The Perfect Glass & Stainless Steel Huel Containers💎 to Avoid Consuming Microplastics❌ & Nanoplastics❌

[Adam35000]

I’ve recently discovered the joys of using mason jars as food containers, and I just found a specialty mason jar size that works perfect for a full bag of Huel! (I posted pictures of it down below)

Mason jars are sturdy glass, non-toxic, they give a clear view of food, they’re microwavable, they’re space-efficient since food is stored more vertically, and more. They’re also pretty inexpensive. I bought the official Ball wide-mouth mason jars from a local store in packs of 12.

The only problem is they come with the cheap tinplate two-piece lids which are really inconvenient to use for daily food storage.

Luckily Ball makes a stainless steel one-piece lid with removable silicone gasket (won’t rot the way rubber does). They’re heavy duty and should last forever. Perfect seal every time. I’ve been using these and loving these. (I tried other stainless steel lids from Amazon but they did not work well.)

The 64oz mason jar is the largest size you typically find but even the wide-mouth version is too small to fit your hand through easily and would not work well for using with a Huel scooper.

The other day as I walked through Target I noticed they had a Ball 1 Gallon (3.785 Liters?) mason jar with not just a wide-mouth but a super-wide mouth, and a stainless steel & silicone gasket lid stock! Needless to say a lightbulb went off in my head

It perfectly fits a full bag of Huel (Huel black, as that’s all I’ve ever used. Not sure if the volume of normal Huel is different but I imagine it shouldn’t be too different), and you can easily get your hand/arm in it to scoop all the way to the bottom!

1 Gallon Mason Jar = 1 Bag of Huel, perfect fit
32 oz Mason Jar = 1 Bag of Huel Daily Greens, perfect fit

It’s like they were made for each other lol
They fit both full bags perfectly.

1st pic = Gallon of Huel > 32oz of Huel Daily Greens > standard size can of soup

2nd Pic = Gallon > 64oz > 32oz > 16oz > 8oz > standard size can of beans. The stainless steel lid & silicone gasket are on the left, the stock tinplate lid on the right. )

I have read that having Huel exposed to direct sunlight is “not a massive problem but would reduce the shelf life and degrade some of the vitamins & minerals over time,” per Julian/Founder of Huel.

I keep both jars inside a closed cabinet all day with the rest of my cans of food and they’re only exposed to light for a 2 minutes a day. It seems more than worth the trade off to me and like there would be minimal degradation considering you are getting a perfect seal every single time, versus the Huel bag that occasionally doesn’t seal very well and can then expose the contents to the air/moisture etc. outside the bag.

No more faulty sealing, no more fiddling, no more messiness, no more plastic for storage.

I figured I’d post all this in case others would find this useful.
I will post some pictures.

I’ve also started using a 32oz mason jar as my shaker bottle. I love it. No more plastic. Just glass, stainless steel, and silicone.

3rd Pic = 32oz jar mixture of Huel Black & Huel Daily Greens, with standard size can of beans.

(Edit: I did have to start using a stainless steel shaker ball inside to help mitigate lumps. I got a pack of 4 for $5 on Amazon.)

4th Pic = Stainless Steel shaker ball for putting in the 32oz jar when mixing Huel, to avoid lumps

These jars all have fluid level markings on the side so it’s easy to be consistent with the water level. They also sell silicone sleeves for these if you wanted to take this 32oz on the go but wanted more protection.

5th Pic = One type of silicone sleeve on Amazon for 32oz

[Hex]

Good post! Lusciously efficient organisation makes me tingle. Used to use a 1l Kilner wide-mouth jar for smoothies and overnight oats – loved them. Seen some other nice storage options for Huel powder but this seems to be one of the cheapest, plus transparent glass is preferred. Even better if your name is Mason when someone tries to steal your Huel.

How do you prepare the Huel when drinking from the jar? For example, do you shake it in the jar, or blend it beforehand? I want to use glass as much as possible, but hate lumps, washing the blender multiple times a day is annoying, and the Huel shaker does a decent job on consistency and convenience.

