A friend of mine sent me an email around midnight pointing out the evils of bottled water. It’s not so much the water as the bottle, I think. Do you realize how ubiquitous bottled waters are in my life, heck, in all our lives?
Turns out that Johns Hopkins (like the science nerd that he is) has been jumping up and down trying to get us to pay attention to the fact that high levels of dioxin are emitted when plastic water bottles encounter extreme temperature differences: heat from being left in a car or microwave or cold from being placed in a freezer. This extends to any plastic container really or any plastic wrap. These suckers melt into your food and ooze toxins all over the place.
By way of example, I once needed to quickly defrost homemade chicken stock in the microwave (uh oh), which I had poured into a plastic bottle (ding ding ding) and put into the freezer (what are you nuts?!?). I left the cap twisted on tightly and when I went to pour out the contents, I got a massive chicken stock explosion. In case you’re wondering, I wouldn’t recommend doing that unless you want your kitchen to smell like meat. But as you can see from this example, I served up a triple-whammy of dioxins through this grossly negligent behavior.
So for all you nukers out there -- and you know who you are -- put down the plastic containers and put your food in glass like Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic. You’ll get the same results of heated food minus cancer-causing dioxin. Neat-o!
Post script: Seems this is an email hoax that is going around and Johns Hopkins has not endorsed the content. However the US Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service does have some helpful guidelines for cooking plastics in microwave ovens. I've decided to take heed to this "warning" anyway. Plastic bottles just aren't green, and as my friends know, I'm all about going green these days.
Punchlines
Hahah.. I remember when you had to clean the counter and windows of your kitchen. Yes, I only nuke in Pyrex now....
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