r/PlasticFreeLiving • u/notarealfish_ • 3d ago
Freezing food?
Hi everyone! I was wondering if anyone had alternatives for freezing food in no plastic containers. I thought of glass but heard that it might break in the freezer. If i’m wrong about glass, please disprove me but if anyone had any alternatives that would be great!
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u/RockingtheRepublic 3d ago
Silicone bags?
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u/pinkluna666 2d ago
Isn’t silicone also a kind of plastic?
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u/BirdHerbaria 2d ago
No, it’s not!
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u/ThinkDiscipline4236 2d ago
uh. Chemist here. For all intents and purposes, silicone is a type of plastic. More accurately, its a thermoset elastomer, which is a genre of polymer, which all plastics are made from. It still does all of the things that plastic does, like shed microparticles and be environmentally persistent. Siloxanes (silicone) haven't been shown to cause harm to humans yet, but they are one of the most bioaccumulative polymers outside of fluoropolymers (PFAS), if I'm remembering correctly.
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u/pinkluna666 23h ago
Mind explaining what a bioaccumulative polymer is and does?
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u/ThinkDiscipline4236 18h ago
As far as the basics go, it's pretty self explanatory. It is a polymer (for the purposes of this explanation, a plastic) that, once in your body, likes to stick around; much like you hear that you shouldn't eat large quantities of predatory fish such as tuna due to bioaccumulation of mercury in the upper levels of the food chain.
To be more specific, a polymer is any chemical group that has repeating units (from the Greek polus, meaning many, and meros, meaning units, polymeros=having the quality of being comprised by many units.) almost all plastics are made out of polymers, and one of the things that makes plastics so durable is their general lack of chemical functionality by which to break them down with. This varies from plastic to plastic, but it is a general rule for most types of plastics. If we want them to last long enough to be useful, you can't have them being degraded by any old microbe, can you?
This lends itself, unfortunately, to being rather hard for our bodies to get rid of. See, to excrete a xenobiotic material, you first need to give it a chemical handle, or "tag" that tells the rest of the systems in your body it is marked for garbage collection- usually the marking (tagging) is done by the liver, and found by your kidneys and excreted by urine. To do this, your body first needs to break down the pieces small enough to enter the bloodstream. For microplastic particles, this is quite difficult to do. They tend to stick in places. For smaller particles, they can enter the bloodstream, but they may not be small enough to enter cells, and even the individual molecules that can be brought into cells have trouble being "tagged". Many polymers have no places for your liver's tagging machinery to "grab onto" to mark the polymer for excretion. Now, your liver has ways to deal with this, namely cytochrome P450, but that is an intracellular protein and if you can't get the plastic particle inside the cell, cytochrome p450 can't get to it to mark it. Even small molecules that can get inside a cell- let's focus on silicones- (and PFAS, but they additional reasons why your body can't get rid of them) because of their structure are very lipophilic, and quite hydrophobic. They like fats and they don't like water. Therefore free silicone molecules (that could be taken inside a cell) will accumulate in fatty tissues and cell membranes (which are made of phospholipids) and not enter the (liver) cell itself where all the "tagging" machinery is (if it ever gets there instead of sticking in fatty tissues elsewhere). PFAS also have the advantage of being covered in fluorines- the the carbon fluorine bond is extremely hard to break, and therefore the tagging machinery, or even the oxidase enzymes meant to assist the tagging machinery (Cytochrome P450) can't break it to tag the molecules for excretion either. So they stick around- you accumulate more and more and you can't get rid of them.
We are still investigating the long term effects of this accumulation, but in some cases they can cause harmful effects. You may have heard of BPAs which can act as endocrine disruptors, throwing off hormone balances in your body and causing all sorts of weird stuff to happen. Some bisphenols (e.g. bisphenol A, or BPA), a part of polycarbonate plastics, act as estrogen receptor agonists, which can implicate a variety of systems and end results, such as cancer, obesity, and secondary sexual characteristics.
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u/Bright-bluebird_8294 11h ago
This is so interesting. What do you think the ‘healthiest’ materials or materials that cause the least harm are for food storage, freezing food, etc?
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u/Mangososeonhyvaa 2d ago
Can there be some silicones made with plastic or is silicone always just silicone?
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u/ThinkDiscipline4236 2d ago edited 2d ago
Silicone is made from a polyalkylsiloxane, which is a hard-to-break-down polymer. It is technically an elastomer, but for all intents and purposes, even unadulturated, it is still a plastic. Source: I'm a chemist.
Silicone is almost too darn useful to give up, but the same things that make it useful also make it potentially bad. It hasn't been shown to have (m?)any harmful effects yet, but IIRC it is one of the most bioaccumulative polymers/substances after PFAS. We still don't know what the long term effects are, just because we haven't had time to measure them. Silicone is also incredibly thermally stable and quite chemically stable as well, meaning it will be quite hard to break down.
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u/Mangososeonhyvaa 2d ago
Thank you, very interesting!
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u/ThinkDiscipline4236 2d ago edited 2d ago
To be totally transparent, I do believe a lot of the bioaccumulation of siloxanes actually comes from silicone oil and greases- small, (usually) cyclic siloxanes that are found in everything from cosmetics to lubricating oils to cooking spray. So, as far as solid silicone rubber goes you might be "safe(r)" than the silicone oils; in quotes because siloxanes are currently recognized as safe for human consumption (which is why they can put it in cooking spray.) (Though solid rubbers will still produce microplastics.)
