This is sort of a shower thought because this morning I was using some shaving cream and I thought, if it turns out in 5 years this was giving me cancer, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Comes out a goo, ejected from a can with force, immediately becomes a foam?
Do you have anything you use that you think might be too good to be true?
Not really “secretly” bad for you, but all the plastic in our lives. I wonder how we’ll ever replace it cause everything you buy at the supermarket (in developed countries) is wrapped in plastic.
wrapped in plastic
Everything you touch and use involves plastics and petrochemicals. Even stuff you wouldn’t think of like the coatings that allow street signs to reflect better and have massively improved safety. Lightbulbs? No more efficiency for you, most LEDs are on a plastic substrate. We will never get away from plastic, not at this point. You could make it so that food isn’t wrapped in plastic and that wouldn’t make a dent in our plastic use.
You could make it so that food isn’t wrapped in plastic and that wouldn’t make a dent in our plastic use.
Sure, but it might curb how much plastic ends up in our bodies. I have to assume that food wrapped in plastic has a greater impact in that regard than LEDs.
I agree. I think it’s worse than we already know.
My insulin.
I can promise you it’s not nearly as bad as not taking your insulin.
Oh yeah, defiantly. Wife said, maybe it ends up like chemo, the benefits, out weigh the bad, but you still don’t want to use it as a hair removal drug.
I definitely don’t like the creosote based preservatives that give it that weird smell.
I have type 1 though, so it’s indisputable that it’s healthier for me than no insulin - without external insulin, I’d be in DKA, a coma and then dead probably in less than a week.
Type 2 here, just diagnosed on Nov 19th after a minor stroke. I was trying to identify the smell, was making me think of a dentist office. It’s not a pleasant smell for sure.
They are also used in bandage packages, also some medical soaps, sanitizer and anesthetic - metacresol and phenol.
almond milk
Flavored soda water.
Bottled water. The plastic contaminates the fluid. Just drink straight from the sink if you live in an area that allows for it!
Tap water in super contaminated with PFAS in most areas, pick your poison
(Or get a reverse osmosis filter)
I switched over to have water delivered to my home in glass bottles (fortunately multi-use glass bottles are still a thing here in Germany). It tastes so much better than the same brand from PET bottles.
(Why don’t I drink tap water? Because I want my water sparkling with CO2 bubbles, and I don’t like the simple carbonaton appliance)
I bet you’re right. If you leave a plastic bottle in the sun, the water tastes god-awful.
It doesn’t even have to change temperature, it is enough that the water remains in the bottle for few days for plastic to start “decomposing” (probably not the correct word for it). And by the time you buy the bottle, it has been long since it was filled in the first place.
Oh, and the expiration date on the water bottles? Obviously it’s not the water getting stale. It’s for the plastic.
Air fryers.
Most of them are designed so poorly that it’s also impossible to get all grease out of them. That can’t be healthy. My sister has a ninja air fryer, you can’t remove the top grate. There is grease build up in there. A friend of mine has one he brings it over during the Super Bowl party, the moment he opens up the lid on it you can the old grease come out of it. That’s not an exaggeration. There’s no way in hell that can be healthy. So it won’t surprise me if years from now people go we should never have used those.
It also won’t surprise me too much if there’s some health hazard with them other than just the buildup of grease.
Sidenote, what are these companies thinking to make a product where they know there’s going to be grease that is going to build up, and it in a way that makes it almost impossible to clean said grease?
Unless they thought process is: use it three times throw it away go buy a new one.
Huh we bought an expensive air fryer because my in-laws wouldn’t stop bragging about it. It was on super discount because bed bath and beyond was going out of business, but still super expensive. And I’ve never had any problem cleaning it, in fact it’s the easiest dish we own to clean, the grease just wipes out and the tray is removable.
It also won’t surprise me too much if there’s some health hazard with them other than just the buildup of grease.
It’s an electric heating element and a fan, same as a convection oven except it exhausts rather than recirculates the air. Any issues beyond the grease buildup you mention would apply to any electric oven or toaster.
I too have watched Technology Connection’s video on the topic. :P
Yes but with an oven you can get in there and clean it. The grate at the top of the air fryer is built in away, where you can’t really clean it.
I have a toaster oven / convection oven / air fryer combo and it doesn’t suffer from this issue.
Mainly, what I was trying to point out is aside from the grease issue that was pointed out, there’s nothing special about air fryers. Any issue aside from grease buildup would also affect convection ovens, which have existed for a long time with no ill effects noted. It’s just an electric heating element and a fan, they’re not doing anything that special. I don’t think they’re going to be found to be dangerous in the future.
Oh my gosh, I never thought of that!
I bought an air fryer, but honestly, I never use it because I hate cleaning the basket. I didn’t even think about the top!
Adding this one to my list. Definitely nothing good about blasting your food with old oils.
