For Americans: mason jars come in a plethora of shapes and sizes, and are dirt cheap. :) I use a quart size as my water glass and we bought Cuppow sippy lids in both diameters to make them easier/safer/neater to use in challenging situations (cars, kids).
Second for the mason jar train. I prefer the wide mouth 1.5 pint variety. You can safely freeze, bake, and nuke these suckers, and I do.
I bring my coffee into work every day in one, then I rinse it and drink water or tea out of it until I go home. I have a few in the freezer full of curry right now, and a couple in the fridge pickling some daikon and carrots for bahn mi.
As long as you don't constantly drop them (I have yet to break one, and I've been using them for years) you can get a ton of use without ever worrying about what they might be doing to your food.
Thanks, I also love mason jars. I hate to point it out, but isn't that Cuppow product also made of ambiguously "BPA Free" plastic? Better than an all plastic container anyway.
That's a great idea! I like their small pots that fit in top of a canning jar - to allow people to carry vegetables and humus.
Those glass jars are, however, heavy. I'm already transporting 15 kg of child, plus stuff. Is the additional weight of a heavy glass drink container worth it?
(I also like that these are not "valved" cups, but are "free flow". "Valved" or "no spill" drinking cups for children can cause ear problems.)
16oz Ball Jars, I prefer the wide mouths, will fit perfectly in most cup holders. I've got it next o an Arizona Iced Tea can and it's only a little bit larger.
I just wasted a ton of time and energy measuring the circumference of each item and the ball jar is about 1" larger. The Arizona can was a rough 9.5" making the ball jar 10.5"
Leach what, though? If it leaches iron, it might be more of a benefit than a problem, or at least neutral. (You can overdose on iron, but it's uncommon.)
I spent the last 30 minutes consulting the literature, I can't find any studies that indicating stainless steel leaches manganese. I realize it was mentioned in that atlantic article but they didn't cite any sources. Do you have a source indicating SS leaches Mn?
> A 2011 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that almost all of the 455 commercially available plastics that were tested leached estrogenic chemicals.
There are other endocrine disruptors out there -- I think the main point of the article is that the US has no systematic process for testing plastics for consumer use.
Look. In 1970, over 75% of kids in the US were never breastfed, which means they drank milk from BPA containing bottles from day 1. And they turned out fine. Don't get unreasonably worried about it. That white collar job with a lot of sitting that you're hoping he or she will get will do much worse things to the body. And if you're driving your kid around in the burbs, well BPA is in the noise compared to that staggering risk. Leading cause of death for kids 2-25. I have a two year old daughter who drinks out of clear plastic bottles and sleeps on a mattress containing fire retardant chemicals, and at the end of the day by far the biggest risk I expose her to is driving down to her grandparents' on the weekend.
Following up on this, the opening paragraph to the Freakonomics chapter on parenting talks about how, as a new parent, your IQ drops 10 points and all sorts of marketers will completely overwhelm you with the fear that you are doing something wrong with your kids.
Take your kids to the doctor regularly and you'll be okay. If you are doing something that 80% of the rest of society is doing and it turns out to be a subtle mistake, there will still be lots of people around you who made the same mistake and will help you figure out how to recover.
Relax. Enjoy your kids! They'll turn into teenagers before you know it.
And they where also exposed to high amounts of environmental lead, and we know how that turned out: higher crime, lower academic achievement, more teen pregnancies, etc. Just because most of a society is exposed to something does not mean it's healthy.
Two interesting papers: Lead Exposure and Behavior: Effects on Antisocial and Risky Behavior Among Children and Adolescents [1], and How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy [2], estimates serious deleterious effects ranging from lower iq, lower self control, increased violent crime, etc, stemming from childhood lead exposure via tailpipe emissions.
I have posted this before on HN, but I don't understand how, as lead levels continued to rise, IQs also increased during the 20th century. And someone pointed out in another comment, as blood lead levels have plunged, we should have seen the lost IQ points being recovered. Has there been evidence of a large gain in IQ since blood-lead-levels have dropped?
That presupposes that trace lead exposure (as opposed to larger doses) measurably harms IQ as opposed rather than manifesting in other kinds of neural/behavioral issues.
