At McDonald’s, I saw that their sweet tea comes from a plastic bag inside a metal container, which stays in there all day. That doesn’t seem sanitary. Then I found out some places, like Olive Garden, heat soup in plastic bags by putting them in hot water. Isn’t this like leaving a water bottle in a hot car, where plastic leaches into the liquid? How is this okay? Like, I feel like that would be so explicitly illegal in other countries. Taking a big plastic bag of soup and just throwing it in water for the plastic to obviously separate from the bag and be intermingled with the food…
It sounds a lot like poison, like it’s literally poisonous. Like how is this okay in the USA?
Not sure if you’re aware, but sanitary just means that there’s no microbial growth that would cause illness.
That’s a separate food from plastics leeching.
Soup in plastic bags is the standard in most industrial kitchens all over the world.
Especially when you heat them ‘au bain marie’ it’s safe-ish. I don’t store food in plastic containers because even food grade plastic leaches but it’s generally allowed.
Ive seen boil in the bag food in the UK. Not really sure what the issue is.
I’ve seen troopies boil the foil ration bags in the hot water, and then use the hot water for tea.
And we (twitch) turned out fine.
Based on your post let me ask you this: what would be more sanitary? Just to show this isn’t a post in bad faith
A plastic bag in a metal container sounds about as sanitary as it gets. It’s far better to keep the tea in a sterile bag until it’s needed rather than pouring it into another, potentially contaminated, container and storing it there.
Maybe you should make sure this doesn’t happen in other industrial countries before shitting on the US
Cooking a food in a sealed plastic bag is referred to as “Sous Vide”, and was invented in 1974 by the french. It can also be performed in a glass jar, so we definitely could remove the plastic from the equation, but there are “food safe plastics” which have been demonstrated to have no known health issues when used for this purpose.
Some plastics, like BPA or PVC, are dangerous to consume/do easily leach into food/water, but “plastic” is a very broad term that refers to a lot of different materials.
Note: microplastics are a whole different story, and we’re not really sure how bad they are for you. It is perfectly reasonable to ask the question, but society at large has essentially decided the convenience outweighs the risk, and good luck trying to avoid it in your food.
I’d worry less about the sweet tea and more about how contaminating your laundry is given the amount of plastic microfibers washing away with the waste water. Polyester is plastic. You deliver microfiber bits of plastic into the wastewater with every load of wash. How much of that is really filtered out?
If you end up in the ER or hospital, you will have an up close and personal experience with plastic. Blood: in a plastic bag. Plasma: in a plastic bag. Platelets: in a plastic bag. IV fluids: in a plastic bag. The tubing that delivers any of those things directly into your bloodstream: plastic. The syringes used: plastic. The IVs placed in your veins: plastic, including the catheter that sits inside your vein for the duration (heated to 98 degrees). The wrappers on each individual pill: plastic. The bottles the pills originally come in: plastic. Thermometer covers: plastic. The tubing used during dialysis: plastic. Tube feeding: plastic bottle of food fed through plastic tubing directly to stomach. A chemist or engineer could detail out what type of plastic is used and whether it’s a potential problem far better than I.
I question the “biodegradable” items used with seedlings. Why is the mesh from the Burpee peat pucks still fully intact in my compost pile after 4 years? Pucks baked wetly on a heating mat. Buy seedlings? Probably baking in the sun at a garden center in a cheap plastic pot.
A lot of shelf stable food is stored in plastic, and we don’t know how hot or cold its getting in the trucks or warehouses before it hits store shelves.
I hate plastic like the next guy but medical setting is prolly strong use-case for plastic as it must be single use and it must be cheap… Well not in America since we pay for elite level everything like true patriots.
But you get my point, a proper medical system needs to be efficient
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People pay a lot of money in fancy restaurants to have their food cooked in a plastic bag lol
Ah yes. Sous vide enters the chat
Some plastics are more stable than others. That said, we are admittedly far too lackadaisical with them in general.
To answer your direct question, we do have an FDA that does a passable job with some things, salmonella outbreaks, emergency vaccine development, stuff like that. There is probably some regulatory capture at play, though, where business interests get their people appointed into oversight roles. When a full half of our government is so vocally and rabidly pro-business, this is difficult to prevent in the long run.
