Plastics in food and the environment

[Roosh]

It turns out that plastic teabags (they're not all paper) leaves plastic in your hot tea.

A cup of tea may be a cure for rainy days, but the soothing cup of the brewed beverage may also come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics shed from plastic bags, according to researchers at McGill University. While the possible health effects of ingesting these particles are currently unknown, the new research published in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology suggests further investigation is needed.

Over time, plastic breaks down into tiny microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics, the latter being less than 100 nanometers (nm) in size (a human hair has a diameter of about 75,000 nm). While scientists have previously detected microplastics in the environment, tap and bottled waters and some foods, McGill Professor of Chemical Engineering Nathalie Tufenkji and colleagues wondered whether recently introduced plastic teabags could be releasing micro- and nanoplastics into beverages during brewing.

To conduct their analysis, the researchers purchased four different commercial teas packaged in plastic teabags. The researchers cut open the bags and removed the tea leaves so that they wouldn’t interfere with the analysis. Then, they heated the emptied teabags in water to simulate brewing tea. Using electron microscopy, the team found that a single plastic teabag at brewing temperature released about 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles into the water. These levels were thousands of times higher than those reported previously in other foods.

Some plastic with your tea?

A cup of tea may be a cure for rainy days, but the soothing cup of the brewed beverage may also come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics shed from plastic bags, according to researchers at McGill University. While the possible health effects of ingesting these particles are currently...

www.mcgill.ca

 

[The Resilient]

Wait what ?

Most of the tea bags I use are with paper filters .

on the other hand though I mostly only by Lipton or luzianne tea for sweet tea.

But that sucks... I was not knowledgeable about tea bags having plastic containers.

 

[kel]

Which are the plastic ones? I've seen the pyramid teabags that felt kinda plastic-y, or is there plastic in the classic teabags that are like stapled coffee filters?

 

[Emperor Constantine]

I use loose leaf tea with an infuser. It's cheaper to buy in bulk, and it makes less trash. And now it appears to be the healthier option as well.

 

[The Resilient]

I use loose leaf tea with an infuser. It's cheaper to buy in bulk, and it makes less trash. And now it appears to be the healthier option as well.

What store/website would you recommend. I'm trying to get away from coffee every morning and switch to tea. All I drink is just the standard black teas sweetened to the point of diabetic comatose levels but I'm open to becoming a bit of a connoisseur to substitute for good tasting teas.

 

[Emperor Constantine]

What store/website would you recommend. I'm trying to get away from coffee every morning and switch to tea. All I drink is just the standard black teas sweetened to the point of diabetic comatose levels but I'm open to becoming a bit of a connoisseur to substitute for good tasting teas.

I get Vahdam brand Earl Grey from Amazon, but that's just habit. I haven't compared it to any other brands.

 

[Bird]

I also try to reduce my coffee consumption, but tea bags are not an option. As far as I know, these bags also contain aromatic substances, so loose tea is definitely preferable.

I have found a first overview of varieties and accessories on this page:
loose-leaf - strainers-infusers

The question is, which of the tea varieties is suitable as a substitute for coffee drinkers?

 

[RexImperator]

I prefer the Russian style loose leaf tea myself. Ahmad Tea Ceylon Loose Leaf... very reasonably priced, too.

 

[Cr33pin]

 

[Laner]

Avoiding plastic has been a journey. I feel like things are easier now than in the past, but its insane how much we rely on cheap wrappings to do the most basic task.

Silicone re sealable bags were a big breakthrough for us.

And finding out that tomato sauce in bottles is still bad due to production of tomatoes was pretty sad.

Like I said, its a journey. I have been avoiding plastics for nearly 20 years, but I want my son to stand a chance of having a large family. So now we are even more careful.

Not to mention environmental factors reduce T in men, and increase it women. Bizarre.

 

[911]

Use loose leaf tea with a metal mesh ball instead of teabags, it's safer, cheaper and the teas are generally of better quality.

Another issue with teas is that they tend to have fluoride, especially the cheaper/older leaf black teas. Darjeelings have lower fluoride levels because they are from newer leaf shoots.

Tea may contain more fluoride than once thought, research shows

Black tea, a Southern staple and the world's most consumed beverage, may contain higher concentrations of fluoride than previously thought, which could pose problems for the heaviest tea drinkers, researchers say.

www.sciencedaily.com

This is a good black tea otherwise, I found it at a local ethnic supermarket:

Pure Ceylon Tea (FBOPF "SP") - Alghazaleen Tea (Do Ghazal) - Ratings & Reviews

Ratings, reviews, and information about Pure Ceylon Tea (FBOPF "SP"), a Ceylon Black Tea from Alghazaleen Tea (Do Ghazal). This tea is from Sri Lanka / Ceylon.

ratetea.com

 

[PaulC]

Interesting video where a man tried to avoid micro plastics for 24 hours. He ended up having to go to a remote island location. Shows you how pervasive they are in our environment.

 

[aynrus]

I've been a big time tea connoisseur for many years...
No tea bags of any kind, except on camping trips (even non-plastic ones contain junk, such as dioxins, glue and what's not)
I use stainless steel mesh strainer to filter out tea leaves or brew with titanium tea-brewing "egg" infuser (available on amazon). Metals other than titanium can leech bad stuff (nickel, etc). Even my mugs are titanium - more neutral metal.

Good stuff can be bought on Amazon. Best green teas are Japanese (I only like green, white and oolong teas, not black, which is less healthy and stains teeth, also)- and it matters which part of Japan they had been harvested from. For example, Kagoshima perfecture tea can be very good.
Japanese teas varieties: Bancha, Kukicha, Kabuse-cha, Sencha, Aracha, Genmai-cha, expensive Gyokiro, Hojicha, Matcha, etc.
To get started with Japanese tea, Ito-en produces less expensive but nice loose tea leaves, Oi Oicha and can buy sampler packs of above tea types online.

I had some GoArtea store teas bought on Amazon shipped direct from China that were pretty fancy. I like Iron Goddess of Mercy (Tie Guan Ying) oolong, especially if grown in Anxi. Or Dong Din (Tung-Ting, Icy Peak) - oolong grown in Taiwan mountains. it's important to get good stuff, as it might be pretty flavorless from a wrong brand.
Dragon Well is pretty interesting Chinese green tea. Chinese oolongs have tons of varieties. Inexpensive Chinese green tea is Gunpowder green.

From black teas I probably only like fermeted Pu-erh (and not by cheap brand such as Prince of Peace).

There're multiple White tea varieties, starting from Silver Needle (more popular), more obscure varieties - all expensive - cheaper and easier to buy is lower grade Chinese White Peony that's easy to get organic and it tastes pretty good (more like oolong, actually).

All of this is easy to find on Amazon.

I stopped drinking all true teas beause of caffeine in them and switched to varieties of mint (peppermint - Melissa Piperita, spearmint - Melissa Spicata, Catnip, lemon balm - Melissa Officinalis, wild mint - Mentha Arvensis, etc and minty stuff like Tulsi aka Holy Basil).
It takes efforts to quit caffeinated tea and I used organic decaf by Davidson's Organics to transition, tea isn't bad and their decaffeinating process is harmless (CO2, not bad chemicals).