Plastics in our kitchen are leaching chemicals into our food and into the water that holds them. At one point in time, you have all no doubt encountered the “orange stained” Tupperware that held tomato sauce or pasta sauce. No matter how hard you scrub or how many times you run that container through the dishwasher, the orange stain does not go away.
The reason WHY this happens is that the molecules that make up that plastic are not very tightly bound as they would be in something like a glass container.
Those molecules actually “hover” around the surface of the plastic and when you put tomatoes or tomato sauce into the container, the line between the sauce and the container actually blurs. Because the line is blurred, the tomatoes or tomato sauce actually becomes part of the plastic, which is WHY you can scrub and scrub, or run the tupperware through the dishwasher over and over, and you will never get rid of the orange stain.
The tomatoes actually BECOME PART OF THE PLASTIC, and the inverse happens: the molecules of plastic are now in your sauce. YUCK. YUCK. YUCK. In the health and wellness world, we call this MIGRATION.
Those plastic molecules may not be BPA, but studies are showing that nearly ALL plastics leach chemicals and this leaching process is enhanced with heat, abrasion (scrubbing), acidic foods and oily foods.
So what can you do?
- Time to throw away the plastic containers in your kitchen and replace with glass containers. You can use plastic lids on the glass containers, but be sure that the food does not touch the lid.
- Never heat the containers with the lids on.
- With regard to plastics that you need in your kitchen ~ things like Vitamixes, Nutribullets, and Food processor containers ~ ALWAYS hand wash with the soft side of the kitchen sponge (remember no scrubbing) and try not to use with hot foods (not always possible I know). These plastics should never be put through the dishwasher.
I know it can be really disturbing to think back on all of the times when you have used orange stained Tupperware and likely heated your food in the microwave in it, but don’t let it get you down. Just look forward and start to take proactive steps to make changes in your environment so that you are decreasing chemicals in your life. And as an aside…if you are trying to lose weight or struggling with an expanding waistline, toxins are a HUGE contributing factor to the inability to shed fat. So, making these tiny edits to decrease toxins in your life will ultimately help you lose weight too!
