> “Our study assumes that the average person makes 500 cuts per day on a board, or over the course of a year, 128,000 cuts. Given those numbers, the cumulative microplastics exposure ranges from 7.4 to 50.7 grams per year.”
> For context, a plastic credit card weighs about five grams, so the highest end of this estimate amounts to 10 credit cards per year, shed onto your board and food.
I have several plastic cutting boards I've used close to daily for probably 10 years. But they still have the same shape and weight as when I bought them, based on simple visual inspection. Yes, the surfaces are positively covered in probably hundreds of thousands of scratches from each cut I've made, but the surface is still visibly the same height in the middle of the board where it's most scratched, vs. the edges that don't have any scratches at all.
Yet according to this "study" my cutting boards ought to have developed entire holes in their middles by now.
I can quite confidently say that I haven't removed even one credit card's worth of plastic in a decade. A tiny fraction of a credit card's worth across all the boards, maybe.
In addition, the 500 cuts a day seems wildly off base here doesn't it? I'm the primary cook for things that don't go directly from the freezer to the oven in my household, and I'd put my estimate at maybe 10% of that. I'm not finely dicing half a dozen large onions a day. I only use my plastic cutting board for meat, so the number is much smaller than even that.
> “Our study assumes that the average person makes 500 cuts per day on a board, or over the course of a year, 128,000 cuts. Given those numbers, the cumulative microplastics exposure ranges from 7.4 to 50.7 grams per year.”
500 sounds like a lot for the "average person". Not sure if that's realistic. Maybe for some people...
I wonder where this assumption came from. It's key to the study's conclusions but there's no mention of that.
500/day is frankly preposterous for the "average person". I cook very regularly for a family of three, and the most cutting I'm usually doing is cutting the ends off green beans. That's two cuts per bean pod, with maybe 75 pods. (And I'm usually cutting a few in one go.) That's an above-average day. It's nowhere close to 500. It's much closer to 100.
Also, it's not even clear what toxicity level there is for microplastics, if any. The article even points this out.
I can see mincing garlic or herbs as being a lot of small cuts, but more like 50-75. I think a person might get up to 500/day if they're finely chopping something for all 3 meals, but I don't think that's average.
Half Chinese family here. We chop up something almost everyday, but I don’t think we get close to 500/day. We are using manufactured bamboo cutting boards anyways, which we sometimes throw in the dishwasher if meat is involved.
That sounds like the right ballpark for making a big stir-fry, including a lot of mincing of ginger and garlic and peppers. Not something I do every day, though! I feel like this is off by an order of magnitude.
However... as soon as you do something like use a serrated knife to cut bread on a cutting board? There's no way that wouldn't produce a ton of microplastics. Or if you scoop chopped vegetables by sliding a sharp knife -- that's also going to produce a lot of plastic particles. So it might not be a terrible estimate for some sizeable fraction of the population.
The average person is not mincing, or often even chopping, on a daily basis. And when they are, they are doing a couple dozen slices each through a few vegetables.
I have a feeling hacker news is the wrong demographic, and most folks on here are too busy to cook healthy foods for themselves every day, let alone a family.
I don’t have a clear sense of what an average American does, then, but if you’re an “average home cook for a family” then I don’t think it’s that far off.
Well I mean I do use garlic in about 2 out of every 3 meals.. so there’s mincing at least.
Obviously you can make a sandwich. Or cook a burger. But if you’re eating healthy fresh produce and meats then how are you not cutting things? Maybe like steak and asparagus every night? It’s that or processed food. Or maybe people call warming up pre made foods cooking? I honestly don’t know.
