#348 Hidden Kitchen Toxins – Upgrade Your Cooking, Food Storage, and Cleaning with Aimee Carlson
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- Find out what’s in store for this Myers Detox Podcast with Aimee Carlson, the Toxin Terminator, who joins us to discuss detoxifying your kitchen!
- When Aimee came to the startling realization that manufacturers were not required to produce safe products, she began her mission to bring toxin free lifestyles to others. Learn more about Aimee’s journey.
- When beginning to detoxify your kitchen, Aimee suggests looking at the everyday items that you use, like the products that have started to wear down and could be leaching toxins into your food. Find out more about the first steps to detoxing your kitchen, and how toxins are getting into your food.
- Non stick pans are a hot item for the kitchen, but contain lots of harmful chemicals, heavy metals, and nanoparticles. Learn more about the dangers of non stick pans, and what cookware you should buy to replace them.
- Heavy metals from aluminum foil and aluminum cookware used in restaurants can’t leach into your food. Find out what test you can do at home to determine if your pots and pans are leeching harmful chemicals and metals.
- Rotating your cookware is ideal in prevention of having toxins get into your food. There are, however, a few brands that are safe to use on their own. Find out more.
- Another important aspect to look at when it comes to removing toxins in your kitchen is the way food is stored. Learn about some of the best, safest ways to store you food.
- Using Leadcheck by 3M to test your products for lead, as well as using a resource like leadsafemama.com to learn about products with lead, can greatly reduce your risk of accidentally using products with lead in your home. Learn more.
- Most of the soaps that have a sudsing action contain sodium laurel sulfate which has 50,000 studies proving its high toxicity towards humans. Learn about the products Aimee recommends using to clean your home.
- Appliances are also a big factor when it comes to toxins in your kitchen. Aimee suggests using products with glass and staying away from using a microwaves. Learn more about what appliances and the materials they are made from are safe to use.
- Check out Aimee’s upcoming book and podcast, both called Toxin Terminator.
- Learn more about Aimee and her work at aimeecarlson.com
Wendy Myers: Hello, everyone. I’m Wendy Myers of Myersdetox.com. Welcome to the Meyer Detox Podcast. Today we have my friend Aimee Carlson on the show and she’s so much fun. She’s The Toxin Terminator and is on the same wavelength as I am, talking about toxins and how they affect your health. We’re going to be talking about doing a kitchen detox, how to upgrade your cookware, your storage supplies and your cleaning items in the kitchen. This will be a really informative show. We talk about all different kinds of cookware, utensils and the different heavy metals and toxins that can be found in these. We’ll discuss flatware, the surprising toxins that can be found there and how they affect your health. She has a lot of recommendations, as well, about what to buy instead. We will also talk a lot about nonstick pans.
Wendy Myers: We’ll tell you how to make your own cleaner and your own sanitizer to clean all of your dishes. We talk about different storage container ideas, getting rid of that toxic saran wrap and what to use instead. There are lots of really good tips in the show today. I know so many of you guys listening to this show are curious about the heavy metals that you have in your body. I created a quiz at heavymetalsquiz.com so that you can go there and take this lifestyle quiz. Simply answer the questions, which takes just a few minutes, and then you’ll get a result that will show you your relative levels of toxins in your body. After you get your results, you’ll get a free video series all about how to detox. It will tell you where to begin, what are the best supplements to take, what is the best heavy metals testing to take and how long does it take to detox?
Wendy Myers: All of your questions will be answered in the totally free video series you get, after taking the quiz. Our guest today, Aimee Carlson, was a lifelong entrepreneur working in the automotive industry. Her environment and lifestyle took a huge toll on her health. She overcame chronic health issues and today it’s her passion to share this hope of recovery, with others that have lost all hope for improving their lives and their health. You can check out her upcoming book and podcast of the same name, Toxin Terminator. I love that. You can learn more about Aimee and her work at Aimeecarlson.com. Aimee, thank you so much for joining the show.
Aimee Carlson: I’m glad to be here, Wendy. I’m excited.
