Why I am throwing out my reusable bags

[Anonymous]

I am a criminal when it comes to using my own bags. I always forget---if they are in the back of my car I am in checkout line when i remember. Also--so many times I'll be at they gym or out in the neighborhood and then think 'oh I should walk over to WF for 'X, Y, Z' and I don't have bags on me. I always get chastized at checkout at WholeFoods and Trader Joes...but frankly I spend so much g-damn money at those places--the least they can do is give me paper bags which I then recycle or turn in later. The hippies at Traders try to give me single bags and I walk 3-4 blocks there and that sh*t will break.

I also much prefer the sturdy double-paper bag from those places over the flimsy canvas bags where all my sh*t is spilling over. Fine with me to do away with plastic---but at least let my use recycled paper bags.

[Anonymous]

You "always get chastised?" really? I've never once gotten attitude and I sometimes remember my reusables and sometimes don't. Which TJ/WFs do you go to?

[Anonymous]

do you all ever wash your purses?

[Anonymous]

Some things are appropriate to reuseable bag, some are not.

[Anonymous]

When I lived in Germany in the 80's everyone brought their own bags for shopping. I don't remember there being massive outbreaks of illness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We use reusables and have not gotten sick. You are "connecting the dots" in your mind. Plenty of people in VA have gotten sick with vomit flu and they use plastic bags. In fact, people have been sick with vomit flu every year, year after year.

I'll take it a step further...I never wash my reusable bags. I put meat into a plastic bag before it goes into the resuables. I don't remember ever seeing any kind of food product spilled onto my reusable bags.

It's in your head, OP. You could get sick from the food touching a dirty conveyer belt, or from an ill person handling your food as you check you. Life is full of germs.

We have used reusable bags for 10 years and have never gotten sick. I am far from the best bagger and have probably thrown raw chicken in with the apples.

[Anonymous]

Was the study funded by the American Chemistry Council? Dig deeper OP. Other countries have been doing away with plastics for years without problem. Hmmm ... a mystery how it is only in the US a problem is found.

[Anonymous]

That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard. 99% of the food you buy is already packaged, so only the packaging is touching the inside of your reusable bags. The other 1% you can put in a produce bag and THEN into your reusable bag.

Or do I have this wrong and you actually plan to lick the inside of your reusable bags for dinner?

[Anonymous]

Kudos, this is america throw that shit away.

[Anonymous]

OP,

I've used re-usable canvas bags since the 1990s. I've never gotten food poisoning from my groceries. (I have gotten it from a restaurant b/f--not pretty.)

I do use the smaller plastic bags to put meat/chicken in. I use them again to clean up after my dog or recycle them.

I would make sure you and your DD is washing her hands and avoid cross contamination in your own kitchen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I don't really have much faith in the linked article citing a "study" done by two right-wing anti-regulation LAW professors. Find me a study by an epidemiologist or other actual scientist and I might be more persuaded. Law profs are famous for pretending to be actual empiricists just because they do some long division and slap it in some stupid law review edited by naive 24 year old law students.

Amen!! Law IS NOT science, people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can understand the reaction, but there are other things you can do.

1. Buy washable bags
2. Buy the cold bags that are thicker and can be cleaned With Lysol wipes (trader joes sells one)
3. Ask that the raw meat be put in a plastic bag.

This, it not that complicated. Its just common sense to separate meat and other perisables from fruits and veg

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd think this would be relatively easy to track, quantitatively. We know when re-usable bags became widely used. Data exists on the number and type of food poisoning cases. Line those two up, see if they correlate.

Until someone shows actual data, all we will hear is "I got sick, probably from my bags" and "I've used re-usables for ever and never gotten sick." Which is of course useless.

Correlation is not causation.

[Anonymous]

Thirty years of reusables. No foodborne illness ever. Pack properly, wash when needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/24/are-plastic-bag-bans-making-us-sick

DD got food positioning this fall twice and I never connected the dots. It's back to plastic for my family.

Or you could wash them every once in a while.