Second… if you are at the level that a bag with meat in it for 2 hours at 140 degrees is too risky… you had better get working on that cabin in the woods.
First off there weren't silicon Sous Vide bags back then and the general attitude was "stick it in a plastic bag" and it will be fine.
Second, this is coming from someone that works in a research lab in plastics. So pretty well educated.
Anything else you want to be condescending and dismissive about? I'm sure we'd all appreciate hearing more about how you know better than the rest of us and please - make sure you lecture us about how much better you are with your logic and understanding of the world. We early await your amazing contributions. <3
I'll bite, your friend may be a professional scientist, but their response was simply "absolutely not". I had a biologist friend who had the same attitude toward eating raw eggs.
The fact is the science has not looked at risks of sous vide plastics. There's maybe no money for such research, unless like in this article the professor became a father and had to microwave food for his newborn baby. In their research, they showed that those particular nanoplastics cause kidney damage, but only in vitro (EDIT: Ah yes, a quick Google shows a horrifying 2023 study that says nanoplastics do get absorbed into the bloodstream...). That's like a doubly indirect argument for concerns about sous vide.
I think a more nuanced answer is that we just don't know, and so it is reasonable to invoke the precautionary principle. Other people, when made aware of the risks, might go ahead but that's their informed choice to do so.
So unless there's a series of studies that shows, "Sous vide produces X amount of polyethylene nanoplastics, and adult/child/rat consumption shows measurable harm", the best we have is precautionary principle and informed risk. It would be nice to have something definitive like "Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer", or more recently from WHO "Drinking alcohol causes breast and gastro/rectal cancer", but we don't have that scientific closure to an open question for sous vide yet.
But wouldn't it be fair to say "these results of microwaving plastic containers and using soft plastic bottles show concerning results, so we'll say this other thing that is in the same ballpark needs to be researched and until then carry a warning"? I mean, it seems like guilty until proven innocent is the safe way for items used in producing or containing food, etc, no? Or would that cause too many problems?
The sad thing about people like GP is they'll spread stuff like that for 40 years, and then become silent once they get cancer, COPD, or whatever that quite possibly was at least influenced by their lifestyle decisions.
Sorta like those construction workers that are full of bravado at 25, and can barely get out of a chair at 50 because they wrecked their body with improper lifting technique.
I think if you work for 25 years in construction you are bound to wreck your body regardless of what you do. It's hard to not wreck your body in that span of time even if you only do yoga and meditate for that long.
I know many people with 30+ years in construction that are physically fine (I'm ~ 60 ATM).
A good technique and steady approach goes a long way and there are many jobs in construction that don't break the body - crane operator, bobcat | front end loader | etc. operator.
Push up slab building have been around for decades now, if you can avoid being squashed under a giant mass of concrete (not that common) you're not going to be putting your back out (unless you're running at jobs like a bull at a gate).
Sure, but in any hard graft manual labour industry that's why you have young guns.
Anybody that stays in such an industry for 20+ years has (generally) worked smarter and not destroyed their body - they're still in the industry but moved onto machine operations, management, supervision, health and safety, etc.
I do like to bring up camp fires in any "the modern world is killing us" discussions.
In genernal there does seem to be little discussion of relative risks, trade-offs - plus a tendency towards romanticizing older tech as well as a big dose of the naturalistic fallacy.
However I think research into microplastics is important and I'm personally reducing plastic use when it's easy and low-effort.
I also rather enjoy a nice wood fire when I'm camping.
I read some (Danish?) research about soft squeezable drinking bottles, like those used by cyclists for example, and the result was pretty bad. Do you know if they use the same process / chemicals in silicone products?
Second… if you are at the level that a bag with meat in it for 2 hours at 140 degrees is too risky… you had better get working on that cabin in the woods.