Wendy Myers: Yes, my fellow detox partner, my detox partner in crime. I wanted to have you on because I want you to talk about how to detox your kitchen and make better choices for cooking, storage and in cleaning, as well. Tell me a little bit about your story and what surprised you the most, as you walked into this toxin-free lifestyle.
Aimee Carlson: You know, Wendy, that’s such a great question because when I got into this, what I realized is that the products I was using every single day were not safe for me and they were actually making me sick. I lived in this little bubble, I thought that if I was able to buy it at the store that somehow equated to it being safe for me to use in my home, with my family, my children and with my pets. I was so far from the truth with that. That was probably the most alarming thing for me to learn, that manufacturers don’t have to have safe products out there for us.
Wendy Myers: That was for me, too. I always remember reading the labels on the different products that I was using. I was reading the ingredients and I just assumed that the government was checking these ingredients for safety before they’d be allowed to be used in consumer products. But no, they were not.
Aimee Carlson: I can’t speak for you and why you do what you do, but it’s certainly why I started my podcast because I was infuriated. We look to our government to be providing safety for us and to make us feel safe within our own country. It’s so far from the truth. What you find is that you just have to follow the almighty dollar. That is what speaks volumes. That’s why I wanted to give a voice to this movement of realizing that you have to be your own best advocate. You have to start learning how to read labels. You have to start learning what ingredients you need to avoid in order to have optimal health, and also realize the fact that probably so many people are sick and don’t even know it. Until you feel good, you don’t realize what good feels like.
Wendy Myers: Exactly, that’s such an important statement because a lot of people don’t realize how badly they feel until they feel better. I keep improving my life, my health and trying different things like EMF protection and so many other things. With everything I do, I start feeling a little bit better and it’s like, “Wow, I feel really good. I didn’t realize I could feel better.” Certainly there are a lot of people who are very ill, just as you were. A lot of people know deep down that there’s something wrong. They go to the doctor. The doctor never looks at toxins. They don’t look at EMFs. They’re not looking at chemicals or giving any advice in that regard. Most doctors don’t do heavy metals testing, so people have no clue that this is an underlying contributing root cause to their symptoms.
Aimee Carlson: Right, I’m not saying doctors are bad. Please don’t get that wrong and send me the hate mail. There are good doctors out there, but what they’re trained to do is to treat your symptoms. That’s their training. It doesn’t mean that they are a good doctor or a bad doctor, but that’s what they’re there to do. They’re not going to look at your lifestyle. They’re not going to look at the root cause of what is making the symptoms happen in the first place. That’s where we have to become our own detectives and start working more with a homeopathic doctor or a natural functional doctor, who will actually look at the whole body, how it’s working and get down to the root cause. That’s what I had to do.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about the kitchen.
Aimee Carlson: Yes.
Wendy Myers: Yes, because a lot of people have toxic kitchen utensils, cookware and storage containers. Let’s talk about the first step in detoxing your kitchen.
Aimee Carlson: Oh my goodness, I always love to talk about everyday products because that’s going to have the biggest impact on our overall health. Let’s start by saying that number one; I have put my glasses back on, hey, age, love it! There are really not any safe coatings for our cookware. There just really are not. This goes along with toxins, we’re going to be exposed to them every single day. We can minimize our exposure, but we’re not going to get rid of them completely. Inevitably, any kind of coating that gets put onto our cookware is going to wear down. Then what happens is that the product that’s not supposed to be in contact with food, starts becoming in contact with food. That’s where we start getting toxin buildup in the body. Does that make sense?
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Aimee Carlson: That kind of breaks it down. Our best options are going to be finding cast iron, stainless steel, some ceramics that aren’t a coating and then rotating through those types of cookware, so that we minimize our exposures. Don’t just have one type.
Wendy Myers: Yes, absolutely.
Aimee Carlson: When those coatings reduce down, we start getting the heavy metals. That’s the biggest toxin coming from our cookware, the heavy metals leaching into the food that’s coming into our body. It’s getting deposited into our blood. It gets deposited in our tissues, too. Heavy metals don’t leave our bodies automatically. We have to physically do something to get the heavy metals out.
Wendy Myers: Absolutely.
