Say no to Cooking in Plastic

[OzarkRose]

I recently read an article about how poaching sous-vide is the latest rage as it keeps product moist and would like to alert everyone to the VERY REAL effects of cooking in plastic. You may know that plastic sluffs off (for lack of a more scientific term,HA!) more rapidly as it heats. What you may not know is that plastic acts as both a hormone imitator and inhibitor! And has been linked to everything from undropped testicles to learning disabilities. As professional cooks, we are stewards for the public. We strive to educate the layman on what is "good". So think deeply about ALL the aspects of "good".
Please read "Our Stolen Future" by Theo Colborn. This group of scientists are being considered for a Nobel Prize for this work. I had the luck to work with Theo's daughter when the book first came out and you just wouldn't believe all that went on! You might remember when it hit the news ... and dissappeared. Can you say "...big money in Washington..."?

[Kerryclan]

Here's a common sense, non-alarmist article on the subject of heating food in plastic:

http://www.jhsph.edu/PublicHealthNew..._plastics.html


...more studies need to be done to define what levels are of concern in the body and what other factors are important.

[KeeperOfTheGood]

Hey oh

As I already posted. Plastic is more than one animal. In some forms it is very stable, to the point even that 100 000 years from now when its dug up it will look much the same as the day it was pitched in the garbage.

I had a very extencive talk a few years back with a chemist. He was on the team the invented plastic cling wraps. I talked to him only by chance and a new secretary that really didn't know how to answer my question. You see, in cooking school, my chef used cling wrap on things like scalloped potatoes and poached fish and chicken breast, to cook them. The only thing is that I was ill the week he introduced this to the class, and I did not know if it was an application specific product he was using. So, I did the only illogical thing, and phoned the maufacturer. Who then pased me to sales. Who then passed me to the head of the division. Who happened to be the chemist.

I explained who I was, and what I learned in school, and what product it would have been. He was quiet, and then he said "oh good god no". We then had a very good talk about the compounds that make plastics, and how clingwrap was different from general plastic containers. Essentially, it is an extream end of plastics. It contains a large quantity of plasticiser inorder for it to be what it is. These chemicals are fairly dangerouse, however, under normal use, not a health hazzard. The danger occurs when it is heated, because this liberates the chemicals from the plastic. Degree of liberation is as much a function of heat as it is of time. Time is actually more important. Yes, a three minute blast in a nuker will liberate a small quantity of these compounds, cooking for hours will virtually deplete the plastics of these compounds rendering the food so cooked as toxic. Long term toxic.

His advice, don't use it for anything hot, prechill hot dishes before wrapping, and to not purchase heat sealed plastic wrapped food from stores. This advise on plastics and food is, as I said, from one of the chemists that had a hand in its invention.

[OzarkRose]

ALthough it sounds as is "a small amount" is tolerable, these compounds are not excreated as waste but accumulate in our "fats". For women this is VERY VERY important as breast milk is a high-fat product ... hense the name of the book "Our Stolen Future"!

[100folds]

I have worked with a Chef who used the sous - vide methd. We kryovac or vacume packed the meat after searing and marinating the meat. For order, we placed it in a bain de marie set at 57 C and for pick up, placed the meat in a pan and in the oven. Now, we didn't use cling wrap or little plastic baggies, we used heavy duty vacume pack bags. I don't know if the plastic molecules went into the food and my guess is that they did but not to a toxic level.
Anyways, I like the method because the meat did have more flavour and was quit juicy. Maybe the same method can be used but with a different vehicle. Like banana leaves or intestines. Any ideas?
You see, the method works and as Chefs we have the creativity to make it healthy and taste good.

[MarkV]

Originally Posted by Rose Konold

What you may not know is that plastic acts as both a hormone imitator and inhibitor! And has been linked to everything from undropped testicles to learning disabilities.

I've never dropped mine.

Mark

[Kerryclan]

Originally Posted by MarkV

I've never dropped mine.

Mark

...oh, I've dropped a few.

MarkV =

[Chef_Bob]

Can some one tie this and the sous vide issue togeather? Is this a concern? If a menu says sous vide how do we know what plastic is being used?