Mine is one of my most non-stick surfaces and usually wipes clean with a paper towel
…. Now that I’ve been trying to move away from teflon
Sugar
That’s not exactly secretly bad… It’s just bad
Yeah, the natural state of humans is ketosis. Glucose stinks and we don’t need it!
This is not really a secret. The sugar industry lobbied so hard to have sugar included in everything and well, we’re seeing the damage.
I think sugar by itself is not so bad. The fact it is in amost all types of prepared foods from the store is really bad. But I’m not a specialist.
UHT milk.
I’ve been mad about UHT milk ever since I discovered I can’t make clotted cream with the ultra high temperature stuff. I don’t want unpastuerized milk but ffs, let me have some texture I can work with!
You make clotted cream from milk? Doesn’t that take like a week? Don’t you usually start with some form of cream?
I mean, I made it once from double cream, but they don’t sell that here in the Netherlands, and it’s so not worth the time compared to just buying a jar of clotted cream.
More power to you though!
You can make it from milk and butter if I remember. You can make it from double cream (heavy whipping cream in the US).
And I would love to just buy a jar but I can’t find them anywhere except online!! It’s such a shame because I grew up enjoying it, and went a few years too busy to have anything with it, and then when I went to buy it… nowhere.
Eta: If someone has a solution for me in the US thst doesn’t involve paying a fortune online, I am all ears! More ears than anything really.
Methadone
All of these Omega-3 and so-called healthy foods that have markup prices.
Like, an organic banana vs a original banana. What the fuck am I missing out on here?
Like, an organic banana vs a original banana. What the fuck am I missing out on here?
Mostly I’ve noticed the organic ones have more flavour. If there’s nutritional differences, I’d mostly expect it to just be more of the same nutrients in the organic version.
Warfarin blood thinners.
Wouldn’t be surprised if we find later that after decades of use that someone’s body can gain resistance to it. I’d be fucked since I’m on the blood thinner train for life*.
*or until we can start printing human cells to recreate human parts
Air conditioning. All kinds of bacteria, dust, mold, algae, who knows what else is going through the evaporator, through the air ducts and blasting right into your lungs. Yeah, there’s a filter, but it’s on the intake side. It doesn’t account for what has built up in there over the years and it doesn’t catch everything. The one in your car can be equally as gross.
you get Legionnaires’ disease from air conditioners. It’s called that because it was figured out after a bunch of people died from improperly maintained air conditioners at a hotel hosting a Legionnaires convention in the 70’s!
That’s why I use a mini split ductless unit. A lot easier to clean.
Toothbrush. In one hand it scrubs food and gunk away and helps distribute fluoride toothpaste around. On the other it’s made of tiny plastic bristles that are probably disintegrating when in your mouth and growing a fun ecosystem when out of it.
Ever since I heard of microplastic, this has been on my mind quite a bit. Although it might not be “ingested” if they are micro enough, it can probably still get absorbed every time you brush. Multiple that by every day of your life and, boom, now there’s plastic in my balls and I’m 3D printing on my girl’s face.
boom, now there’s plastic in my balls and I’m 3D printing on my girl’s face.
I’m stealing it
Swirl necklace
I bought a uv tooth brush sterilizer. Not sure if it’s doing anything useful but it’s a colourful addition to the bathroom.
UV is good at breaking down plastics ….
the number of things growing on your toothbrush is definitely non zero but being frequently scrubbed in sodium fluoride probably inhibits a good portion of it\
related though, electronic toothbrushes are way, way better in terms of tooth care, and my understanding the last time I read through marketing bullshit a few years ago was that the rotational/mechanical ones were better than the ones that just vibrate i.e. Oral B vs Sonicare, but the fucking Oral B toothbrush heads have fucking exposed bits of the mechanism, like, there’s these holes in it, so like, guess what? mold grows in there
I don’t understand how that isn’t like, you know, a massive design flaw that should be changed immediately, but I guess they want people to swap toothbrushes more often than mold would grow, idk
This is a clever answer and now I completely agree with you.
In theory, your toothbrush is getting a clean twice a day. Its already covered in nice sudsy toothpaste foam and you’ll (hopefully) be rubbing and rinsing that off.
The plastic disintegrating in your mouth however, yeah, I can’t dispute that!
Commercial yogurt. Yeah maybe it’s just a tasty and healthy probiotic. Or maybe it’s a way for food conglomerates to change our gut bacteria so that we crave even more foods with cheap sugar.
I’m so nervous I’m going to find out aquaphor is bad. I’ve been spreading it on my baby’s diaper area since they were born. I know she’s absorbing it right into her little body. There’s been so many articles about how diapers and tampons and pads are all just awful for us and full of lead and who knows what else and we’re putting them right against our mucus membranes and just poisoning ourselves.
If you want to try something else, Burt’s bees has a healing ointment for babies that is shea butter based instead of petroleum. Never actually used it on a baby myself lol but it worked wonders for me on my scalp (I have curly biracial hair and I’m picky about what goes in it) and scaly winter hands!
