• Glass Baking dishes- Anchor and Pyrex are the brands we have of different sizes like this one.
• Covered ceramic dishes with glass- We have a Corningware set that we use occasionally. This exact one is the main dish we use. I love that it has a glass lid to steam foods. We no longer use aluminum foil to cover anything in the oven to cook. This is a much safer alternative. Aluminum foil can leach or migrate into your food like plastic. Avoid cooking your food on it or with it.
• Glass Tupperware-We have bought sets from Bed, Bath and Beyond and Amazon, and we’ve supplemented our supply with small ones mainly from HomeGoods, TJ Maxx and Target. We have quite a collection of all different sizes and several brands. I’d say the best brands are Anchor, Pyrex, Glasslock, Store and Lock and Pro Glass. Here’s a set I recommend.  We have a lot of small containers for our daughter’s portions. We have some glass Tupperware with hard plastic lids and some with soft plastic lids. We’ve also gotten a few cheaper brands of the small sizes with hard plastic lids, and their plastic lids don’t stand up as well in the freezer. Once we batch cook our meats, we freeze them in individual portions to pull out anytime. We use this size container for our daughter’s meat portions. The size is great. Over time with lots of use, the lids are tearing some when we remove the lid from a frozen dish, which we often do. Hard plastic lids will last longer. Use caution. The glass can be delicate to travel with in a bag or cooler, especially if you have multiple containers. I have one of these that my sweet in-laws gave me. I love to travel with it because it has the silicone sleeve.

Tip: If you begin to grow your collection, you’ll soon find you need some kind of organization for your lids. Otherwise, it may take you two hours to find the right one. The organization will also help prevent all the lids from crashing down on your head when you open the cabinet and search for one (maybe that happened to me once or twice).  I purchased a pot rack organizer from Target. It works well for the larger lids. Look, I’m not the most organized. As you’ll see these lids are still different sizes in different rows, but this is a good start and you can be as particular about your organization as you want to be. For the smaller lids, we find it easier to stack them by size in rows in our cabinet.

• Stainless steel containers- These are another alternative to plastic containers. These are easier to travel with than glass, but don’t ever heat in them.  Here is an example. There are so many choices, and this is an like a lunch box with multiple compartments.I personally prefer glass because I can pop it in the oven or microwave and heat directly in it.
• Glass mixing bowls, stainless steel bowls, glass cutting boards-  Here’s a set of stainless bowls. We’ve found these everywhere kitchen items are sold. We found some large stainless steel and large glass bowls at IKEA that were a steal (we love IKEA!), and so far they’ve held up very well.This set is great because it has a non-slip bottom. We have a Sharper Image set that is similar that we really like. I feel like you just can’t beat glass though. I love our super large glass bowls from IKEA, and Pyrex bowls like these are just great for every day use.  We have several different sizes of glass cutting boards. This is probably the size we use the most.
• Stainless Steel drinking glasses:  Yetis are super popular now, which we have and love. However, there are also many cheaper brands now available. Just remember to look for 18/8 or #304. These are food grade safe. Don’t assume if it appears to be stainless that it is. There are a lot of imitations out there. Here are some other brands we also use.This brand has impressed me. We recently ordered the smaller glasses for our daughter and love them. They are dishwasher safe, unlike most of the stainless steel tumblers we use for hot liquids.
• Measuring cups, spoons, etc.- This is a great set of glass measuring cups for different size jobs. I have a stainless measuring spoon set almost just like this , and I love the deep spoon set way better than the flatter ones. My sister-in-law gave me a stainless measuring spoon set from Kohl’s, Food Network brand, that I love!  This set is cool; it includes both stainless cups and spoons. I recommend getting the ones that aren’t painted. First the paint tends to come off over time and who knows if the paint is safe. Secondly, you can no longer read your measurements once the paint starts to come off.

BABY/KIDS SECTION:

• Glass Baby bottles-Dr. Brown’s glass bottles were actually hard to find in stores for us a few years ago. Here are the ones we currently use. They quit making the skinnier bottles.  We were lucky to get hand-me-down bottles from my generous sister that she no longer needed. These were a baby gift from a wonderful friend. These have a silicone sleeve in case they are dropped. We sent this set to daycare, so they didn’t have to worry as much about it being dropped and shattering. Not only are the glass bottles so much safer but also they are so much easier to clean than plastic. Life factory has these too. Whole Foods carries a lot of Life Factory products.
• Toddler/kids glasses: We have these. We also found some small mason jars similar to these at HomeGoods. Our daughter uses both. Yes, we waited until we thought she’d be safe with the glass. We typically don’t let her walk around with it. This is the exact water bottle we have for her. She hasn’t quite figured out the straw yet but in time she will. Again, we love the Life Factory brand. We’ve also bought a few stainless steel water bottles at Homegoods and TJ Maxx that we send to her school now.
• Sippy Cups- We haven’t used this exact brand, but these look like great glass sippy cups of two different sizes. One looks like a great bottle that transitions to a sippy cup. Here’s a stainless steel option as well. Here’s another option too
• Stainless steel lunch containers for kids (or adults)- Here’s a great alternative to using plastic baggies for your kids breakfast, lunch or snacks. Amazon has a ton of different choices depending on your preferences.  Here is another cool option, and you can find individual containers as well if you’d prefer that. Please note and tell your kids not to EVER heat stainless steel products or containers in the microwave. We are currently using these containers for my daughter’s lunch Check these out.. We also have these. These are for items that don’t have to be heated, and this can be used just as a storage container or you heat the food prior to putting it in the container. It will stay warm (not hot) for several hours.  If you want to heat their lunch or yours, I recommend you pack your lunch in glass (which you can put directly in the microwave) or pack it in stainless steel, then pour it onto a paper or microwave safe ceramic plate (not Styrofoam) and heat it in the microwave.

 

I know you are beyond overwhelmed! Breathe. Remember, taking baby steps still equals progress. So, start small with this transition and keep going. Your health is worth it!