[Randy]

This whole vacume packing and cooking in plastic craze sounds like shear lazyness to me.

I cook my fresh food to order, in pots and pans.

Guess this 40 y/o is already old school......

[Mikeb]

Originally Posted by Randy

This whole vacume packing and cooking in plastic craze sounds like shear lazyness to me.

I cook my fresh food to order, in pots and pans.

Guess this 40 y/o is already old school......

I don't know about others, but I don't cook stuff sous-vide because I'm lazy, rather when I want a certain product that traditional cooking methods can't achieve. At the restaurant I'd often be slicing and cutting ingredients to order, plus cooking them - hardly the quick, 'lazy' way. Yet we also used sous-vide cooking techniques.

[OzarkRose]

...just returned from a journey through France (another topic altoghter is that we need to toss out the idea that our gourmand existance in America is somehow less than that in France. Oh, how life in Europe has changed in 20 years!)...
But I would like to re-energize this converstion by asking if anyone followed through with the "natural" casing thought. I have had a few foods prepared in Banana leaves and they were incredibly moist. But I guess this couldn't translate to the same kind of volume as it would inevitably leak into the poaching liquid. I wonder about the celluose or cornstarch packaging products they have now. Anyone know much about them?
And to clarify (maybe,ha!) the issue with plastic is not that it is "toxic" but that it ACCUMULATES and passes on to our children who then have growth problems.

[mikefly]

so let me get this straight cuz im just a knuckles dragging on the ground kind of chef!!!! the plastics are ok as long as you do not heat the food up in them??? because after reading this i started going back thru the last 17 years and wow i mean wow i have heated alot of stuff up in plastic wrap and on the ocasion that i could only find a job in a corprtate resturant(applebees,tgi fridays etc) they cook everything in plastic i mean everything you could go days with out using a pot or a skillet!!!!! i guess the reason im asking is that i am now helping my cousine get her coffee house off the ground at this time we have pastires and panninnis etc, but this winter i want to offer soup and i dont have a real kitchen here to make them so i was going to go with syscos pre made soups that are in the boil bags, now if i thaw the soups and dump them in to a pot and heat them that way is it safe or should i just find a different way of doing the soups????

[panini]

If this is not a toxic problem and a storage problem that will effect in the future, how do you explain KOTG getting sick from the use of plastic?
BTW I put this up there with over 90 percent of all food borne illness occurs in the home, I'm also going to believe that most of the residule effects of this is going to be traced back to the home use, not commercial.

[OzarkRose]

Hey, I'm no scientist; I can't tell you how much by which method. And I don't think you can get reliable information on the internet because I have, first hand, seen how money and lobbying works to get this type of information out of the channels to the populace (my god, there were contracts on Cleos life! Her daughter in no-wheres-ville had to hire a body guard for her daughter to go to school!). But it is well documented that heating accelerates the "sluffing". Of any substance for that matter. The general rule is the harder the plastic, the less it "sluffs". If you have to microwave, can you use ceramic? Or better yet, check out those new corn starch disposables. So yeah, in theory, every use of plastic is contributing but in this day and age some things are unavoidable. But doen't that mean you "DO WHAT YOU CAN"?
Perhaps I'm just fooling myself, but I like to think that although we, as cooks, spend 90+percent of our time just preparing food, underneath the workhorse is an human with a greater vision than a paycheck. We are the sheperds! Sure, I can possibly agree that most of this is going on at home ... but we are the "laymans" role model, the teachers; we set the fashions, guide them to the next taste sensation. Why not do it the best way we can?

[panini]

Rose,
My question was general. But I have to respectfully dissagree that we are the shepards, this is really in the hands of the few large corperations and their marketing.
I was more concerned with the use of wrap. It goes on basically everything in the kitchen. Even hot foods. I do know for a fact that if very hot liquid is wrapped in plastic with holes to breath, then frozen,the wrap has a completely different properties.
I'm not sure there is a whole lot of microwaving in plastic, in commercial kitchens, it's been years since I been there or eaten in chains or franchises. I would venture to say this is happening more at home with a lot of marketing directed to freezer to microwave.
If there is no real documentation it may have to go on the board to be careful when using bleach on floors with mats. This may give off some poisinous toxins.