Now if you tell me the average person just makes Mac and cheese, or eats sandwiches, well then I understand. About 42% of Americans are obese, and fast food makes up a significant part of the average American diet. So I guess I’m reading the study as if it’s looking at the “average” person who uses a cutting board cooking, rather than an average American (many who may not even use cutting boards)
So maybe I’m in a bubble cooking these meals, but I’m not sure what actual “cooking” doesn’t do a lot of cutting. Knifes are the chefs primary tools. (watch any cooking show and count how many times knife hits board)
The parent said course chop, not dice. And plenty of dishes have pieces of onion of the size the parent is describing, especially considering that the pieces come apart. I'm not following the nature of your disagreement. It sounds like you're responding to a different post, or are trying to gatekeep something, but it's not clear what.
Beyond the number of cuts themselves, how many of those cuts actually touch the board?
I don't cook much and mostly make simple meals, but when I do prepare food, half the time I'm using the cooking board only to capture crumbs, fruit juices, etc. Actual cuts terminate either in the air, e.g. when slicing bread rolls in half, or on the inside of the outer layer, followed by ~90° turn of the thing under knife and finishing in the air (e.g. slicing lemons, tomatoes, etc.). None of those cuts have the knife making direct contact with the board.
(Sure, it's probably bad technique and somewhat inefficient; I think I unintentionally learned to do it because plastic cutting boards with cuts in them look ugly and are annoying to clean, so I tried to avoid damaging them.)
The number doesn’t seem that outlandish. Slicing a single onion of 50mm diameter into two halves and each of the halves into 1mm thin layers is 100 cuts already for example (yeah, 99, I know…).
Yeah, that's a pretty huge assumption. I struggle to imagine more than 50, even when cooking something moderately elaborate. So one order of magnitude there. Perhaps someone cooking a lot (e.g. for a large family) cuts more. But then that microplastic exposure is shared between everyone in that family. Pity we can't access the paper to check...
Yeah, that is wild. I'm honestly very confused by it. I feel like I'm pretty average and I probably make about two orders of magnitude fewer cuts than that as a daily average. The average person is roughly cutting up some meat and/or some vegetables, and probably not even every day.
If you are doing two orders of magnitude less cuts than that (i.e. ~ five cuts, or maybe even ten or twenty?!) you can hardly be preparing fresh food? You’re most likely not even in the group of people that this study is about in that case.
What world do these people live in?? I cut fruit every day for my family in about 20 slices. Vegatables might be another 15. One or two slices if I make a bagel for lunch.
I'm quite possibly missing something, but this is baffling to me (Text S1 from the paper) [1]:
> All the chopped carrots were carefully transferred to the glass wash tray. As shown in Figure 2,
> 500 mL of ultrapure water was used to wash the blade and the chopping board further to transfer all the particles in the same glass wash tray.
Who would expect contaminants left on the blade and the board to be counted alongside those in the chopped food itself? I suppose it's difficult to rigorously separate the chopped and the chopped-upon, but the distinction seems essential to support, or not, the hypothesis about human consumption.
I've been using bamboo cutting boards for years now. They're cheap (Ikea has them for like 10 bucks), durable, easy to maintain (it's not end grain, no need to oil them or whatever, and you can wash them properly in water, they won't split).
One cool thing about wooden cutting boards is that they are somewhat self-healing. Wood swells with water so small incisions can close by themselves.
I really like the Lämplig one, as it's properly sized instead of the small 10×20cm things that some people seem to use; having space to work is just so nice. And at €15 it's the same price or cheaper than most of those plastic ones (when I first got it I believe I paid €10 for it, or maybe even less, and I couldn't believe how cheap it was).
> One cool thing about wooden cutting boards is that they are somewhat self-healing. Wood swells with water so small incisions can close by themselves.
I believe it's also more hygienic, because with plastic cutting boards the bacteria stay on the surface, whereas in wooden ones they're "absorbed" by the wood (or something along those lines, I'm too lazy to find a reference).
I always presumed wood becomes a spongy high-surface area surface filled with food - a bacterial heaven - especially cracks! There is a definite funk to wooden boards. However, there are claims that wood is more healthy! Maybe some truth to the myths?
