http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/foodscience/sous-vide-cooking-beef-protein-digestibility-09138.html

I wonder what the long term effects of cooking food in plastic will be?

It's supposed to be fit for purpose. So much of our food is in contact with plastic.......

We already have clues as to long term effects of plastics contact cooking. Most canned goods are processed under heat/cooking conditions- and they have long had chemical linings. Used to be BPA stuff, now it's more resin that isn't BPA stuff. Nonstick pans, and the teflon coatings are plastics too. MRE's and space foods packed in plastic- and meant to cook in the package- have been around for quite a while. Home boil-in-the-bag foods have been used for decades now.

Sous vide method has been around since the late 60's, it's newness is the ability for the home cook to use it over the last few years.

And don't forget, plastics are in most clothing.

Canned food inside is coated with plastic.

Furniture are mostly plastic.

Yet, we are living longer and longer.

Off-topic, sorry.

dcarch

What temp should I sous vide my sofa?

I have not sous vide’d sofa, so far.

Need bigger tube and bigger bag.

Will look again how Heston sous vide whole pig in a hot
tube.

dcarch

Oh goodness, a whole pig? Hadn't seen that before, lol. That guy looks fun :)

Plastics are not the concern.......it is only heated plastic that comes into contact with food and only certain types of plastic. It is the phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA's) that can leach into foods with heat and may be harmful but most plastics with food that are intended to be heated or microwaved are made without these compounds.

dc - maybe i should go for cow (ch) instead.

As gardengal notes, it is heated plastic that's the issue.

I have inert and reusable silicon sous vide bags. Not worried here.

FOAS, Just a cow? You are a coward. Go for a bison, much bigger.

Just was talking to a friend about having had a bison burger at Ted Turner's midtown restaurant. Not bad. Turner has 50,000 heads of bison.

dcarch

'OTDCVADHD'. Original Topic Disregarded Co Vid Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. (be kind as we are all nuts right now,😂,)

Not making fun of mental health dealing with family members. (wow).

Yes, I have issues with plastics. Going back 30+years. Not just the containers, but the processed foods heated, marinated, and grilled/broiled/Microwaved.

I use my microwave, in my pantry, maybe once a month....no plastic. Even then always ceramic or glass. When I visit, my mother hides her 30 year old plastics she uses. Frugal, she does not want to hear about the heath issues. They microwave daily or boil stovetop. In old plastics and old scratched non-stick teflon. The few pans I gifted them, stainless, and sheet pans, are spotless when I visit as they don't use them at all. I pack a small crate when I visit. Can't find my 'gifted' cooking items as they are off into a bedroom closet or garden shed....a danish dough whisk in the shed among screw drivers, lol. (she still uses a trashed teflon cookie sheet from years ago.) I found my sheet pan 'gifts' in the linen closet.

Islay was not bring up leaching plastics via sous vide. Quite the opposite.

Dcharch.. disappointed the video didn't show the decanting and the serving of that pig!!!

Back to the article, I think the originators of low temperature long time a couple hundred years ago thought it was more digestible too, though obviously on an experiential, rather than experimental, basis.

Re plastics, I think the issues start at higher heats for the most part. I use BPA and phthalate free bags anyway, and almost all food bags are polyethylene, at least on the interior which touches the food.

Don't wash polar fleece—yes, it recycles pop bottles, but it leeches micro plastics into the water, which are way too small to filter—and become part of the fishes, so if you sous vide fish, you're more likely to ingest plastic from the food than the bag. :D

Interesting point pillog about the low temps being around for ages. It would have been nice if the study had included other low temp wet cooking applications like braising and crockpot kinds of cooking as well as the roasted and boiled methods. Roasting is dry and often high heat, and boiling is high heat, though wet.

And maybe not a sous vide pig from the hot tub, but a traditional method of wrapping a carcass wet, and buying it in roasting heat for extended hours or days would be an intriguing comparison too. I knew a firefighter down in AZ who's department would dig a trench, bury a few 55 gallon drums of carne for asada, and let the stuff cook for days before their annual picnic.

Lots of deli meats are cooked in bags. Youtube has videos.

I assume there are other foods that I don't know about as well.

True. Fine dining chefs who think the microwave was Invented by the devil think nothing of cooking your food in plastic wrap.

Well, I don't know about you all, but even though we are living longer, I know LOTS of women with breast cancer (not at the ends of their potentially longer lives) a few people with brain cancer, lots of people with dementia, lots and lost of people with mental illnesses. I am NOT claiming any are a result of food and plastic, but I don't think we can just dismiss the possibilities that, besides destroying the environment, plastic just could be affecting the health of humans. I don't cook in plastic.