Aimee Carlson: If we’re cooking with really acidic type foods, that’s exacerbating the leaching process. Those of us who are Italian and are doing a lot of tomato sauces and that type of thing, we’re going to have more leaching start occurring on our cookware. I wanted to show you real quickly. I don’t know if we’re going to actually be able to see this. Yes, you can, with the light. See how there are scratches? This would be a Teflon type surface, pan, and even without trying we’re getting scratches on the surface. It just happens even as careful as we try to be.
Aimee Carlson: When that surface scratches, where is that going? It’s going in our food and then we’re eating it. We can look at other examples. I love to show this one when I do this. How many people have plastic utensils that they cook with? It’s so easy. It’s the cheapest to buy. It’s easy to use. I don’t know if you guys can see this, but see what happens? When it gets exposed to heat, we get these little black flakes. You can just take your finger nail and just flake them off, where is that plastic going? In the food and then we’re digesting it. That’s just nasty. I can’t do it, but that’s what happens. I don’t care how careful you are. Can you see what I’m pointing out?
Wendy Myers: Yes, I do. I like the silicone spatulas.
Aimee Carlson: Now, silicone is good, but silicone has yet to be tested for longterm safety. It’s certainly a better option for us.
Wendy Myers: It’s an upgrade. It’s really hard because there are only so many choices that people have. Wood is good, but I don’t see many wood spatulas. There’s also the stainless steel ones, the metal ones but those have their problems too. What do you like for a spatula?
Aimee Carlson: Bamboo, I really do like bamboo. This is a spoon. I didn’t bring my spatula to show a spatula, but you can buy them in bamboo. You can find many different companies with them. I love stainless steel. I’m not going to lie. Most of the time you’re going to see me using stainless steel.
Wendy Myers: I do too. I use stainless steel. Sometimes, if it’s something like a spatula, I don’t want to use metal because it can be scratching your pans. Actually, I haven’t seen a bamboo spatula. That’s a new one for me.
Aimee Carlson: Amazon is fantastic. Check that out. I do love silicone utensils, especially when it comes to spatulas, when it comes to wiping things out of a jar.
Wendy Myers: Yes, the spatula.
Aimee Carlson: Then you have the flippers. I don’t know my utensils. I just use them, but those are good. I do use silicone on cloth, on my hands, to pull a pan out with. They’re just really easy to grab and use because sometimes with just the cloth ones, I find the heat transfers through that. You can still get a burn with the cloth heat pads. You have to use your common sense in getting the best utensils to use.
Wendy Myers: What about pans? A lot of people use toxic frying pans or cooking pans. People love nonstick because it’s just so easy to use. What are some of the problems with the typical nonstick and even the green nonstick, that people are buying right now?
Aimee Carlson: Right, a big thing that we see in the industry, Wendy, and I know your listeners are probably well aware of it, is the term “green washing”. What we want to know is what can we use? Things that we want to avoid are all of the heavy metals. Lead is a huge bioaccumulative that happens in our body. If we have lead-based metal pots that we’re using, it’s just going to keep biocumulating in the body. It is really hard to detox lead out of the body, so it causes all kinds of symptoms for us. As for PFAs, this is your Teflon. Teflon is a PFA that I showed earlier. Those are found in your nonstick surfaces. PFAs are full of cancer causing agents. They are behind a lot of chronic disease causing issues because they flake off with the heat and flake off with the utensils that we’re using, and build up in the body. We’re hearing about and seeing a lot of cookware that is infused with cadmium. C-A-D-M-I-U-M. That helps get the bright colors that are created on our ceramics. That’s where we’ll see cadmium used.
Wendy Myers: Yes, especially the red and orange ones. You’re going to have cadmium in those.
Aimee Carlson: It’s really, really, toxic to our kidneys. A kidney is a detox organ in our body and if our kidneys are not functioning properly, then of course disease is going to set into our bodies. We see lots and lots of nickel, because nickel is a much less expensive metal for manufacturers to use versus stainless steel. You’ll find nickel in a lot of cookware. It’s also a more pliable metal. It’s not as heavy duty of a metal and there are a lot of people who have nickel sensitivities. If you are someone who gets rashes on your skin, you might want to check your jewelry out because if you’ve got nickel in your jewelry, it can be creating some rashes on the body.