Plastic boards get a proper clean if the water is hot enough? They also dry completely - wooden boards stay wet for far longer. I don't think I've noticed plastic boards ever getting a bacterial funk smell. Then again I don't cook heaps so...
"Bacteria inoculated onto Plastic blocks were readily recovered for minutes to hours and would multiply if held overnight. Recoveries from wooden blocks were generally less than those from plastic blocks"
Now, I wouldn't put too much stock in a single study like this, as it only tests a single bacteria under a limited set of conditions for starters, and when cleaned thoroughly it probably doesn't make too much difference. But in reality people are lazy, in a hurry, etc. and don't necessarily clean and scrub properly.
Either way, I certainly wouldn't just assume plastic boards are more sanitary (ignoring the microplastic issue).
Do you hang your cutting boards up to dry? My most used wood board is technically for pizza but it has a handle and dries very fast when hung up. I do live in a rather dry area though
Apparently they use urea-formaldehyde glue to do so (source: a cursory google, take it with a grain of salt); I'm sure the bamboo is fine, dunno about the glue or whether it breaks down safely over time.
Downside of bonded wooden cutting boards is that they're not dishwasher safe. I've been using one made out of a pressed material, dunno what it is, but when wet some of the material can rub off as fibers that remind me of paper / cardboard, and that one's dishwasher safe.
Maybe this is an issue for professional use, but for normal home use you're using a knife for what, maybe 5 to 10 minutes a day on average? I'd be surprised if it makes a noticeable difference, especially if you're otherwise taking care if your knife: get a sharpening steel and use once on every side of the knife after use and for normal "home use" this will keep even cheap knifes more than sharp enough for most people.
Probably just means you need to sharpen it more often.
As I understand it, a steel doesn't sharpen the knife, but aligns the edge - in normal use, the edge folds over; steeling makes it straight again, and should be done before using the knife. It takes a _lot_ of effort with a steel to put an edge on a knife where it's worn away.
That's possible. I have a Minosharp sharpener which I use frequently so I don't see it as a real problem. My knives are still sharp enough to shave hair!
I love the idea of wood cutting boards, they also inhibit bacteria better than plastic.
But we bought all sorts, IKEA to Williams Sonoma $100 hardwood boards, religiously washed and dried them, oiled them monthly. But they all split and crack so quickly
Bamboo seems nice enough, but those are bound in plastic/resin and coated with something other than mineral oil — not sure they are better.
We stock up on the polypropylene thin cutting boards from IKEA. They are made in Taiwan which has a bit better regulation than other places, and polypropylene is an old plastic that is known to be very inert if not the most inert.
This is why you aren't allowed to serve food on wooden novelty plates (officially, doesn't stop some people), the wood cannot be cleaned / disinfected properly.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but your cutting board probably isn't the biggest source of microplastics in your life and many of those sources aren't your choice.
Let's be honest, this is just preemptive marketing for kitchen nerds. HN is too easy.
Anything that's not the kind of plastic being described. Anything that gets people buying yet another cutting board. They're not something most people buy often so incentives have to be created. Marketing doesn't have to be so focused.
I'm not saying microplastics aren't a problem. Of course they are. I'm saying that any trend is an opportunity for sales and I'd question whether this item is the one that really makes a difference for you. The whole article is so sleazily written.
Eating microplastics if very far down on my personal concern list (far below inhaling microplastics for example). There are so many scare articles around foods, plastics, air quality, noise pollution, radiation, etc. and so little effort assigning any proportionality or hierarchy to these concerns. Example: It's hard to think that consuming alcohol or refined/added sugars isn't 100x worse than unknown harms from microplastics.
It appears that those cutting boards are made of Richlite [1], which seems to be fused layers of paper. Apparently some form of phenolic resin is used during the creation process, but only little of that ends up in the actual board. Not sure about any adverse health effects there.