[Adam35000]

Thanks! I feel the same way about organization.

Excellent question about preparing the Huel. I shake it right in the jar.

With the jar I have noticed lumps a couple times a week, so I bought one of those stainless steel shaker balls on amazon for $5 and that resolved the issue for me.

I will edit my post to include this information.

[Argon18]

These work great for me.
$25 for 6 containers on amazon.
A full bag of huel fits in perfectly

[Adam35000]

Thank you for sharing Argon!
It’s nice to see other approaches/solutions that work well for people.

I’m highly concerned about food touching plastic because plastic constantly sheds many, many billions of MICRO-PLASTICS & NANO-PLASTICS into food.

These are known endocrine-disruptors and bioaccumulate in one’s body over time, undoubtedly causing health problems which is becoming clearer over time.

Nano-plastics could be even more dangerous than microplastics because nanoplastics are small enough to slip across cell membranes and make their way to places they shouldn’t.

I’d rather just go with glass, stainless steel, silicone, ceramic etc and avoid the issue altogether.

This article emphasizes how problematic microwaving plastic is, but it also describes how storing food in plastic even in a normal temperature room or a refrigerator is still a problem. It’s causing the release of many many billions of microplastics & nanoplastics into our food, which will bioaccumulate over time in the body.

# For the Love of God, Stop Microwaving Plastic
https://www.wired.com/story/for-the-love-of-god-stop-microwaving-plastic/

"First, these particles are sneaky. Once they enter the body they coat themselves with proteins, slipping past the immune system incognito, “like Trojan horses,” says Trinity College Dublin chemistry professor John Boland, who was not involved in this study. Microplastics also collect a complex community of microbes, called the [plastisphere], and transport them into the body.

Once they’ve snuck past the body’s defense systems, “the chemicals used in plastics hack hormones,” says Leonardo Trasande, a professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the director of the Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards. Hormones are signaling molecules underlying basically everything the body does, so these chemicals, called endocrine disruptors have the potential to mess with everything from metabolism, to sexual development and fertility.

For both kinds of fluids and polypropylene containers, the most microplastics and nanoplastics—up to 4.2 million and 1.2 billion particles per square centimeter of plastic, respectively—were shed during microwaving, relative to the other storage conditions they tested.

In general, they found that hotter storage temperatures cause more plastic particles to leak into food. For example, one polypropylene container released over 400,000 more microplastics per square centimeter after being left in a hot room than after being stored in a refrigerator (which still caused nearly 50,000 microplastics and 11.5 million nanoplastics per square centimeter to shed into the stored fluid). “I got terrified seeing the amount of microplastics under the microscope,” Hussain says.

To test what these plastics do to our bodies once they’re consumed, the team bathed human embryonic kidney cells in the plastic roughage shed by the baby-food containers. (The team chose this kind of cell because kidneys have so much contact with ingested plastic.) After two days of exposure to concentrated microplastics and nanoplastics, about 75 percent of the kidney cells died—over three times as many as cells that spent two days in a much more diluted solution."

I saw this article recently which suggests that new technology is revealing there to be in some places potentially 10 to 100 TIMES MORE MICROPLASTICS & NANOPLASTICS THAN PREVIOUSLY ESTIMATES, in certain places.

So clearly we’re still barely understanding this problem, and I’d rather just stick with glass, stainless steel, silicone, ceramic etc and avoid the risks of long-term plastic usage altogether.

# Researchers find a massive number of plastic particles in bottled water
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1223730333/bottled-water-plastic-microplastic-nanoplastic-study

" Microscopic pieces of plastic are everywhere. Now, they’ve been found in bottled water in concentrations 10 to 100 times more than previously estimated.

