Sunday lunch is a customary time for families to share this meal.
However, specialists have just shown that a roast dinner can contain an astounding 230,000 microplastic particles.
According to researchers, consuming a similar dinner every day would be akin to ingesting two plastic bags every year. The investigation was conducted by scientists from the University of Portsmouth and Good Morning Britain on ITV.
Microplastics are defined as less than 5 millimeters in length. Michelle Morrison, a GMB reporter, and her daughters prepared two roast meals with chicken, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and Yorkshire puddings to determine how many insects end up in food.
However, one dinner was prepared with plastic-wrapped items, whereas the second meal’s elements were mostly unwrapped. The roast produced with plastic-wrapped components contained seven times as many microplastics as the other.
According to experts, this demonstrates that packaging is a primary conduit for plastics to enter our bodies. The non-plastic packaged commodities are also 37% less expensive.
Dr. Fay Couceiro, an expert on environmental contamination at the university, stated, “It appears that the majority of microplastics in our food come from the plastic container in which it is contained.”
However, there are more routes via which plastic can infiltrate the food chain. It might be entering our produce through the soil or our meat through grazing.
‘The air also contains numerous microplastics, so they may be falling onto the meal. Lastly, it could be from the culinary items used to prepare the food. She continued, “Typically, food samples are analyzed for microplastics in their unprocessed state in the laboratory.”
This study is unique in that we examined what was actually on your plate after the food was prepared.
Instead of a sterile laboratory, the food was prepared in a regular kitchen, therefore it is likely that the microplastics came from the food itself, the packaging, the cooking tools, and the air.
Miss Morrison stated, “Previous study on the number of microplastics present in a complete meal has been extremely limited.”
“According to the results of our latest experiment, we consume considerably fewer microplastics when we minimize our consumption of packaging.” We must now determine whether or not microplastics are harmful. Or, as many people believe, are they essentially plastic time bombs?’
Professor Shaji Sebastian, an expert in gastroenterology at Hull University Teaching Hospitals, stated, “The key is to comprehend what microplastics do to the body.”
Do they travel to the organs? Do they, for instance, breach the blood-brain barrier?
The urgency of research into the effects of microplastics on the human body is heightened by the startling findings of this investigation, he noted.
Alberto Costa, the head of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Microplastics, said, “We do not yet know what effect this has on human health, but I would welcome more research and investigation.
