Trying to live more naturally was never meant to be easy.
But I can’t preach about living a completely toxic-free existence because that is impossible. But don’t give up – I’m also taking note of what I’m typing – anything, no matter how small, that limits an exposure, can only be good. Surely the more exposures we can rid ourselves of, then maybe the body has more of a chance to naturally detoxify the other unavoidable exposures. The body continuously detoxifies cells, we may have all come close to potential health issues but were none-the-wiser because the bad cells were flushed away before they could further mutate. Nutrition also plays a massive part in this, I know this, but I haven’t really been aware about it for that long. Of course we all know we are supposed to eat healthy and that ’5-a-day’ is only a guide and we should all be eating like 20 fresh fruits and veg a day but alas, who has time to buy that much fresh food all week and I’m a student – I’m supposed to be living off smart price beans and bread.
Plastics are the next toxic no-no you should add to your growing list of doom. In a nut carbon shell, oh dear, plastics can contaminate their contents. We pay so much attention to what is in the packaging, that we almost forgot about the packaging itself. Grab the nearest plastic container to you – it shouldn’t take long because lets face it, what isn’t sold in plastic these days? Who else misses buying glass drinks from vending machines and walking around the neighborhood for half of the night trying to find a bottle opener only to discover there was one attached to the vending machine all along. Okay so this only happened abroad many years ago, but still, I’ve read countless websites that all say the same thing: certain health issues never used to be this common. Why?
Please discuss.
We got lazy. Plastic is cheap. Cheap doesn’t mean it’s good for your health. But it’s cheap. Win. I think that was probably someone’s though process many years ago. Someone in the plastic industry. Well fast forward 20-30 years and they must be hella rich now.
There are lots of different variants of plastics, you know, ‘safe’ food-grade plastic, and well, other concoctions of plastic that leave a lot to be desired. Can you guess which kind food is packaged in?
No! It’s a trick question, food isn’t always packaged in food-grade pla…. wait, you guessed that??
So what the hell are we doing, people? By buying these products we are creating a demand for shitty quality which is affecting our health. Scientifically proven – check it out on Wiki or somethin’..
So now you have that plastic bottle in front of you, or a cup, or container.
There should be a triangle on it, a recycling emblem, usually at the bottom. Anyway, it should contain a number ranging from 1-7.
What number is yours?
Well read on to see if your number is safe and exempt from making you ill… Is what I would say if this post was sponsored by the plastic industry.
Rule of thumb: no plastic is really safe with regards to food and drink. Especially if it’s nearing the end of the products shelf life. Just think how long the contents have been touching the plastic. Where are they stored? Near a heat source? In sunlight? That’s just asking for the plastic to leech its properties into the food.
Basically, we should dodge all plastics but unless we are mega rich, we can’t afford to buy organic-everything in un-contaminating glass jars.
So if your triangle carries number 3 or 7 AVOID AVOID AVOID. Well, I’m not going to lie, I bought some suspiciously cheap coconut oil on Amazon just before I really put two and two together, or in my case, three. The plastic is a grade bloody 3, which is really bad with regards to food. I’m still using the coconut oil, but not for cooking.
Decantering the coconut oil into glass containers
.T
Also worth noting, after chucking out tons of toxic products, I only spotted one with grade 7 plastic. FYI, it was a John Freda frizzy serum. Grade 7 is made up of un-recycled plastic that almost definitely has come into contact with nasties like engine oil and who the hell would choose to touch that. I mean, that frizzy serum would have already contained enough questionable chemicals but the contaminating plastic just added the final, classy touch. I’m suddenly not surprised why certain diseases are massively on the rise. Our bodies are just not designed to absorb/ingest this stuff, over and over too.
I remember seeing some re-post about plastic bottles being 100% accountable for breast cancer. It was so poorly written and didn’t tell me why so I just discounted it. Now I know that there is actually some truth to it. Let me delve deeper and actually tell you why. There is a link between plastic and cancer – the plastic actually mimics the female hormone, just like parabens and other bad chemicals do. It’s scientifically proven. Scary, right? Now, that water you are drinking from the bottle will be washed down nicely with little microscopic cells from the contaminated plastic. I’m assuming we wouldn’t want to drink it if we could see this. So this is another exposure that the body will want to detoxify. Add it to the list of other exposures, e.g., paraben coated shampoo, and inhaled body spray/hair spray/ nail varnish, whatever it is. These ‘little’ exposures sure add up quick. Why don’t they make this publically aware? Well, the first step is finding actually finding out about it. Congratulations, the veil has been lifted, don’t you feel cheated, even a little bit? You’ve just ventured into the elite ‘aint-no-one-got-time-for-that-club’ and doesn’t it feel so, bittersweet? Well, you can now do something about it, if you want to. Good luck, you’ll need it.
From the top of my head:
- Don’t re-use plastic bottles. The longer they are sitting around, the more they will contaminate the contents. Especially if they are in cars (in prolonged sunlight = heat source). Grade 1 plastic is very common for bottles and I believe this plastic is only meant to be used once. But they don’t tell you this, they just expect you to
already know itbe completely ignorant so you happily buy more and give them a good retirement, while we will be lucky to even make it to ours. -_- - Plastic + heat do not go well together. Replace plastic jugs (anything that goes in the microwave) for glass or ceramic-ware. (Although grade 5 plastic, is more resistant to heat).
- Replace plastic cups with glasses. I hear that beer gardens are great places to ‘borrow’ glasses from.
- If you want to continue using plastic then look for food-grade plastic, HDPE, and hope your plastic container with last nights leftovers never came into contact with petrol, paint, etc., in its previous life before it was ‘recycled’.
A-thank you.
I don’t usually include a thank-you section but I couldn’t avoid it in this case. A special thank you to my 4pm nap which messed up my sleeping schedule D:
Hello, 3.14 am.