Researchers from Columbia University and Rutgers University found roughly 240,000 detectable plastic fragments in a typical liter of bottled water. The study was published Monday in the [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

About 10% of the detected plastic particles were microplastics, and the other 90% were nanoplastics. Microplastics are between 5 millimeters to 1 micrometer; nanoplastics are particles less than 1 micrometer in size. For context, a human hair is about 70 micrometers thick.

Microplastics have already been found in people’s lungs, their excrement, their blood and in placentas, among other places. A 2018 study found an average of 325 pieces of microplastics in a liter of bottled water.

Nanoplastics could be even more dangerous than microplastics because when inside the human body, "the smaller it goes, the easier for it to be misidentified as the natural component of the cell," says Wei Min, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University and one of the study’s co-authors."

Also, BPA free basically means nothing at all. The replacement chemicals BPS and BPF behave like BPA. They’re hormonally active in ways similar to BPA.

# Why ‘BPA-Free’ May Be Meaningless

https://time.com/3742871/bpa-free-health/

" But it turns out the chemicals used to replace BPA may have nearly the exact impact on the human body — hormone disruption — as BPA, according to a new study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives ."

[epicure]

So is my Huel shaker poisoning me?

Also, aren’t you worried about the plastic bags Huel is stored and delivered in?

[Adam35000]

I think the best mindset is to just reduce exposure, rather than worry about perfection. We can’t live in a perfect environment but we can take countermeasures to reduce exposure, especially in the highest risk areas.

The harm is probably proportional to the exposure. If you’re storing food in plastic & microwaving it in that plastic, you have massive exposure to microplastics & nanoplastics.

If you’re merely shaking your Huel up in a plastic bottle and chugging it quickly, there’s obviously less exposure.

So we should probably proportion our level of concern to the harm/risk.

How any of these plastics will bioaccumulate & affect us over time is yet to be fully determined, but we already know they’re harming us in measurable ways.

A big problem is there seems to be so little awareness that “BPA-free” doesn’t mean safe, at all, and that storing food in plastic means we’re ingesting not just microplastics but nanoplastics as well.

I don’t want nanoplastics infiltrating my body every time I eat or drink. There’s enough problems to deal with in this world, and I don’t want this to be yet one more problem for me down the road. I can take simple measures to address this one, so I might as well do it now rather than later.

Rather than live in fear or paranoia I find it’s best to think of it as designing a lifestyle that keeps plastics out of our body the best we can, the same way we put gutters & downspouts on our homes to keep the water out of our foundation the best we can. Like a fun engineering problem to simply design a lifestyle that handles this problem elegantly and long-term.

Then we get to passively benefit from that lifestyle for decades, enjoying better health and a little more peace of mind.

[epicure]

Sounds sensible, and probably worth wearing a mask while walking in urban areas, next to busy roads too. Plenty microparticles thrown up by vehicle tyres, to say nothing of microparticles in exhaust. Also good to wear a mask when travelling in a car, as the air inside the vehicle is often more polluted than outside.

Also don’t forget the microparticles constantly shed by those fleece garments we wear. Masks will maybe be wise to use there too.

Wearing a mask makes you look peculiar but at least we can use Covid as an excuse.

[Adam35000]

I think it is wise to perform a cost-benefit analysis to see which countermeasures you determine have enough benefit to be worth the cost (all forms of cost, not just financial).

I think the vast majority of people would find the one-time change of buying glassware far, far, far, far less costly/obtrusive than wearing a mask 24/7.

As far as countermeasures go, the highest priority is to have better testing & regulations to reduce the quantities of particles polluting our society in the first place. This goes for plastics and all kinds of smog too.

I think another sensible countermeasure to air pollution is to move out of big cities and to a place with more green space. If it’s feasible, there are many reasons to move out of cities, with pollution being just one. This way you get to passively enjoy the benefit of cleaner air after making a one-time change.

Are you suggesting that one should continue to store food in plastic, microwave in plastic, drink out of plastic, ingesting countless trillions of plastic particles for decades, simply because you don’t want to worry about the other particles you have less control over?

