If you're the type of person who uses a chopping board while cooking, and why wouldn't you be, then you need to be alert to a possible problem.
While preparing food, it's inevitable that things are going to need to be chopped up from time to time, and it's best if you use a surface other than your kitchen worktop.
No matter how spick and span you keep things, it's always better to have a dedicated chopping board, and you don't want to be cutting right into the worktop surface anyway.
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However, depending on the material your chopping board, there's different things you've got to watch out for.
For a lot of people, your chopping board is going to be made of plastic, and it's going to look like you've run a sharp knife across it a few times if you've had it any length of time.
And that's a problem as health experts have warned that this poses the danger of you ingesting microplastics.
A 2019 study from WWF International found that some people are consuming as much as five grams of plastic a week - the equivalent of eating your credit card.
A 2023 study found that people were ingesting between seven and 50 grams of microplastics from their chopping board a year, as each cut scrapes away a little bit of the plastic and likely deposits it in the food being prepared on it.
Since that food is going down your gob so too is the plastic, and as a consequence, you could be eating quite a lot of plastic over the course of time.
Plastic is also the reason why people have been warned over drinking bottled water recently, as they contain the even smaller nanoplastics which are linked to cancer, birth defects and problems with fertility.
Back on the topic of the chopping board, experts suggest that you switch from plastic over to something made out of wood or marble.
Still, even these can have their drawbacks as if you're preparing raw meat on a wooden board it's liable to soak up some of the juices and be a contaminant for whatever's put on there next.
Pretty much all chopping boards pose as danger as over time with use they'll develop cuts and grooves where bacteria can hide, clinging on between washes to infect your food.
When it comes to the chopping board, make sure you clean it like your life depends on it to scrub as many of those annoying little germs away.
Topics: Food And Drink, Health
Joe Harker