How safe are plastics for food storage? It’s far from clear, but some scientists have expressed concern in the past — and some recent reports might cause more concern. As Mother Jones reports, a study published in 2011 showed the chemicals having estrogenic activity (EA) are more widely found than previously thought. The report says:
Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled — independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source — leached chemicals having reliably detectable EA, including those advertised as BPA free. In some cases, BPA-free products released chemicals having more EA than did BPA-containing products.Exactly which plastics leached synthetic estrogens? Mother Jones summarizes it for us.
I’ve only read the summary of this study, and I’m certainly not qualified to evaluate it. But if you’d like to minimize your use of plastic food storage products, you have a lot of nice alternatives. I’ve mentioned many of them before — see the related posts at the end — but I’ve also found a number of other options.
Let’s start with those made from glass. The one at the top of this post is the Earl Storage Jar Set from Mode. I haven’t seen any others with cork stoppers!
Surprisingly (at least to me), you can get glass food storage containers from Rubbermaid. The bases all nest inside each other, and the lids snap on the bottom, so these are also good for conserving storage space in the cabinets.
And yet another glass option is Luminarc.
Moving beyond glass, you might choose the CLOC porcelain storage containers from Neoflam. You can get them in white from Williams-Sonoma.
And finally, here’s the Wrap Bowl from +d — a ceramic dish with a flexible silicone lid. Those of you in Europe could also buy it here.
Related Posts:
Plastic Food Storage: OK or Not?
Reader Question: Glass Food Storage
The Latest on Plastic Food Storage - And Alternatives
Another Scary Thing, as We Approach Halloween: BPA
Food Storage: Alternatives to Plastic
3 Innovative Food Storage Products
I have the Rubbermaid glass containers, and love them. They are hearty without being excessively heavy, nicely shaped and the lids fit well and last a long time. (But thumbs-up to the Luminarc example -- it's pretty.)
ReplyDeleteThank, Julie - good to know. I have some from Anchor Hocking myself, because that's what my local market was selling.
ReplyDeleteWhy not just re-purpose glass jars? I keep some of the ones that have good shapes for my purposes. You can't beat the price, I really don't care if I lose one and there is no loss if it breaks!
ReplyDeleteGlass jars could work in some cases, anonymous - but they won't work well for things like leftover lasagna, if you want to keep the shape of the pieces.
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