As if countermeasures in one area obligates you to take every possible countermeasure in other areas?

Focusing on what we can control is wise.
Protecting health is wise.
Reducing exposure to harmful materials is wise.

Simple one-time changes (like buying glassware) to reduce exposure are a great “low-hanging fruit” that bring outsized benefits when calculated over the long-term, especially when compared to far more obtrusive changes which may be more trouble than they’re worth (unless you live in particularly smoggy places.)

[Hex]

Nothing wrong with making what small changes you can reasonably do to create cumulatively great impact. Gives room to relax a bit in other areas. I think the mindset conveyed in this thread is excellent, logical and would create a far better world if more thought along these lines.

Many years ago I went through a bunch of different water bottles, some cheap, some expensive, looking for one that was less harmful while still convenient, reusable, easy to clean, hygienic, environmentally conscious and long-lasting. The best one I found which I’ve been using for years since, is literally a £2 glass VOSS bottle. 5x, 10x, even 20x cheaper than all the endless plastic and metal bottles on Amazon and elsewhere claiming to have your health in mind, yet significantly better and dead simple. Tiny investment for a good impact.

Out of curiosity, how do you filter the water you use for Huel @Adam35000, or do you use bottled water?

[Phil_C]

Unfortunately, decanting your food into glass or metal containers to reduce plastic exposure is a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Plastic packaging doesn’t just arbitrarily shed nano particles UNLESS significant energy is applied to it (or the container itself is already structurally damaged) – for example, picking up a plastic container of food to put in the microwave isn’t going to immediately pass nano particles of polymers through your skin. Nano particles WILL pass into your food though while its being heated in the microwave.

Similarly, research has shown that the vast majority of nano particles in bottled drinks do not come from leaching from the container itself, but either from the bottling process or the ingredients that were already contaminated. All of our water sources are already contaminated with nano particles, so you will absorb far more of these particles into your skin taking a shower or wearing freshly laundered clothes than you will handling a plastic package.

Inhalation and ingestion are the most common ways we get these particles into our system – nano plastics are in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, even the ground the food grows in.

[epicure]

This is from seven years ago, but should still be of interest: How your clothes are poisoning our oceans and food supply | Environment | The Guardian

Also beware of carpets.

[hunzas]

And don’t wash your clothes

[Adam35000]

I read that in 2020 France became the first country in history to pass microfiber legislation to reduce microplastics. They are requiring all new washing machines to include microfiber filters by 2025.

I’ve been leaning towards hardwood floors since they’re easier to keep clean, especially with my cats puking up furballs. (I tried passing a law that they puke in designated areas only, but they don’t seem too concerned about following that one ).

I’ve seen interesting ideas for how to clean up the oceans of microplastics/nanoplastics. Perhaps one day we will have a way to actively clean up more of what has already been released.

[Adam35000]

Yes, there’s no escaping microplastics & nanoplastics.
But it is possible to reduce exposure.
If we implement a good solution for each of our areas of main exposure, then we’ve made great progress.
If we just shrug and say “oh well, I’m already breathing it in elsewhere,” how does much does that help?

My primary concern with avoiding plastic food containers wasn’t due to potential aborption of plastic through my hands from handling it. I hope that was clear. It was because it gets into the food itself and then ingested.

There are many ways microplastics & nanoplastics get shed into food through food containers. The friction between the food and the container itself as the food is moved around, the scraping of the container when scooping or eating, the opening & closing of the lid (studies of water bottles showed that squeezing the water bottle and putting the cap on & off were ways more plastics were released), microwaving, stacking & unstacking the plastic containers, and more, are ways plastics can be released.

