It turns out the packaging our fast food is served in is terrible for us too
Look, I hate to interrupt anyone’s food-based fun.
I don’t want you to put down a chip mid-bite. I don’t want you to abandon that mozzarella stick. You deserve good things, and terrible food is good.
But I have to tell you this. I’m sorry. But it’s for your own good.
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We all know that fast food is absolutely terrible for us and is slowly destroying our insides.
But a new study now says that it’s not just the burgers we’re funnelling down our throats that are turning our bodies into trash. It’s also the packages they’re served in.
The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, notes that because a lot of fast food packaging is designed to repel grease and oil (so that your burger box isn’t sodden and leaking grease before you take a bite of the meal inside), it often contains synthetic chemicals that could be damaging your health.
The flourinated compounds used to repel grease, called PFASs, can taint food, meaning that you’re taking them in without, well, actually consuming the box your food is served in.
This is all a bit scary, because these chemicals have been associated with an increased cancer risk, infertility, and high cholesterol.
Loads of takeaways are served in these grease-repelling boxes, meaning that a lot of the unhealthy stuff we eat is coming into contact with damaging chemicals.
The researchers collected around 400 food packaging samples from fast food places around the U.S., and found that 46% of paper wrapping, 20% of cardboard boxes, and 38% of sandwich and burger wrappers contained fluorine.
The worst takeaway packaging culprits were found to be dessert and bread wrappers, with 56% showing detectable levels of flourine.
What this all means, essentially, is that we don’t just have to worry about the junk food we’re eating slowly killing us. We also have to feel bad about the packaging it’s in, too.
There are a couple of options to deal with this horror.
Firstly, you could stop eating fast food. We don’t think that’s going to happen.
Or, when you do go for fast food, you can ask for it to be given to you without the packaging. The restaurant staff will look at you a bit strangely while placing the burger directly in your hands or in a tupperware box, we know, but it’s probably worth the weirdness if it’s going to help you health-wise.*
*Plus you’re saving the environment. Well done, you.
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