Best way to avoid toxic chemicals and microplastics in food?

Hello everyone, I recently been trying to live a more healthy life. Ive seen videos detailing how toxic chemicals, GMOs and microplastics affect the food everyone eats. Does anyone know have any tips for best practices to avoid these things? Here are some things im already doing:
1. Buy my groceries coming from local farms if i can
2. Dont buy groceries with plastic wrapping
3. Take my own cotton bags with me in which i put loose items like apples, potatoes, tomatoes
4. Check labels of food in the grocery store, anything with too much additives i dont buy it. (i have not done enough research to which specific additives are bad so for now i try to just avoid them all if i can)

Sometimes i have to compromise unfortunatley, some plastics and chemicals seem impossible to ignore. Any other tips would be greatly appriciated!

Leave earth

Sorry there is no avoiding microplastic it is part of humans now and will be forever

I just hope it turns out to be rather harmless

a reply to: markovian

While it is impossible to avoid completely i think it might still be a good idea to avoid additional plastics when you can. Its impossible to avoid all toxic fumes, but im not going to voluntarily inhale car traffic either.

originally posted by: futurehobo
Hello everyone, I recently been trying to live a more healthy life. Ive seen videos detailing how toxic chemicals, GMOs and microplastics affect the food everyone eats. Does anyone know have any tips for best practices to avoid these things? Here are some things im already doing:
1. Buy my groceries coming from local farms if i can
2. Dont buy groceries with plastic wrapping
3. Take my own cotton bags with me in which i put loose items like apples, potatoes, tomatoes
4. Check labels of food in the grocery store, anything with too much additives i dont buy it. (i have not done enough research to which specific additives are bad so for now i try to just avoid them all if i can)

Sometimes i have to compromise unfortunatley, some plastics and chemicals seem impossible to ignore. Any other tips would be greatly appriciated!

There are plastic wrapping on most groceries these days, and if there isn't, chances are that somewhere along the line they were in plastic. Even the meats in the display cases at the grocery stores that they cut for you were at some time in plastic in shipping. Even if the store buys beef that the butchers can cut up, most times the sections of beef come in plastic sealed bags that they have to take them out of.

I put the veggies in the bags the stores have there, they are plastic food grade bags on a roll, then we pull them out of the bags most times and put them away, We cannot get away from plastic these days, there is little alternative. The inside of the fridge is made of plastic too. There is only so much we can do.

Eating seventy five percent natural foods is what we strive for, sure we cook them, that is called processed foods then. It is the highly processed foods you want to avoid as much as you can reasonably avoid them. A big contributer to the plasticizers, I think they call them Phytates, is the rubber gloves of the people handling the food along the way to your table. There is extra chemicals in the food of restaurant food and deli food since they are required to wear those latex or other gloves while processing them. I am not afraid of a cook handling the food, I am more concerned about the gloves chemistry going into the food. But even then, a little will not hurt you, but too much will cause problems.

I like fresh veggies from people's gardens, especially green and yellow beans grown without pesticides or just minimal pesticides if needed. We blanch the beans then cool them and flash freeze them on a pan and put them in plastic food grade bags to freeze them. Do we do this to lower consumption of chemicals? No we go through all that work because they taste better. For optimal taste, you need to blanch and freeze them the same day they were picked.

I know pretty much about some of the chemicals used in foods. One thing I can contribute is that if a chemical is used on the food that is considered GRAS it can be used in the food without listing it until a certain percentage by weight or volume is added to the food. So the chemicals are not always listed on the label and some companies put them on there while others don't, and some of the worst offenders of using these chemicals are the ones with the least listed on the label. Keep it under a percent and use five different chemistries instead of one limited at two percent, and you can have way more chemicals in the product without listing.

As an example, amounts of MSG are limited by law, but they can also had hudrolyzed soy protein, modified food starch, guar gum, and xanthian gum which all contain some of the same attractant chemistry and the level of this psychotropic chemistry that needs detoxing can be high in the product. They all have free glutamates in them at fairly high levels.

originally posted by: markovian
Leave earth

Sorry there is no avoiding microplastic it is part of humans now and will be forever

I just hope it turns out to be rather harmless

Um....too late, they have been doing quite a bit of testing on them, and they definitely are not harmless. They are finding they are actually directly causing diseases like pre-diabetis which will lead to diabetes. They are also leading to some sorts of cancer risk elevation.

originally posted by: futurehobo
a reply to: markovian

While it is impossible to avoid completely i think it might still be a good idea to avoid additional plastics when you can. Its impossible to avoid all toxic fumes, but im not going to voluntarily inhale car traffic either.