Aimee Carlson: A lot of nickel is really an issue for young children and babies. Chromium is another metal that’s used in a lot of our cooking surfaces. It’s very toxic to the kidneys and the liver and it’s very, very toxic for developing children. We want to make sure that you do not have chromium listed in the ingredients in any of your cookware. I hear a lot about nanoparticles with sunscreen as we’re coming into summertime. There are actually nanoparticles in cookware, too. We want to look for non-nanoparticle labeling. Most listeners have probably heard of the nanoparticle, asbestos. We all know the problems with asbestos. Asbestos is a nanoparticle.
Wendy Myers: Where would we find that in cookware?
Aimee Carlson: It’s in ceramic coatings. A lot of ceramic coatings have nanoparticles.
Wendy Myers: I think people don’t realize that about a lot of ceramic cookware. It’s really expensive. Underneath it will have the cast iron, like the Le Creuset, and some of the other ceramic cookware that looks really fancy and nice, but that coating will get you.
Aimee Carlson: Yes, absolutely, the nanoparticles are really going to affect our immune systems. So again, right now and always, we want to be building that immune system and not removing it.
Wendy Myers: It’s also the glazes that when heated up, all these different toxins in the glazes get into the food. Le Creuset and other similar types of cookware is not a good idea to use.
Aimee Carlson: It is not. I’ll give you some good brands. Have you heard of Mamavation?
Wendy Myers: You know, I have not.
Aimee Carlson: Some of the brands that I went and picked from, came from her. She actually has a website. She has done a ton of research on different subject matter. Not all of the stuff I agree with, but she does do a great due diligence and says, “Here are the things you want to avoid and where you find them, why you want to avoid them and here’s some good options for you in cookware to select,” she gives you an actual brand name.
Wendy Myers: Okay, great. What is that website again?
Aimee Carlson: Mamavation, www.mamavation.com.
Wendy Myers: Fantastic.
Aimee Carlson: Once you start learning and you know more in the toxic realm, there are some things that I don’t really agree with her on, but there’s a lot there that’s a good starting place. Aluminum is another one. It’s another cheap metal for manufacturers to get. It’s a softer metal. We hear a lot about aluminum in our deodorant and about it being a neurotoxin. It absolutely is. It’s been tied to Alzheimer’s and dementia and many other neurotoxicities. It’s definitely not something we want to have in our cookware.
Wendy Myers: I think people don’t realize when you go out to eat at restaurants, they often use this cheap, disposable, aluminum cookware because they wear out fast and it’s really cheap. So in a lot of the cheap restaurants you go to, you’re getting a nice little dose of aluminum with your meal. That’s another risk of eating out often.
Aimee Carlson: Think about what we use a lot of times for food storage or even food preparation, especially coming into summertime when we’re cooking on the grill. I used to wrap potatoes, carrots, onions and butter in tin foil and cook it on the grill. Oh my gosh, that’s aluminum.
Wendy Myers: It’s really pliable and soft so that is getting into your food very easily.
Aimee Carlson: We’re applying it right to the grill, heating it up to a high intensity heat and that’s just leaching right into our food. Here’s a great test that you can do to check your pots and pans for toxicity. Take about a tablespoon of baking soda and add about a cup of water and bring it to a boil and then taste it. Just take a little taste of it. If it’s bitter, if it has a metallic taste to it, get rid of that pan. If it’s just water and baking soda, it should taste salty.
Wendy Myers: Also, if you have stainless steel, if you’ve had it for a really long time and it’s kind of nicked, you might be leaching nickel and other metals into your food. You want to get a good brand of stainless. My mother has had her cookware for 40 years. She really likes it, but it has all kinds of nicks in it. You want to be aware of that and replace it if that’s the case.
