It’s really important b/c it puts hot fluids in contact with potential sources of leaching. And coffee often makes the ENTIRE difference in whether or not going to a venue makes you more focused/functional…
Coffee is SOOO pro-longevity (neuroage) yet if you drink loads of it you have loads of hot water that touches palstics with most non-premium coffee-makers
chameleon cold brew… from whole foods… is the closest there is to ideal… (NO HOT WATER COMES IN CONTACT WITH ANY PLASTIC IN THE PROCESS)
Breville at least uses the non-trashy kinds of plastics and I feel less uneasy with it than I do with other coffeemakers
it ALSO depends on WHAT you serve the coffee in. Like metal containers (which some venues use like a latch.bio event last month) vs weird-plastic containers (like what the Buck Institute used yesterday, but I gave in bc I was tired). I feel uneasy about the starbucks containers
POST PICTURES of ur favorite coffee-serving methods and those that look a bit sus…
PLUS, are some suppliers more trustworthy than others?
Illy Intenso Whole Bean Coffee uses metal tins, but the primary source of exposure is probably in the soil/pre-packaging
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and are the coffee-dispensers life alive uses slightly sketch?? they feel plasticy on te outside
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If Breville espresso coffee makers produce coffee with higher caffeine to grounds ratio than French press, do they also have higher caffeine to microplastics ratio?
I’d used a cold drip one I liked a lot for a few years but got concerned that it had so much plastic (especially the filter which I think was something like nylon). I finally found this one that works just as well and is all glass, metal & silicone:
Good catch Alex - I did not even notice. Alex is very focused on details (me, not as much).
I think they just use some standard caterers at the Buck for the Longevity Summit, so they are not so conscientious.
And great feedback everyone else… some good ideas here.
Microplastics might simply be a new trend in health signaling among the upper class. The beast needs feeding, so create demand for new products with spurious and very preliminary evidence with no way of building a risk vs reward among rational actors. It’s fine to do so still.
For Bryan it makes sense as he’s optimizing at the margin. For the average person they have trillions of circulating apoB particles that are proven to cause them debilitating disease and the primary cause of death. They are in expectation rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic by paying attention to microplastics while that’s happening.
No idea other than to make it cooler or maybe slow down the water release? I just use room temperature water out of my filtration system. It makes a somewhat concentrated liquid, I think I add about 1/4-1/3 water before I drink (heating in microwave since I like it warm).
Sorta, seems to depend on how you define plastic vs something like rubber. They are produced thru very different processes and different materials and have as a result different safety trade offs. It’s pretty much impossible to eliminate all potentially problematic materials so I’m just trying to minimize as much as practicable. Unfortunately the drip systems that are only glass & stainless steel that I’ve found are much more expensive so I settled on this one.
A comparison of plastic & silicone risks that is a bit on the more skeptical side:
Maybe it’s because I’ve been making my coffee without hot liquid touching plastic for so many years that it seems easy to me, but… yeah. It seems easy to me.
Drip, cold-brew, hot-flash-cold-brew – all of it can be done without hot water or resulting hot coffee touching plastic. Here are some pictures of my current tools, though I’ve left out the wood chopstick and ceramic mug – you can envision those.
Aeropress has an all glass and metal version of their press coming out this month. I preordered one a while back as I was interested in the fact it has no plastic parts. Also I currently use a Fellow Stagg X pour over setup and it is all metal.
