With the recent completion of the Christmas holiday, I found our family was the recipient of not only a new Anova precision cooker, but also a Food Saver Vacuum Sealer. I was pretty excited because I had only heard great things about Sous Vide cooking and my wife (who is a chef) had bragged about how prefect sous vide dishes turned out.
So naturally I started looking at recipes for Sous Vide dishes and saw some great ones, but then I came across this article:
http://nomnompaleo.com/post/12463202060/cooking-sous-vide-plastic-safety
And it brought up the fact that cooking in plastic can have harmful developmental effects due to the leeching of Estrogenic-like chemicals that can cause hormone disruption, into food that contacts the plastic.
The above article was written because of the recent completion of this study:
Some plastics are much worse than others, and exposing the plastic to “stresses” (sunlight, microwaves and heat) caused in increase in the leeching effect.
I understand that Sous Vide cooks at relatively low temperatures, but according to Table 1 in this study 71% of all samples tested had detectable levels of EA (Estrogen Active) compounds. With 100% of food wrap and 97% of Plastic Bags testing positive. Estrogenic Activity is the reason so many products are listed as BPA free.
I stopped using plastic in my microwave for this very reason, and now I’m having second thoughts on Sous Vide. Reading the article from nom nom paleo, even silicon bags are susceptible to the leaching effect. Has anyone come across any studies to the contrary? Until proven safe, I may to use mason jars to get started, but that kind of defeats the purpose of sous vide.
To top it all off, according to the study, almost all of the plastics tested could be made EA compound free, but most are not currently. Above all they say that EA compounds are most harmful to children and since my wife and I are expecting our first, I’d really like to know that the food we are eating isn’t poisoned. But its almost impossible to avoid, Almost all food you buy comes in some form of plastic bag or wrap or package.
Has anyone found any research to the contrary? What are your thoughts on this? Has anyone tried Sous Vide with Mason Jars? Does that defeat the purpose of Sous Vide?