Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid.

In 2018, Turner published one of the earliest papers positing that black plastic products were likely regularly being made from recycled electronic waste. The clue was the plastic’s concerning levels of flame retardants. In some cases, the mix of chemicals matched the profile of those commonly found in computer and television housing, many of which are treated with flame retardants to prevent them from catching fire.

  • andyburke
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    6113 hours ago

    Plastic and food shouldn’t mix.

    We fucked up real bad. Gonna be a long road to fix this shit.

    • @Maggoty
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      43 hours ago

      The new thing is PFAS in the food chain. We’re fucking it up faster than we’re fixing it. Almost like profit motivation was a bad idea.

      • @Red_October
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        72 hours ago

        Food should never touch anything artificial. If it hasn’t been levitating since the day it was hand harvested from old growth forest, it’s basically pure poison.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 hour ago

          I yeet my food so high it stays in the air/orbit just long enough before I plan to eat it. Sometimes, it hits wild geese on the way up and they get cooked during reentry.

      • sunzu2
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        2012 hours ago

        metal is best shit we got, mate.

        stainless steel is OG all purpose.

        cast iron is best for some use cases.

        enabled cast iron is niche for the more elite chef.

        anything is else is trash but willing to hear suggestions.

      • DarkThoughts
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        412 hours ago

        This is very specific since he even build up a little rice tower pressing up against the foil.

        • @[email protected]
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          3 hours ago

          Well, you need wet food, metal and another metal all touching each other for this to happen. I’ve seen my sister make the mistake IRL so it certainly does.

          • DarkThoughts
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            112 hours ago

            How did she manage to do it? I usually only see people use this example for topping half eaten pots, which means the amount of food in them should be far away from the aluminium foil.

            • @grue
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              36 hours ago

              What kind of utter madman both (a) doesn’t have matching lids for his pots and also (b) refuses to take the leftovers out of a pot (which is a vessel for cooking, not storage) and put them into a more appropriate container?