Are you implying that the McDonald’s in Europe don’t do this either? It’s extremely standard practice in the food industry and has been for a while.
Remind me to not get you a Sous Vide kit for chistmas.
i have a sous vide machine. it always feels so extremely wastedul to use, but it does make really good food. i wish there was an alternative to plastic that i could use :(
I’ve never done sous vide myself, but I’ve heard canning jars can work as well.
companies are very averse to lawsuits, so they will toe the line of what is legal. the FDA is supposed to maintain what is legal or not based on safety, but conservatives in this country are always trying to blur those rules for monetary gain.
that said, with regards to plastics there are many ‘food-grade’ plastics designed for these specific use cases.
id be curious of what other countries are more strict when it comes to the FDA. I’ve seen it about on-par with other 1st world nations. theres always a bit of differentiation when it gets to some specifics, but overall the US is better off than 95% of the planet.
now with the orange turd back in office, i suspect that will drop precipitously as they dismantle important organizations like the FDA and the department of education.
your ignorance of chemistry does not mean there are no standards.
Food company profits are more valuable than human life.
People on Lemmy will believe literally anything you tell them as long as you make it about a corporation or billionaire.
The example in the OP is very obviously food grade plastic, specifically engineered for those use cases
Ehh, kinda? I mean there is no plastic on earth that does not produce microplastics when combined with heat, but the science on how bad that is for people is very new, as plastic packaging for food is still relatively new.
We don’t know how bad or not microplastics are, but everyone is being exposed to a lot.
There’s also an “acceptable risk” that companies will take. Not sure about food service, but I have been in meetings where 5% of customers fucked over is considered acceptable, with the dollar figures that follow. They probably take into account the total number of lawsuits they get for poisoning people, and the cost of the impact to the bottom line via lawsuits and bad marketing versus actually fixing the issue.
For example, if 10,000 people get food poisoning a year from iced tea, probably only a small percentage of those people will trace it back to McDonald’s iced tea WITH tangible proof. It might be easier to pay for those lawsuits than actually fixing the issue. They’ll pass some kind of memo out, showing they addressed the issue, and then blame the store management. Nothing really changes.
“A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.”
My wife was an insurance adjuster for a major company, and that’s EXACTLY how it goes.
Which company?
Probably not collectively but for the people making these decisions it is.
Well, it depends on how much profit across how many companies we’re looking at, along with how many lives we’re comparing to. Also whose lives.
There are people who get paid to make these kinds of decisions…
Cue Zap Brannigan’s quote…
Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make
The USA puts colourings, additives, and other bits a pieces in food that is unnecessary, or unhealthy, but creates flavour. Then they go to other countries and say “your food tastes like shit”.
Packaged foods in different countries are exactly the same as what you can find in the US. They are all loaded up with the same stuff. But, just like anywhere else in the world, lots of people make their own food from scratch or buy healthy alternatives.
Holy shit NO! Half of your additives are illegal in Europe
First, don’t assume “your”. Second, you are using the EU as a reference. What about the Middle East, Asia, Africa, or the Pacific? As someone who has traveled the world, there is junk food in every culture and most of it is garbage.
Us did pioneer the slop industry so we ate three generations into consuming that trash to t point where maw grew up eating hamburger helper. Majority of Americans don’t even understand what is or how it is made beyond what commercials tell them.
Blue coloured corn flakes is yummm tho 🤡
Or Cheerios.
Won’t eat oatmeal…
Too Poor too cook rice and beans, but will eat chips out of the back that costs 3-4x of rice and beans
Even fast food ain’t cheap no more but at least, they cutting back on that now.
USA use chlorine, excessive amounts of salt and sugar, and a ridiculous amounts of other additives.
Other countries regs are much stronger.
The fuck are yall on about… food from anywhere else is the best. I would go to events in Iceland regurally enough and it takes me a week or so after getting back to stop noticing that everything state side tastes like plastic.
Modern British food is some of the best in the world, far better than American slop.
Show me one yank that agrees with that
Show me a Brit that agrees with it lmao
Note the word “modern”
My favorite is British “lasagna.”
I’m stereotyping.