That is true-the lead-crime link seems compelling. But I've been browsing a fair amount on the subject, and the lead-IQ link is always quite heavily featured.
Some studies claim differences of 5 IQ points between children with blood lead levels between 5 and 10 micrograms per deciliter. Since blood lead levels are far lower than 5 for the majority of children nowadays, and much lower than they were when we were kids, these IQ differences should be clearly apparent between generations.
"Look. In 1970, over 75% of kids in the US were never breastfed, which means they drank milk from BPA containing bottles from day 1. And they turned out fine."
But did they really (turn out ok)?
How common were peanut allergies and obesity before 1970 for example?
I'm not saying that BPA cause peanut allergies or obesity.
I am saying that kids are not turning out OK and it's fair to question whether something environmental is causing this.
"Jirtle: We have recently demonstrated that exposure of pregnant mice to bisphenol A (BPA), a building block of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins used to make consumer items ranging from water bottles to dental sealants, significantly reduces DNA methylation in Avy mice (Dolinoy et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104: 13056-13061, 2007). This results in the birth of more yellow offspring, mice that become obese and have a higher incidence of diabetes and cancer as adults. Thus, there could be a connection between the increase in plastics in our environment and the rising incidence of obesity in humans. However, such an association will not be able to be demonstrated unequivocally until the expression and function of genes involved in human obesity are shown to be altered by BPA."
If you want to look for the root cause, look at food businesses and advertising. The Starbucks' of the world that make more profits than the coffee shops of yore by selling higher calorie foods for even higher prices. A coffee and donut at DD has half the calories of a latte and scone at Starbucks.
The "eating more" and "environmental influence" explanations are not mutually exclusive. One could be causing the other--chemicals that mimic hormones could be influencing appetite or satiation, for example.
Yeah we see that careless phrase all the time - "We turned out fine". Except when we didn't. Its observer bias I think.
My Dad used to say "In my day we didn't throw out food when it had mold; we'd just skim it and cook it again!" My sister came back with "Yeah Dad, and in your day people died for no reason."
Molds that grow on bread or food in the refrigerator are vanishingly unlikely to produce aflatoxin, the carcinogen you're referring to here. The real risk of food-borne illness from moldy kitchen foods are allergic or bacterial.
There are dozens of toxins harmful to humans that can be identified in different types of mold, of which there are many. Some have been known to raise the risk of tumors. One specific example is ocratoxin.
I did not mention aflatoxin because it is bad for you on a whole other level. Fortunately it's not very common.
Polycarbonate bottles were not in widespread consumer use back in 1970.
Even though this particular polymer was originally discovered over 100years ago, and relatively modern production techniques were patented in the '50's,
widespread use to replace glass in "water cooler" type bottles did not begin until the '80's.
Later this polymer moved down the chain into smaller
bottles.
The invention of polycarbonate at GE in the '50's is interesting:
"[Fox's] discovery, made within eight months of his joining GE, was a serendipitous byproduct of the wire enamel project. The byproduct would prove far more important than the original objective."
from "Unlikely Victory: How General Electric Succeeded in the Chemical Industry"
...and in the 70's homes were painted with lead paint and the cars burned leaded gas, the outside air was full of asbestos brake pad dust, cribs could strangle you 10 different ways, and everyone around you smoked, including your mother. We all survived.
He's right. There are worse things to worry about.
Given they're estimating up to 1/3 of women could have PCOS, which is caused by testosterone... the hormone BPA is supposed to interfere with, 1/5 is actually comparatively low. I know about 10% of women have fertility complications due to PCOS, so attributing an alleged 1/5 to BPA is laughable.
Infertility is evolutionarily advantageous in a species that requires a lot of parental investment. The fertility rate of women in the 16-25 is insanely high, given there used to be a near 20% mortality per pregnancy.
The majority of the infertility is due to advanced age, and nothing else. A woman in her late 30s has almost the same chance of getting pregnant in a year that a teenager does in a month.
Polyethylene manufacturing is as simple as it could be, they don't need the crazy additives PET needs.
But those are so ugly companies don't want to use them. PET is beautiful and you could make it in colors like blue-transparent, or red-transparent so people and companies love them.