Admittedly there are bigger sources of microplastics & nanoplastics. But again, do we want to improve the issue or just give up? Especially when it’s so simple to implement certain changes (like the glassware)

–Buying glassware
–Putting in wood floors instead of carpets, or carpets with natural fibers
–Putting a microplastic filter on your washing machine or a device in with each load that gathers microplastics etc (new emerging solutions)
–Putting in a reverse osmosis system or a good kind of water filter that’s been tested regarding microplastics

Yes water filters may introduce a particular kind of plastics into the water. There are Consumerlab reports that some water filters actually increased some forms of microplastics, while others actually do effectively reduce them. So it’s not that hard to find filters that have been independently tested regarding this and go with what has the best results.

I think the goal is a net gain. If a water filter increases certain nanoplastics but removes much more of other kinds, and removes a host of other problematic particles, it is worth it especially when that benefit is calculated over decades.

Sure there’s no way to perfectly eliminate exposure, but given that plastics bioaccumulate it seems wise to reduce exposure so that the body has less of it to deal with.

(I posted this once but apparently accidentally deleted it. I tried to find the edit button but clicked the 3 dots and then the trash can lol)

[Adam35000]

Your journey sounds very similar to mine. I’m glad you found what worked for you!

I thought I found water bottle perfection when I found the hydroflask like 10 years ago lol

Then I realized I drank more water when I could actually see the water level so I went for a see-through water bottle, but it was plastic.

Then I realized glass would be best for my situation so I went with a glass 75oz water bottle with a silicone sleeve coating a lot of it, but so I can still see water level. I got a silicone straw for it to replace the plastic one it came with.

Now that I got the mason jars a couple weeks ago perhaps I will one day use one of them as my water bottle lol I’ve also seen mason jar lids that have a strawhole with a silicone plug, and a stainless steel straw. But honestly i’m pretty happy with my current water bottle setup, this would just satisfy a part of my brain that wants to use mason jars for as many things as possible now

Regarding filtering water, I have a water filter pitcher that is BPS/BPA-free, highly rated in some independent tests, and claims to filter out microplastics, but the jury is still out on how it stacks against others as I need to look into it more. Consumerlabs tests water filter pitcher’s various claims, and I’ve seen other websites/organizations test their claims as well.

I recently bought this glass beverage dispenser so that as soon as my water filter pitcher has filtered the water I can pour it into the dispenser. This way I have a lot more filtered water on hand for things like cooking etc, and also the water doesn’t sit in the plastic pitcher for very long at all, a couple hours at most.

There are other water dispensers like this that are around $30-$40 but after looking at dozens they all had issues I didn’t like. A metal lid that rusts. A plastic spigot (the one I bought has a stainless steel one). Weak glass so that the bottom can completely break open at some point.

I just got this so I need to put it through its paces but it seems like a reasonable solution for me right now. Filter the water then immediately put it in the glass & stainless steel dispenser.

[epicure]

@Adam35000

I’ve been leaning towards hardwood floors since they’re easier to keep clean, especially with my cats puking up furballs. (I tried passing a law that they puke in designated areas only, but they don’t seem too concerned about following that one ).

Hardwood floors are great, so long as the neighbours downstairs don’t mind. Cats are super-great, furballs or no, never mind what the neighbours say.

This is an interesting thread, it’s got me thinking and I just realised I’m boiling water for coffee in a plastic kettle. That can’t be a good idea.

[Adam35000]

@epicure

Hardwood floors are great, so long as the neighbours downstairs don’t mind. Cats are super-great, furballs or no, never mind what the neighbours say.

I agree, I love em!

@epicure

This is an interesting thread, it’s got me thinking and I just realised I’m boiling water for coffee in a plastic kettle. That can’t be a good idea.

I’m glad it’s had value for others!

It does help to occasionally think about these things.
I’m regularly noticing blind-spots where I didn’t realize there was some simple change I could make (and would make) that would be healthier for me.

[hunzas]

Cats. I have two in my life. One is long haired, one is shorthaired. Interestingly it is the shorthaired that is always coughing up furballs. The long haired never has although apparently long hairs are more susceptible to the issue. They are brothers from the same litter.

Personally I think the shorthair needs to stop being a dick. Now he’s giving the evils.

[epicure]

now there’s a cat with attitude.