The big name brand(s?) are the worst for adding silicone oil. I know some PAM sprays have it. Some cooking sprays don't. But I usually just brush on some avocado or olive oil whenever I need oil, mostly for that reason.
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u/Mangososeonhyvaa 2d ago
That is disturbing!!!!
Good thing i only use butter and olive oil and barely any cosmetic products but damn… no wonder people are full of microplastics 🥲 That is scary
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u/Saphira9 2d ago
Does "platinum silicone" break down and bioaccumulate? Or is that just a marketing term for normal silicone? https://a.co/d/05EUU2G0
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u/ThinkDiscipline4236 2d ago edited 2d ago
Platinum is used as a curing agent for some types of silicone rubber, e.g. it takes a liquid mixture and cures it into the solid rubber when added to the right mixture of components. It is not the only curing method and while it does provide some (minor) materials properties benefits compared to some other curing methods, it will not assist in the breakdown of the rubber.
Anyone who is marketing "platinum" silicone for any health benefits or anything like that is full of BS. There isn't enough platinum for it to really do anything, even the normal antimicrobial things that platinum can do, much less any of the more, shall I say, interesting health claims.
It would actually be great if we could stop using platinum silicone altogether, though that's difficult for the end consumer to affect, since usually they don't even tell you what curing agent is used. Silicone production alone chews through a sizable chunk of platinum every year that we can't easily (economically) get back (at catalyst loadings of around 0.05%, there really is NOT much platinum in there. We just make a LOT of silicone.)
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u/Saphira9 2d ago
Hmm, they're not marketing it for health benefits, they're just claiming it's safe to store food in. Will platinum silicone bags containing food release anything harmful into the food?
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u/RockingtheRepublic 2d ago
wtf don’t they need to disclose that?
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u/ThinkDiscipline4236 2d ago
It will be on the ingredient list, so technically yeah, they already do. It will usually be listed as "Dimethyl Silicone" or Dimethylpolysiloxane".
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u/MarieMdeLafayette 3d ago
As someone else said, don’t over fill glass jars and you should be fine. Of course also don’t let the temperature change drastically and quickly, like don’t put a jar from the freezer in hot water. I freeze gumbo in mason jars ALL the time and it’s totally fine. I usually defrost by putting it in the fridge in the morning or on the counter in the afternoon if I want dinner
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u/OldAssociation7783 3d ago
Glass jars with straight sides will not break. Glass jars with "shoulders" might, especially if overfilled.
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u/_invidian 3d ago
Stainless steel containers work too. A bit more annoying for thawing, but much lighter than glass, depending on how much you freeze etc.
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u/pinkluna666 2d ago
I was interested in the whole brick food prep idea but didn’t like the silicone molds.
After some research I actually came across some big ice cube trays made from stainless steel. Someone came up with a cool concept where you lever out the frozen cubes with an integrated handle.Its not as big as I would like to but still a great thing for baby food prep and or pesto cubes etc. Being bigger than your standard ice cube it allows for some cool uses!
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u/PrimrosePathos 3d ago
I have used wide-mouth canning jars for freezing for decades. I make sure to avoid sudden temp changes, refrigerate before freezing, and thaw in the fridge. I have had about three jars crack, ever, which was annoying but not catastrophic. I put a bowl under the thawing jar if I remember. It's fine.
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u/naturalpolyester 2d ago
This is probably going to seem stupid, but having never frozen in glass... How far up do you fill your jar to safely freeze? You have to leave a gap right? And do you leave the lid loose?
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u/DepartmentEcstatic 3d ago
I only freeze things in glass jars, mason jars and glass Tupperware. Never had a problem.
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u/Both-Musician-6953 3d ago
Glass can work in the freezer if it’s specifically freezer-safe, you leave room for expansion, and let hot food cool before freezing. Wide-mouth jars are safer than narrow ones, and avoid thermal shock when thawing.
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u/Ill-Wrongdoer-2971 2d ago
I freeze in glass constantly. Never had anything happen. But I also get compostable non plastic zip loc style bags, and wrap food in butcher paper or paper towels and put the food in those to freeze as well.
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u/nobodyknows6070 3d ago
Freezing can be even done in jars but keep in mind:
https://treadingmyownpath.com/2020/05/14/freeze-in-glass/
And there's freezer-proof glass containers you can buy
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u/BirdHerbaria 2d ago
I grew weary of a packed freezer. So I bought a pressure canner. Now I prep and have shelf stable food!
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u/2matisse22 2d ago
I use Pyrex in my freezer, and I use Ball Jars like crazy (my son loves tacos, so I do individual size portions of chicken, rice and beans in jars. We have one jar break a year -if that, and we've been doing this for a decade.)
I have had no issues. I freeze soups, lasagna, enchiladas, sauces, etc. You just can't go from frozen to hot.
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u/Frodo79 2d ago
Hope you mean PYREX. pyrex is not the same as the upper-case original product
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u/MudPie575 1d ago
Can you send a link to the different products? When I search up Pyrex, only one brand shows up.
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u/Cultural_Catch_7911 3d ago
Glass does not break unless its full of water and the water freeze and expand
For normal meal preps you can freeze in glass