I have some big wooden cutting boards, and while they are really nice in a lot of ways, they are an absolute pain in the ass to wash by hand in a normal kitchen sink. You have to wash half at a time or something. After spending an hour or two cooking, then eating, then cleaning and putting things away, I don't need to have to maneuver this thing under a faucet to try to get it clean. So I have a somewhat big plastic one I just throw in the dishwasher. Easy.
Also, I tend to only use the wooden ones for vegetables and cooked meat. I know the wooden ones "inhibit bacteria", but if that's what is standing between me and salmonella/E. Coli, I'm taking modern chemicals every time. I know that's slightly germophobic but sorry, food-borne illness really sucks.
Do they harbor bacteria more than wood though? I've been using plastic cutting board for meat just because I always assumed wood being porus would be more bacteria friendly. Using wood board for everything else.
> The next logical question: just how bad is it for us to be ingesting microplastics? On that, the jury is still out. Yadav’s study also included a preliminary toxicity test on mouse cells (rather than live subjects) to determine the level of negative impact on biological function.
...
> “We did not find toxic results or effects from polyethylene on the mouse cells,” says Yadav. “But this portion of our testing was very preliminary, and not detailed.”
Kind of always suspected it and kept using them out of laziness (they can be popped in the dishwasher and it deals with them). Will definitely trash them now.
This is exactly why I use them. Washing my large wooden board in the sink is a pain, and it gets stained when cutting anything like red cabbage.
So I use a plastic board whenever I need to cut anything messy or chop raw meat etc. and can just shove it into the dishwasher afterwards.
There are compressed wood boards which can be dishwashed but they're literally 10x the cost of a plastic board, so to be honest I'll probably just keep using the plastic.
Wooden chopping boards are susceptible to deep groves where bacteria can get stuck, leading to increased risk of cross contamination.
Wooden chopping boards are bonded, so your still cutting in to whatever that bonding agent is.
You can't put a wooden chopping board in the dish washer.
Wooden chopping boards tend not to be distinctly colour coded.
Wooden chopping boards the size of the commercial plastic boards I use are much more expensive, invariably get left in the sink by someone, which invariably ends up splitting them, and their weight is unweildly.
The only time I thought wooden end grain boards were better, was when I was hanging out with people who'd spent too much on their second or third one because the cheaper first one or two they'd bought had already failed.
That and several commercial chefs have since told me the kitchens they work in don't permit the use of wooden chopping boards, other than as serving platters for some dishes.
Off the top of my head, plastic is lighter, cheaper, easier to dry, less prone to cracking, easier to keep sterile, and machine washable. I prefer wood, but there's no reason to use antagonistic internet-forum-style exaggeration and black-and-white phrasing ("superior in every way").
"It's easier to clean by hand" is almost always a fallacy (especially "much easier") motivated by some kind of mild form of hobbyist elitism. It's common sense that placing something in a dishwasher and taking it back out is easier than essentially any form of hand cleaning by most reasonable definitions of ease.
Edit:
You could make other pragmatic arguments (e.g. I'm sure some people generate enough dirty kitchenware that you need to pick some big things to do by hand), but "easiness" by itself clearly isn't viable.
> “Our study assumes that the average person makes 500 cuts per day on a board, or over the course of a year, 128,000 cuts. Given those numbers, the cumulative microplastics exposure ranges from 7.4 to 50.7 grams per year.”
> For context, a plastic credit card weighs about five grams, so the highest end of this estimate amounts to 10 credit cards per year, shed onto your board and food.
I have several plastic cutting boards I've used close to daily for probably 10 years. But they still have the same shape and weight as when I bought them, based on simple visual inspection. Yes, the surfaces are positively covered in probably hundreds of thousands of scratches from each cut I've made, but the surface is still visibly the same height in the middle of the board where it's most scratched, vs. the edges that don't have any scratches at all.
Yet according to this "study" my cutting boards ought to have developed entire holes in their middles by now.
I can quite confidently say that I haven't removed even one credit card's worth of plastic in a decade. A tiny fraction of a credit card's worth across all the boards, maybe.