Aimee Carlson: Rotate cookware and have several different kinds like cast iron, stainless steel and there are some ceramics that are going to be okay. We want to search for those not having the nanoparticles, the glazing and the cadmium and all that stuff on it. Manufacturers are required to label things now. We can be looking for products without those issues and then rotate our cookware. Number one, it’s going to last longer for us. Number two, we’re not getting that constant exposure when we’re using that cookware. I think that helps people out a lot.
Wendy Myers: I’ve been wanting to get a salad master set, which is a really good set. It’s titanium and they also use stainless steel. It’s expensive, but they’re supposed to be one of the best and least toxic cookware out there.
Aimee Carlson: Yes, EWG gives a lot of recommendations for cookware as well, which is the Environmental Working Group. They have a whole team of researchers that are going out there and researching different topics, as well. Titanium is one of those that EWG gives their thumbs up for, to say this is a good option of cookware that we can use. As are, stainless steel, titanium and glass. Obviously, glass is a great one. You just want to make sure that it’s not breaking into our food. With cast iron, make sure you season it. Grandma, way back in the day, had such a great idea with the cast iron. Again, rotate it because cast iron does leach some of those heavy metals into the food. It’s not good to be absorbed by the body on an ongoing basis.
Wendy Myers: Yes, I think it’s fine for occasional use. I avoid it, but I think if people love their cast iron, it’s fine for occasional use. Remember that iron causes dementia and a lot of people have iron toxicity and they’re not aware of it. It’s just another thing to consider. It’s almost like trying to use the lesser of a few evils. They’re all problematic in some way.
Aimee Carlson: They really are. California has some of the most restrictive criteria for products in the whole entire United States. If you pass Prop 65 agenda and you get a thumbs up, you can pass that criteria, it’s going to be a pretty good option for you to purchase. Is that your finding too, Wendy?
Wendy Myers: Yes, absolutely.
Aimee Carlson: There’s a brand called Xtrema, X-T-R-E-M-A, Ceramcor is the company.
Wendy Myers: I have one of those.
Aimee Carlson: That one is like, Mamavation, that’s the only cookware that they’ll recommend. That’s the only one that gets the passage by that Prop 65 in California. California requires all kinds of labeling on their products and has probably the most stringent policy in terms of what they allow and give the passing and thumbs up approval for. That’s the only cookware in their research that passed all of that.
Wendy Myers: Fantastic, that’s so important because I think people don’t realize how much lead that they get, not just in their cookware but in their glasses, their plates, dishes and things like that. Lead Safe Mama is a great resource. She actually takes all of these different brands and tests them. There’s hundreds of things she’s tested. It’s really surprising. Especially grandma’s antique dishes and china that people are using. It’s crazy how much lead, cadmium and other metals are in those. That is a good resource if you’re buying new dishes or are using grandma’s dishes as china. You might want to reconsider that.
Aimee Carlson: Absolutely, in china, it’s the whole glazing process where we’re getting all of that toxicity coming in. Again, these are things that weren’t being tested for 50 or 100 years ago. There was just not the testing happening in order to help us make sure that this isn’t affecting our overall body and our overall health. Let’s also talk about food storage. Many times, we’re talking about pots and pans and a lot of people know this is an area that we really need to look at and make sure that we’re getting the proper cookware. We’ve addressed that. We’ve talked a little bit about utensils. We’ve talked about bamboo, we’ve talked about stainless steel and silicone, but how about storing our food? What are some great options there? I would recommend glass as number one. I love Mason jars to store food in. It is such a great, easy option and so inexpensive. You can just go buy canning jars of various sizes, and you’ve got some great storage containers to store that food in.
Wendy Myers: I love glass too. I actually bought some, I forget the brand, they’re just glass, square storage containers with a plastic top. I love them, but they were $20 each and the Mason jars are super inexpensive. I’ve been using jars too. I love it.
Aimee Carlson: Well, sometimes you do need a square. I get that and I think Pyrex has a great storage option. I think they come in a set. You’ll get some larger pieces and they’ve got a plastic lid because they need that seal on the top. Then they’ve got the lock tabs that just pop down and lock on there. That’s a great option. Some other options for storage are things like beeswax wraps, instead of using the saran wrap.
Wendy Myers: Yes, the saran wrap.
