Avoiding plastic in food - a measurable difference in just one week

Avoiding plastic in my cookware and kitchen has been an ongoing goal of mine. When I talk about it, I have often been told that it's not worth doing, as there are so many other sources of plastics in our lives that avoiding plastic contact with food isn't worth the effort, or that the plastic in food is an insignificant source of plastic in the human body.

Anyway, a study in Nature Medicine just came out showing that avoiding plastic in your diet/kitchen can reduce the plastic compounds (phtalates and bisphenols) in your urine in just 1 week!  (By 30+%, depending on what intervention/compound was tested).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04324-7

Other interesting take aways:
- Plastic packaging upstream matters - including things like buying produce in plastic packaging, or that produce previously being handled on plastic (so! Grow your own whenever possible if avoiding plastic matters to you!)
- Both avoiding plastic packaging/plastic touching food, and avoiding plastic in your kitchen made a difference, independently of each other - so achieving 'perfect' avoidance wasn't necessary to reduce exposure (by 30+%!).
- Almost 60% reduction in bisphenols was possible
- individually packaged items are significantly worse for plastic contamination than bulk packaged.
- plastic in food prep appliances matters - possibly also in dishwashers...
- Avoiding plastic tends to lead to a healthier diet
- Even researchers attempting to provide a non-plastic diet struggle to provide plastic free food thanks to upstream contamination
- Researchers speculated some plastic compounds may be stored in adipose tissue.
- Avoiding plastic contact in personal care products (shampoos, soaps, etc) also made a difference
- Study participants who had the lowest levels before the study were those who 'rarely consumed fast food, highly processed foods, foods in plastic packaging or microwaved foods in plastic'


This study has definitely reaffirmed my decision to avoid plastics in my food choices and refuse to microwave items in plastic. I'm now seriously considering my remaining food contact plastic usage, the largest of which is freezer bags for storing vegetables in my freezer. I'm also considering my personal care products which I tend to buy in bulk but are stored long term, in plastic...

There's a fellow who does Youtube shorts that I've tripped over a few times. His goal is to replace plastic utensils with equivalent wooden ones.

The Japanese made many of their kitchen utensils out of bamboo.

We had a maple tree come down recently. I should have a look at some of the branches with a mind to making a wooden spoon with an angled flat edge so it would scrape a saucepan as well as spoon it out.

My favorite wooden spoons and utensils are all either bamboo, maple, or olive wood...

Jay - I have two wooden spatulas/scrapers similar to what you describe and I LOVE them. One is called a 'wok Turner' and great for scraping frying pans/woks. The other was I think an 'angled Turner' and is perfect for scraping the corners of pots.

When I packed up to put my things in storage, years ago, I threw out all the kitchen utensils that I hated. Basically everything plastic, and anything 'coated', many things I'd bought as a cheap university student, and been too cheap to replace because they worked well enough. Several years later, after buying a house and unpacking, I discovered I had almost no kitchen utensils and went on an emergency buying spree at IKEA,(while refusing to buy plastic). I have slowly rebuilt my kitchen and am very happy with it.

I've attached pics of my favourite/most used plastic free kitchen utensils. They don't feel like 'settling', I am genuinely annoyed not to have them when I go to other people's houses and cook with their utensils, the metal and wood work better than plastic.