Should dry food ingredients like sugar, coffee powder, tea powder, chilly powder , nuts,flour etc be stored only in food safe plastics ? Or any plastic container is alright? I am concerned about plastic leaching into ingredients, which may cause serious health issues. I know it is not good to store cooked food in non safe plastic containers. But does it hold the same for dry food ingredients also? Clarify please.
With every day pass, our country is getting into more and more trouble. The inflation, unemployment and falling value of dollar are the main concern for our Government but authorities are just sleeping, they don’t want to face the fact. Media is also involve in it, they are force to stop showing the real economic situation to the people. I start getting more concern about my future as well as my family after watching the response of our Government for the people that affected by hurricane Katrina.
Are you talking about long term food storage, or just daily use type of items? By long term, I mean purchasing the items in bulk, and storing them for several years in your pantry? Then you should always use food grade plastics to put up your food storage. Most common are the food grade five gallon plastic buckets. Never, ever store your food, even in a food grade plastic container on a bare dirt, or cement floor. Despite the buckets being plastic, there IS still air and moisture exchange. Most people do not realize that even though a food product is in plastic that there IS still an exchange of air and moisture with the outside air (even in food grade containers). The only way to prevent this is to use food grade mylar bags and seal your food items before placing them into the food grade plastic buckets, and sealing the buckets. Nuts will only keep 1-2 years, no matter how well you seal them. The oils found in nuts cause them to start going rancid. Coffee and tea also have short shelf lives of 6months-2 years. However you said powder. If your coffee and tea has been freeze dried and turned into powder they will store virtually forever. Always use food grade plastic containers for any type of food storage. You have much less worry though, with dry foods leaching in anything bad from the plastics though. I've had a one gallon plastic container of chilli power sitting properly stored in my pantry for just over six years. I just opened it, smells and tastes as good as anything just purchased. ~Garnet Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years
for starters, if nobody's using it, turn it off! by this I mean, if you're not going to leave a room in your house, turn off the light in that room. buy energy saving bulbs, they produce the same amount of light while using less electricity. when buying a new electrical device, try to find one with energy star on it. these devices use less electricity than their regular counterparts. when and if possible in your community, recycle. the more people recycle, the less need there will be for production of new materials. when driving, if your forced to wait in line say at a drive through, turn off your car until your finally allowed to moved foward. a very large percentage of fuel consumption is while idling in traffic or waiting in a line. this is good way to conserve fuel a little hear and there. BUT use common sense lol DON'T do this at every stop light, best place is rush hour traffic, when you're stuck in one spot without moving for many minutes.
