Eating daily roast dinners could be the equivalent of eating two plastic bags a year, research finds
The roast dinner is a long time British tradition and a meal thousands of people look forward to all week.
But experts have now found it could contain some potentially sinister surprises.
Research by the University of Portsmouth in partnership with ITV's Good Morning Britain, has revealed that enjoying just one traditional roast dinner can lead to ingesting 230,000 microplastics (microplastics are any plastics that are smaller than 5mm in size).
Furthermore, eating one roast dinner everyday - or a similar meal everyday - would equate to eating two plastic bags each year.
GMB reporter Michelle Morrison, alongside her 9-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son, made two separate roast dinners at home with the same ingredients - chicken, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and yorkshire pudding.
However, one meal was made with ingredients that had all been bought wrapped in plastic versus the second meal, for which most of the ingredients had been purchased without any plastic packaging at all i.e. loose.
The roast made from ingredients wrapped in plastic contained seven times more microplastics than the non plastic-wrapped one, showing that plastic packaging is a major route for plastics getting into our bodies.
In addition, the non-packaged items cost 37% less than those bought wrapped.
Dr Fay Coucerio, Reader in Environmental Pollution at the University of Portsmouth, tested both roast dinners and explained: “From the results it would appear that the majority of microplastics in our food come from the plastic packaging it is wrapped in.
"However, there are other ways that plastic can enter the food chain. It could be getting into the vegetables through the soil or into our meat through grazing.
"Air has lots of microplastics in it too, so they could be falling on top of the food and finally it could be from the cooking utensils used when preparing a meal.”
Dr Couceiro continued: “Usually food samples are analysed for microplastics in their raw state under laboratory conditions. This allows us to understand how much plastic is inside a particular type of food.
"This study differs because we chose to look at what was actually on your plate after the food had been cooked. Instead of a sterile laboratory, the food was cooked in a normal kitchen, so it is likely the microplastics will come from a combination of within the food, the packaging, cooking utensils and the air.”
Michelle Morrison, a reporter with Good Morning Britain said: “Previously there has been very little research into the amount of microplastics contained within an entire meal.
"Our new investigation has clearly found that we eat far less microplastics when we reduce the amount of packaging we buy.
“What we now need to know is, are these microplastics harmless or, like many believe, are they actually tiny plastic timebombs?”
Professor Shaji Sebastian, Consultant Gastroenterologist, Hull University Teaching Hospital said: “The key is to understand, what are microplastics doing to the body? Do they go to the organs? For example, do they cross the barrier between the blood and the brain?
"If it is launched in the intestine, which is my area of interest, is it going to stimulate some problems or inflammation which may lead on to disease down the line? These are critical questions, which we need to answer.
“The results of this investigation are surprising and make research into the impacts of microplastics on the human body all the more urgent.”
Methodology
2g of each food type (chicken, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and yorkshire pudding) were taken from the plastic wrapped and the unwrapped dinners. Samples were digested and analysed by microRaman to determine the number of microplastics in each sample (2 - 600 µm size range). The number of microplastics was then multiplied up to estimate the number on the whole plate.
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