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Comment by pfarnsworth | Hacker News Reader

Do the chemicals in the plastic bags not leach into the food? That's always been my greatest fear, given that things like BPA weren't understood until someone decided to analyze it. Has there been a test ensuring that boiling a plastic bag doesn't emit chemicals into the food that it's holding?

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a) You aren't boiling the water, not even close most of the time. Most meats are cooked around 135F - 150F. You might take veggies up to maybe 185F, but I don't think most people SV vegetables anyway.

b) Dave Arnold on his Cooking Issues podcast got the SC Johnson folks to confirm that their ZipLoc bags are safe for this application. In fact, I checked one box of mine and it says "BPA free".

c) FoodSaver bags are safe as well, but I don't have a reference handy.

You should try SV veggies.

Carrots in SV are ungodly. Impossible to eat them cooked any other way IMO.

Thanks for the info. However, BPA isn't the only plastic that leaches chemicals. Even the non-BPA plastics emit chemicals as far as I know.

Sous vide is usually at a lower temperature than boiling. I did some research and felt pretty safe about using ziploc bags with mine for meats up to 160 F. People have done testing on this stuff.

You can be sure that there's some transfer of chemicals between the bag and what's inside of it. It's just a question of how dangerous that stuff is.

It's possible to buy reusable silicone bags instead.

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