Your kitchen is full of microplastics. Here’s how to eat less of them

“If you farm on a piece of land that was previously industrial and the soil is contaminated, [there is] potential for those plants to accumulate the contaminants in the soil,” says Sathyanarayana. Once that the crops are harvested, there are many more opportunities for contamination during processing. “Factories use a huge amount of plastic to be effective and to have high throughput for their products.”

For some foods, it is possible to get rid of some of the microplastics before you eat them. One study in Australia found that people were typically consuming 3-4mg of plastic per serving of home-cooked rice, and up to 13mg per serving of pre-cooked rice. The microplastics were just as present in rice that was packaged in paper, as in rice that came in plastic packaging. However, the researchers found that rinsing the rice reduced the microplastics served up by 20-40%. Washing meat and fish, too, can reduce microplastics – but not eliminate them. 

For other foods, rinsing is impossible. Salt often contains microplastics due to contamination at mining and processing points. A 2018 study found that 36 out of the 39 salt brands analysed contained microplastics. Sea salt had the highest levels of microplastics, likely due to the high levels of microplastic pollution in the world’s lakes, reservoirs, rivers and oceans.

Both Sathyanarayana and Annelise Adrian, a senior programme officer with the plastics and material science team at World Wildlife Fund, are proponents of switching to fresh, whole foods or, at the very least, avoiding ultra-processed foods whenever possible. “The more ultra-processed a food is, the more likely it is to have high plastic contamination, because there are so many touch points in a factory making that food,” says Sathyanarayana.

Reducing the amount of plastic in the food chain will take more than changes within our individual kitchens. Globally, if the amount of plastic debris polluting the environment was cut by 90%, it could halve the amount of plastics consumed by people in the most affected countries.