Aimee Carlson: No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want the phthalates and the BPAs. We don’t want any of that stuff in there. Then, most people take that plastic wrapped food and pop it into the microwave and heat it up. Don’t do that.
Wendy Myers: I read it has cadmium in it also.
Aimee Carlson: Yes.
Wendy Myers: Then that goes in the trash and hurts the environment. It’s a mess.
Aimee Carlson: It’s a cycle, a vicious cycle and we don’t need all the plastic, folks. Reuse, reuse, reuse. Things like beeswax wraps and cotton produce bags. You can use cotton produce bags to store your produce in, instead of wrapping them up in plastic. Glass, we already talked about. There’s stainless steel jars, as well, that have nice lids that come with them. If you don’t like the glass, then there’s stainless steel. The one caveat I would say, in using stainless steel, is don’t store your acidic foods in there.
Aimee Carlson: Like salads with the salad dressing already on it, your tomato based foods or that type of thing. Don’t put those into stainless steel because it’s going to leach off of there. Parchment paper is a good option to use for food storage. Get away from all that plastic and it’s going to save you all kinds of money, not buying the rolls of aluminum foil and saran wrap and those types of things.
Wendy Myers: Yes, because you can reuse those things many times.
Aimee Carlson: Over and over and over again. We’re saving the environment as well. Part of living a toxin free lifestyle isn’t just for ourselves, but it’s for planet earth as well.
Wendy Myers: Absolutely, instead of using the aluminum foil, you can use the parchment paper to wrap stuff up or whatnot. If you want to cook stuff in the oven you can use a banana leaf, like they did back in the day.
Aimee Carlson: I know when we cook, if I do corn, I just keep it in the husk to cook it. If you want to season it with different things, you can open it up, season it with some olive oil, some sea salt or whatever you want to put on there and then cover it back up in the husk. There are ways to get around using some of the toxic things for sure.
Wendy Myers: I had one thing I wanted to say because I was following the Lead Free Mama for a minute there, just because I was on the market to buy some dishes. I was so shocked by how many different types of dishes have lead in them. She has a big resource on her site, but I also bought these little lead swabs which are really cool if you just want to check if the products you’re using, bowls or CorningWare that your mom gave you, or whatever have lead in them.
Wendy Myers: They’re called LeadCheck by 3M. You can get them on Amazon. They’re not cheap, but they have this little tip on them and all you do is rub it on the plate or whatever you’re testing. If it turns pink or red, you have lead, you’ve detected lead. You can also do that in your house. If you have paint and you’re concerned about it chipping off or if you have a baby, you can check if you have lead. Especially before you renovate, so you’re not destroying your child’s brain before you renovate. There are lots of uses for these.
Aimee Carlson: That’s wonderful and what a great resource, super easy. If you don’t want to do the baking soda concoction, you don’t want to taste that, that’s a great alternative to do. I love that, by 3M. I wrote that down so I can get some of them. You only have to check that out once, right?
Wendy Myers: Yes, exactly.
Aimee Carlson: Check your plates, check your pans and if they’re bad, get rid of them and get a better, safer option. Again, those resources, the EWG has some great resources with products and then you said, what did you call her?
Wendy Myers: Oh, leadsafemama.com. She has a Facebook group you can join, too.
Aimee Carlson: Perfect, so lots of great resources to give you some safe options.
Wendy Myers: If you want to really be on the edge of your seat and feeling badly about all of your kitchenware and dishes, go on leadsafemama.com
Aimee Carlson: If you don’t get the 3M test and do the baking soda test, those are some good options. I love that. Now let’s talk about how we clean up, because if we’re going to start using, say, bamboo and wood, we get a lot of stuff that gets transferred inside that. How do we sanitize and clean those things? In light of the last couple of months, I’m not sure when this airs but cleanliness and sanitization and those types of things are high on our priority list right now. So what can we do?