I don't have a big enough mouth to inhale car traffic myself

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: markovian
Leave earth

Sorry there is no avoiding microplastic it is part of humans now and will be forever

I just hope it turns out to be rather harmless

Um....too late, they have been doing quite a bit of testing on them, and they definitely are not harmless. They are finding they are actually directly causing diseases like pre-diabetis which will lead to diabetes. They are also leading to some sorts of cancer risk elevation.

Its in our blood and brains yea its probly bad

Its size is what's bad what it can do is probly going to come down to where it got stuck at like say inbetween a neurotransmitter

a reply to: futurehobo

You could always just starve yourself....

But seriously , you can't get micro plastics from the plastic the food is wrapped in... you can however get plastics in the actual food and that includes vegetables and of course when you dispose of the plastic the food was wrapped in...

It's pretty hard to do unless you can subsistence farm. If you cant the next best bet is to never eat anything with an ingredient list.

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: futurehobo
a reply to: markovian

While it is impossible to avoid completely i think it might still be a good idea to avoid additional plastics when you can. Its impossible to avoid all toxic fumes, but im not going to voluntarily inhale car traffic either.

I don't have a big enough mouth to inhale car traffic myself

Are you sure about this?

a reply to: futurehobo

I would love to be able to do this.
The rapper NF...his wife Bridgette is into this and she has an account on Instagram where she shows toxin free products from food to home goods to beauty products and a zillion other things....


I thought I stumbled upon a great resource (I actually did).......then reality hit and I realized this could cause me to become severely OCD and paranoid about everything. I mean, just touching receipts is toxic. Seriously, it is. I had to force myself to stop thinking about it and other things. There would be no way to afford to live that kind of lifestyle either because it is incredibly expensive to remove EVERY product and contaminant.

So, I decided to just do what was possible to keep my sanity and not go broke and live life as best I could.

a reply to: futurehobo

look for the shortest supply chain.

directly from the producer to you.

look for seasonal food.

non GMO.

also you can use cotton.

avoid nylon, plastic, or another products from oil.
avoid teflon.

avoid products from top companies or large retails, no packaged products in large stores.

only local products from nature.

travel near your area and you will find it.

replace your containers with glass, or other non toxical forms .

a reply to: futurehobo

Micro plastics come from synthetic materials such as polyester, the tiny fibres break down and are now everywhere in the environment. Use filtered water for drinking/cooking or buy spring water if your tap water is very bad. Plastic bottles and bags are generally food safe, it’s because they are some difficult to break down they are used in many products in the first place. But mostly because they are cheap.
The plastics that could leach toxic chemicals like bpe into food have been banned these days. Still I don’t think it’s a good idea to have things stored in strong sunlight or excessive temperatures for a long time.

It sounds like your doing the right things already, one thing I will suggest is don’t stress to much about it, the body is great at dealing with toxins as long as it’s not exposed to excessive amounts. Even things that are good for you can be toxic in excessive quantities.

I try to live by the old adage. “Everything in moderation”

a reply to: futurehobo

I’m so glad you brought up this topic as it is near and dear to me.

The very easiest way to avoid plastics/toxins is go back, way back. What did our ancestors use?

Glass, metal, crockery.
Don’t heat or put hot things on plastic.
Don’t eat or drink with plastic plates, cups or utensils.

Natural clothing is getting harder and more expensive to get. Almost everything is mixed with a synthetic fiber.
Pure linen is fantastic, so healthy!
Buy bedding that is pure cotton, or linen. No microfiber!

Do NOT put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t put inside your mouth.
Need lotion, use coconut, almond oil, sesame oil, etc.

It is possible to greatly reduce your use of plastics but nothing is 100%

a reply to: JAGStorm

I have found that large amounts of microplastic fibers go airborne when I clean off the clothes dryer lint trap. when I lived by myself, I never gave it much thought as I only purchased natural fiber. Now I live with a family of 5 and I speak my mind and offer suggestions, but most of the clothes in my house are now polyester based. The dryer lint trap is absolutely full of plastic micro particles that go airborne as soon as it gets pulled out for cleaning.