That's what I thought, but then I read somewhere that BPA has been found leaching from HDPE also, as well as PET. (Perhaps in much smaller quantities; it didn't say.)
In brief poking around the Web I find a couple of sites that say that not only are H/LDPE and PP okay, so is PET.
The only thing everyone agrees on is that polycarbonate has BPA (or an equally bad replacement).
As far as the others go, I'm not really sure what to think at this point.
I have a baby girl turning 1 in a few weeks and my wife and I opted to only use glass bottles for her.
More scary, however, is all the stuff they put in everything else. For example, the fire retardant chemicals they use in manufacturing things like baby mattresses, which have been shown to cause neurological issues, especially in children. Look for a tag on any pillows or mattresses that says "complies with California Technical Bulletin 117"; that means it was treated. Also, check out the documentary "Toxic Hot Seat". My wife and I sleep on the floor, with a few blankets, and have slept with our daughter between us since day one (she never slept in a crib).
I felt so unprepared prior to my daughters birth. I still feel terribly unprepared. But I find that I'm a lot more proactive now about doing my own research to at least help reduce the probability that I'll put my little one in danger (and all we can really do is reduce the probability, since massive amounts of misinformation ensure it will be nearly impossible for the average person to really get to the truth about some of this stuff).
Stick with wool mattresses and clothing for infants and toddlers and you should be good - fire resistant, water resistant and very comfortable. All of our big beds are either natural latex mattresses inside ecowool covers or pure wool in a quilted wool cover.
They got the law that forces every mattress threated with the excuse that it will give you time if a fire starts. Big business.
What they don't tell you is that most fires in homes are created by smokers. If nobody in your home smokes you should be able to opt out of buying this sh*t.
Apparently, smoking related fires are deadly, but rarer than you'd think (causing only 2% of residential fires, though surprisingly 14% of deaths). But point taken with regards to smoking in bed, which is apparently still a thing..
Ok so a bunch of people have commented on that, but what is the mechanism of toxicity of the chemicals? Can they be absorbed through the stomach, skin, inhaled? Are they surface bound or on the filling? Would you have to eat the filling to be exposed? What are the threshold levels involved to create danger?
That's trading evils a bit though. Before fire retardants in furniture, I believe fires involving furniture was a leading cause of death (and not just in babies)
> My wife and I sleep on the floor, with a few blankets, and have slept with our daughter between us since day one
And when your daughter is old enough to talk, she'll tell everyone she sleeps on the floor, and CPS will come take her away (this sort of thing is a major fear of mine -- some minor idiosyncrasy or eccentricity will be taken out of context and misinterpreted as a sign of an "unfit" home, and they'll come a-knockin').
I grew up sleeping on the floor, and I was home schooled (through high school). As a kid, I had a premade story ready-to-go if a stranger asked why I wasn't in school: "I have a dentist appointment today."
I'll be home schooling my daughter and I think by the time she's old enough to "tell everyone" anything, I'll have already explained things to her.
If breast feeding isn't an option (wasn't for us), use glass up until they're old enough that they want to start holding their own bottle.
After that we've used the playtex liners. They're LDPE (polyethylene) and not known to leach any chemicals known or suspected of causing cancer or disrupting hormones. The nipples are 100% silicone, with the only cautions coming from cooking in silicone (primarily baking) far exceeding the temperatures you'll ever get warming a bottle. Make sure any glass bottles have silicone nipples too (some brands don't).
The reason to use the disposable liners is basically: no concerns about BPA, less hassle, you can warm the milk faster, and you only have to sterilize the nipples (most important in the first few months to prevent thrush, which can stop them drinking).
Using stainless steel is risky due to manganese, which means they're either coated with polycarbonate meaning BPA, or PET. So you've got a stainless steel coated polyethylene liner... kind of redundant.
We used to float the liners in a Thermos full of hot tap water, it was usually at temp within 5 minutes (you can do the stir and shake in emergencies, and you get it warmed in about a minute).
Good luck, don't panic! You need to conserve that vital energy for sleep. My son is almost 15 months. I've been so long without sleep, that the rare occasion I get 8 hours or more I think my body just assumes I'm dead and starts breaking down.