Aimee Carlson: General soap and water is going to clean everything. If all we’re wanting to do is clean, soap and water is fantastic. If we want to disinfect where we’re looking to make sure that things are disinfected, then we can start adding things like vinegar and baking soda. That’s going to give us good disinfection when we combine that. We want to make sure our soaps don’t have sodium lauryl sulfate. That’s what creates the sudsing action, but sodium lauryl sulfate, that one ingredient by itself, has over 50,000 studies on PubMed about its toxicity. It’s horrible for the body, just horrible. It’s almost always the second ingredient listed.
Wendy Myers: It’s in a majority of the products that you’re buying and it makes it very sudsy, like some of the dishwashing liquids that just keep sudsing and sudsing and sudsing. You only use one tiny little drop. That’s the sodium lauryl sulfate.
Aimee Carlson: It’ll be labeled as sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth, L-A-U-R-E-T-H sulfate or SLS. That’s how you’ll know. Also, stay away from fragrance. Fragrance is a conglomerate of over 3000 different ingredients that they can use, but they don’t have to tell you what it is. We just want to stay away from it and buy those products that are fragrance-free, not unscented, but fragrance free. You can combine the baking soda and the vinegar in with it. Hydrogen peroxide is another great additive to put in with that. Some people don’t like vinegar because they don’t like the smell of it. You can add some fresh lemons, just squeeze some lemon in there and that helps take that vinegar smell away. Those are some great kinds of DIY options.
Wendy Myers: I was going to say that when I put things in the dishwasher, it’s such high heat and steam for an hour or two, that also disinfects.
Aimee Carlson: Just the heat alone. You don’t even have to put anything in there, right?
Wendy Myers: Right.
Aimee Carlson: Then for sanitizing, we want to get alcohol. Alcohol is what creates the sanitization for us. If we put vodka in, it’s a great option because there’s not really any scent to it. We can add some and we can mix it up in a bottle or we can add Everclear, which has one of the higher proofs. Whatever proof the alcohol is, half that. If it’s 80 proof, then it’s going to have 40% alcohol in it. I think that’s correct. We want to have at least 40 to 60% alcohol, that’s what is good for sanitization. Alcohol is what creates the sanitization.
Wendy Myers: Isn’t Everclear 180 proof? So it’s like 90% alcohol.
Aimee Carlson: Yes, so add some Everclear. Don’t you drink it, just put it into your sanitizer. We can add it to anything that we want to sanitize. That’s what we’re going to do. I have a bamboo cutting board. I’m using a cleaner that has some alcohol in it, so that I’m making sure it’s nice and sanitized. I have a different cutting board surface for meats versus produce. I highly encourage you to do that as well so there’s no cross-contamination going on there.
Wendy Myers: I also use bamboo cutting boards. They’re really pretty. They’re cheap. It’s renewable. I think people don’t realize with plastic cutting boards, that those actually harbor more bacteria than a bamboo or wooden cutting board. It’s always interesting.
Aimee Carlson: You’re cutting into the plastic and that plastic is also leaching into the food. We don’t want the plastic. Plastics are full of phthalates. It’s not just the BPAs. The BPAs are the phthalates and phthalates are just horrible inside of our body. They’re endocrine disrupting, they’re damaging our immune system, they’re damaging our internal organs. It’s just something that we want to avoid at all possible costs. Look at your dishwashing detergent as well. The two key factors I always tell people to look for are sodium lauryl sulfate and fragrance. Get those two biggies out of there. Parabens are more in personal care products, but the sodium lauryl sulfate is just so bad and if you don’t have that in it, you’re probably not going to have many of the other bad ingredients in it as well.
Wendy Myers: There are lots of great, green dishwashing detergents and dishwashing liquids if you’re hand washing. There are lots of great alternatives, now.
Aimee Carlson: There really are. The company that I’m using now, I have one cleaner that I use for everything. I use it in the dishwasher. I use it for cleaning. It costs me less than a dollar per 20 ounce bottle, that I make with it, and I have an all purpose cleaner. I use it for laundry. I use it for dishwashing. It’s for everything. I used to have a caddy that had all my cleaning supplies in it because you needed a toilet bowl cleaner and you needed a glass cleaner and you needed all that stuff. I just have one bottle. It does it all.
