Plastic Villainy

by Leslie Aronson — July 2, 2008

Plastics have come under a lot of scrutiny in the past few years. There are those who say eating food wrapped in plastic wrap and drinking from plastic water bottles can give you cancer. There are also those who say people are being paranoid and plastics are perfectly safe. I am not an expert on this topic, so I won't try to draw any conclusive statements, but to my thinking, it's better to be safe than sorry. I personally don't use plastic wrap and don't store my food in plastic containers. Food that comes packaged in plastic, I generally put into glass storage containers. Glass is great for a few reasons: it's reusable, there's no potential leaching of anything funky into the food, and it's aesthetically pleasing to have a variety of grains in Ball jars arrayed in my cupboard. You can find glass jars just about anywhere - Tupperware makes glass storage containers; so does IKEA. Ceramic storage can be found at many kitchen supply stores. My personal favorite, though, is hitting up local thrift stores because you can find some really cool, funky stuff that can make your cupboards unique. Plus, that way, you're reusing products instead of consuming new ones. And it's cheaper. So whether it's for your health or for the environment or simply the aesthetics of your kitchen, consider rethinking your food storage.