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Another day, another thing people commonly use that it is trying to kill us. Today it’s plastic cooking utensils like spatulas and spoons.
According to new research conducted by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), using plastic cooking utensils like spoons, spatulas, and whisks could be poisoning you, causing damage to your liver or thyroid due to metabolization.
Happy Thanksgiving!
The independent German food safety watchdog found that the amounts of oligomers moving from plastic cooking utensils into food was much higher than previously thought, reports The Sun.
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Oligomers are man-made chemicals that are transferred from the plastic utensils to food when used at high temperatures – especially at temperatures above 158°F/70°C. These oligomers have also been linked to infertility, cancer and high cholesterol.
Scientists for the BfR discovered in their research that 30 percent of the kitchen utensils the group studied, the transfer of oligomers exceeded 5 micrograms per kilo (2.2 pounds) of food. Ingesting as little as 90 micrograms, they warned, could endanger the health of a person weighing just 133 pounds.
The BfR, as a result of their study, has recommended to the German government that manufacturers of plastic cooking utensils be required to compile toxicological data regarding how much oligomers their products give off when heated up.
UNtil then, consumers are advised to keep plastic utensils’ contact with food to a minimum while cooking, especially at high temperatures, or even better, just switch them out with wooden utensils.