Wendy Myers: All that stuff, when you’re looking back on it, it’s just marketing where you have to buy a product for every different room in your house, or task, and it’s just marketing to get you buying more stuff.
Aimee Carlson: Absolutely. So we talked about cooking, utensils to use, we talked about proper cleaning and we talked about some of the ingredients we want to avoid, but what about actual cooking appliances to use? Have you guys talked about that?
Wendy Myers: No we haven’t because a lot of them are plastics. A lot of the food processors and other products are made from plastic. I was going to buy a blender and I couldn’t find a glass one. Even the thousand dollar ones or whatever, they’re made of plastic. I’m like, “I don’t want plastic in my blender.”
Aimee Carlson: I want glass, glass, glass. We want to look for glass products and stainless steel. Again, it’s going to be kind of your higher end. When we make things that are good for us, it takes more money to be able to do this. Know that you’re investing into your overall health. One of the appliances that I would ask most people to stop using is the microwave. Microwaving is just such a poor choice. I know it’s a matter of convenience, but there are so many easier ways to warm up food. Warm up water, do things that we need to do and get rid of that convenience appliance because it’s changing the structure of our food.
Wendy Myers: I have a great little Cuisinart. It’s a small little oven. It heats up super fast. It was a really good quality one. It was a couple of hundred dollars, but I use it constantly and it does an amazing job roasting vegetables. You can roast a whole chicken in it and I heat up my food and it works great. Air fryers are also fantastic as well. They heat up your food super fast. They theoretically produce more AGEs or advanced glycation end products and acrylamides because it’s cooking so fast, but there again, you have damage to your food any time that you heat it up.
Aimee Carlson: Right.
Wendy Myers: It’s the destruction of nutrients, but then the oven and air fryers are the lesser of two evils, compared to the microwave.
Aimee Carlson: Absolutely. Here’s the other thing too, using a tea kettle, if you’re like me and you like to decorate and have things look pretty, we can get so many really nice looking tea kettles. You are able to have something that’s pretty and functional to have in your kitchen. One device I would say to get rid of is the microwave. Look for a better option of being able to warm up food and prepare food in a way that’s less toxic to the body, in terms of changing the format of the food.
Wendy Myers: Well, Aimee, thank you so much for coming on the show. I am so glad that I met you because you focus on detoxification too. I was like, “Oh my gosh. My girlfriend.” Why don’t you tell us where we can find you. You have a podcast, too. Tell us all about that.
Aimee Carlson: You bet. My podcast is The Toxin Terminator and I really focus on the things that we’re doing every single day. The products that we use every day are going to have the most effect on us, in changing our overall health and wellness. You can find me on my website, it’s really the best way and it’s Aimeecarlson.com, it’s A-I-M-E-E-C-A-R-L-S-O-N.com. You can get to the podcast through there. You can get to my Facebook group there. It’s a free Facebook group. If you’re interested in the toxin free lifestyle, we do a lot to support everybody on that journey, myself included. I’m seven years into it and always learning something new, doing something new.
Wendy Myers: There’s a lot of toxins out there.
Aimee Carlson: There’s a lot and oh gosh, it’s a rabbit hole that most people you just don’t want to go down. It can be scary, but we try to make it easy. We give it to you in bite size pieces. I have my book coming out this year called “The Toxin Terminator” where I walk people through the five pillars of living that toxin-free lifestyle.
Wendy Myers: I love that name. I thought it was so funny when I saw your site. I love it. Well, Aimee, thanks so much for coming on the show. Everyone, thanks so much for joining me on the Myers Detox Podcast, where every week we explore different topics related to protecting your health from toxins, lots of advice, protocols, biohacking tips to dramatically improve your life and getting your life back through detoxification.
Wendy Myers: Also, right now, I have created a series called the Coronavirus Support Series with my good friend, Dr. Eric Salinsky. We have so many different supportive topics and speakers talking about finances, talking about parenting, homeschooling and reducing stress. There are a lot of different protocols, techniques and tips for reducing stress. Please go check that out, it’s totally free. You don’t even have to give your email. Find us at coronavirussupportseries.com. I’m Wendy Myers of Myersdetox.com. Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you guys very soon.