> You need to conserve that vital energy for sleep. My son is almost 15 months. I've been so long without sleep, that the rare occasion I get 8 hours or more I think my body just assumes I'm dead and starts breaking down.
I feel your pain. My daughter just turned 1. Up until a month ago, she was still waking up 3 or 4 times a night. Sometimes more. We had gone so long without regular sleep that my wife and I had gained over 30 pounds. We became irritable, tense, and we were getting ourselves noticed at work for poor performance and tardiness. And despite being happily married for nearly 15 years, our mariage was in jeopardy.
We decided it was time to try sleep training. We first tried a gentle, "fewer tears" method[1]. It sort of worked, but my daughter quickly regressed and became worse than before. Our presence stimulated her rather than soothed her, so staying in the room just made things worse. So, in desperation, we tried Jodi Mindell's more old-fashioned method[2].
It worked. Beginning on night 3 of sleep training, we got 8 hours of unbroken, joyous sleep, and we have gotten regular sleep ever since. My daughter still wakes from time-to-time, but it's no big deal now. We can put her back to sleep in a matter of minutes rather than the hours it used to take before.
The best part though is that my daughter is so much more rested as well. We didn't realize that her poor sleep habits were taking such a toll on her. After a few days of good sleep, she began to smile and laugh more often. She began babbling like never before. She was less cranky, more patient, and her daytime naps even improved. It was like a damn miracle.
Anyway, long story short: take your own advice and prioritize your sleep. If you haven't tried sleep training yet, do it.
My little guy after his acid reflux settled down at 3 months was actually a good sleeper.
The issue is me and my wife are both in the midst of starting up our own businesses. So we get our little guy down at about 7:30 and then work begins again.
It actually wasn't an issue when I was on a keto diet, but since Christmas when I went off its just taken its toll. I think its just telling me to go back on the diet.
Why did you wait until then? Is it that you prefer glass bottles but they're too heavy for the baby to hold?
I have a 6-day-old (breastfed so far, but pumping means bottles get used too), so I'm trying to figure all this out. Maybe I'll order some glass bottles.
Honestly, as Dad I didn't give a shit. My wife and MIL were all about sterilising, and the liners aren't guaranteed sterile so for the first few months there's the risk of thrush.
We stopped because glass is too heavy for baby, which means they drop the bottle and I don't care what company claims they've got an "unshatterable" glass bottle, it will and it will when you're home alone with the baby and have to step on broken glass to get out the chair. (Sod's Law)
When my wife was breast feeding we were using iirc madella bottles, they're a pump manufacturer and use all polyethylene for their parts and silicone for their nipples.
The advantage of the Playtex system is that its very light, especially compared to some of the other bottles. In a rush you only need to wash the nipple, which comes in handy. And since my son started walking, having a bottle that cannot shatter is very reassuring. He can walk about with his bottle and I don't have to worry about him smacking it against the metal leg of a chair and smashing it (boys, it happens).
Cool, thanks. We have a combination of Medela and Phillips Avent stuff, and it looks like they're all polypropeline, so we'll probably just stick with those. Glass seems like a hassle and I'm also not very worried about sterilization.
Ditto (except a different brand than Kleen Kanteen). Duralex makes a full line of dinnerware, too, btw. Besides Picardie tumblers (in three different sizes), we also have bowls, plates and salad plates. :) Highly recommended and also inexpensive!!
there's lots of stainless steel bottles and containers out there for when you're on the go. pyrex is also great for food storage in the kitchen / fridge (cheap glass breaks :). small Corelle dishes are ideal for snacks / fruit at home - they are almost indestructible.
I kind of agree with Rayiner that once you start down the rabbit hole there is no end and you will worry about everything.
There are big things that absolutely do matter: tobacco; some medicinal drugs; excess[1] alcohol; stress; unpasteurised milk; etc.
Since the overwhelming advice is to breastfeed babies until six months you might find time is better spent finding sources of support for breastfeeding.
Having said all that: There are glass feeding bottles available if you want them. I have no idea what you'd use to pump into those bottles, nor what teat you'd chose.
