I think this whole thing started when wa-aa-y back in "the good ol' days" they (company) came out with frozen sandwich fixings like turkey or roast beef in gravy - in a boil-in-the-bag pouch. Just boil water, drop the pouch in and boil "X" amount of minutes, cut the bag open and deposit on your bread or rolls for a hot sammie or add a salad and veggies and have a meal for one!

So, of course, not knowing any better many felt that they can now put food items in plastic bags and heat in boiling water. And of course, information was not as available as it is today.

Give me the really good ol' days - before plastic bowls, plastic wraps, etc.

It's so kooky because I can't think of hardly any food that plastic doesn't touch- hot, cold or otherwise- even during the cooking/heating process. Just last night at work I ate Lean Cuisine Sausage & Ziti from packaging that likely had ounce-for-ounce as much plastic in the box as it did food. Nuked it in the black plastic tray with the clear plastic film folded back... Same with my spinach salad- came out of plastic that it had likely lived in since God was a boy! As I departed work this morning an arriving first-shifter had just nuked an english-muffin/egg/bacon breakfast-sammie in this neato plastic bag with these silly perforations in it to supposedly keep the muffin from getting steamy-wet.

Having been in Alaska for so many years (which admittedly- AK is usually very behind all things "trendy"...) and cooking high-volume foods mainly from scratch, I haven't seen many of these ingenius "new" things on the market. Helll- one can now even microwave plastic tubs of Campbell's Soup and Chef Boyardee Pastas- completely encased in weird little plastic coffins w/ holes poked in the top! Maybe you've all seen these items for years- but since I've been in a frozen "coma" up north for over a decade, some of these things are amazing me!

You know, Chub, your Alaskan way of life is better on so many levels. Cooking from scratch is better for you, tastes better, uses less packaging to pollute our planet, and when made with local ingredients, supports our local agribusinesses.

Piffle on food in plastic coffins, I say! I'm with Mama M. But what can I carry my PB&J to work in?

Just a sidebar on the "transference of carcinagens."

Most of this actually started in the '70s, with the search for a plastic bottle that could hold carbonated beverages (read "beer").

Most experiements were with polymers, and there was a lot of concern about the migration of free monomers.

Even though nobody knew whether or not free monomers even existed, or, if they did, if they migrated into foodstuffs, and, if they did, whether that meant anything from a health concern, by Gawd we had to be concerned. Cuz if all that did happen, by definition, free monomers were either an adulterent or an unspecified additive. Either way, and depending on which gubmint agency you listented to, it would make them an illegal and, by definition, a health hazard.

Congress even got involved, and held several hearing on the subject. Indeed, I testified at one of them.

Enter Dr. Gilbert, from Rutgers' food science school, who explains to the Congress of the United States, in all its dignity, that even if free monomers do exist, so what? They cannot migrate into the food, because Maxwell's Demons will keep them out.

Don't be alarmed, I will explain.

Dr. Maxwell was one of those 19th century "thought scientists." Most of them were German, but he happened to be Scottish. Maxwell addressed a non-problem (later, when thermodynamics became a science, it would become real---a rare instance of a thought scientist "solving" a real problem) having to do with the transference of particules through a permeable membrane. Nowadays this has to do with diffusion and osmosis, but nobody knew from such things.

At any rate, Maxwell posited that the reason movement takes place in only one direction (for instance, from greatest concentrations to least) is because if you magnified the membrane it would look like a wall full of open doorways. He called them gates. And in each gate sat a demon, directing traffic. Molecules could only move in one direction because of that.

Can you imagine. Congress hearing such nonsense? Never mind that Maxwell's Demons is a fully accepted idea in scientific circles. Congress wasn't having none of it.

In the Congressional Record, to this day, it is known as "the Gilbert effect."