[1] We don't know what "excess" means here, so recommendations are "zero" which causes anxiety and distress.
I went with glass for the first 6 months.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to find a daycare that would accept glass bottles. They wouldn't touch them due to risk of breakage.
We went with polypropylene after that.
Seriously? The baby bottle I had as a kid (27 years ago) was made of glass so thick I can't even begin to imagine what would break it.
It's survived two babies (me and my sister), countless hikes, seaside vacations, boilings, reboilings, and probably a fair share of being thrown every which way. We still use it sometimes because it's handy as a measuring cup and I wouldn't be surprised if it stays in the family for a few more decades.
For comparison, I don't think a single piece of the "camping proof unbreakable" dish set my parents bought when I was ten is still alive.
Most glass bottles (Lifefactory, AVENT, Boobunny) use borosilicate glass which is what they use for laboratory glassware partly because it is stronger than normal glass. Many of these brands also sell a silicone sleeve that protects the bottle from being dropped.
Interesting - the only 2 daycares I know well enough to know the policy (if you want to call it that), both accept glass - or rather whatever you bring in. Both expensive places in center Seattle. I didn't even know there was another option.
While switching to glass sounds like a good option, I have to point out that glass breaks. How does the known risk of glass breaking, and cutting children compare to the theoretical risk of these plastic containers? Or the pain caused by hitting their heads with glass containers?
Personally, I would never consider giving my children glass containers to sleep with.
Dropped it a few times, didn't break... of course I dunno about a concrete sidewalk or anything. But in the home, it's pretty good. Seems to at least survive falling on the kitchen tiles. Not from the height of an adult drinking it, I dunno about that. But from the height of a 3 yr old girl dropping it.
Things like mason jars are pretty damn sturdy, and unless you have stairs your foot-tall six-month-old is going to be hard-pressed to drop that jar very far.
Unmotivated product placement, but I'm really into 316 stainless. I use HydroFlasks (http://www.hydroflask.com/), from Amazon. They're heavier by far than either plastic or aluminum-with-bpa-lining, or single-walled stainless, but incredibly durable, and being able to have a freezing or hot beverage inside the container for a day or two is pretty awesome.
An OXO bottle brush is pretty essential to cleaning; I then use boiling water, soap, and sometimes bleach to clean them out.
I wish I could get a run of them custom printed as promotional items, and ideally cerakoted, but that would be horrible overkill.
(they're also a good way to transport high quality alcohol into settings where alcohol may not be so permissible...)
Another unmotivated product placement, this time for toddlers that can use straw cups. For our kids we bought the following and it works very well together -
I realize the tumblers are no longer in stock but the caps are pretty universal and can fit on various sized cups. Make sure you don't give your kids stainless steel straws, they're incredibly dangerous for young children.
Recently bought a HydroFlasks, but was disappointed to find it is not dishwasher safe. That put a huge damper on my enthusiasm. (Mainly because while I might remember, I'm sure the other people in my family will not.)
I like those too, but things which could go wrong in other bottles are: threading, actual steel used, liners (wtf), and the plastic used for the cap. I use the kk caps with the hydroflask (compatible).
The article mentions that BPA was found to cause problems in children. A lot of people on this thread are suggesting stainless steel alternatives, but is there actually any evidence at all that BPA is harmful to adults? Likewise with BPS?
So far I haven't found an alternative for freezing big chunks of meat or veggies (in portions that make sense for 1-2 people) in the freezer without using plastic bags or plastic containers - any alternatives?
As for water bottles, I'm a fan of the stainless steel klean kanteen with the bamboo cap
I find the new fear about "estrogenic chemicals" to be kind of amusing. I mean, of course, we're surrounded by toxins, and sure, it's worth some effort to avoid some of those toxins, but the amusing part is that if someone really wants to scare you about a toxin, they don't tell you that it will make you stupid or give you cancer; they imply that it will make you less of a man.
Estrogenic chemicals like BPA do cause problems other than "making you less of a man", though, including cancer - and the linked article focuses almost entirely on those other problems, with its estrogen-mimicing properties mentioned only in passing.
Cuppow: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_kitchen?ie=UTF8&field-bran...