Microwave popcorn

Type of convenience food

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Microwave popcorn is a convenience food consisting of unpopped popcorn in an enhanced, sealed paper bag intended to be heated in a microwave oven. In addition to the dried corn, the bags typically contain cooking oil with sufficient saturated fat to solidify at room temperature, one or more seasonings (often salt), and natural or artificial flavorings or both.

Design

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The bag is typically partially folded when it is placed in a microwave, and inflates as a result of steam pressure from the heated kernels.

Microwave popcorn bags are designed to avoid popped-kernel scorching, an undesirable effect that takes place when popped kernels are heated above 300 °F (150 °C).[1] A susceptor—usually a metalized film laminated onto the paper of the bag—absorbs microwaves and concentrates heat at the film interface, thus ensuring a heat distribution focused on the hard-to-heat flavor coating so that the unpopped kernels are evenly coated prior to popping, thereby ensuring even flavor throughout the product.

Some popcorn is flawed and will not pop because of possible damage to the shell, which allows the steam to escape. These unpopped kernels are known as "old maids" or "spinsters".[2]

An early susceptor popcorn bag design was patented by the American company General Mills in 1981 (US Patent #4,267,420).[3]

Safety issues

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Care in package design is needed for food safety.[4]

A safety issue is that the cooking time given on the packaging does not apply to all microwave ovens. Setting the timer and coming back later, after the timer's alarm has sounded, could result in the popcorn being burnt and smoking badly. Microwave popcorn makers suggest that the person cooking the popcorn stay near the oven to observe the popcorn as it cooks, and take the popcorn out when the time between pops is more than a few seconds.

Some microwave ovens have a specific mode designed for cooking popcorn, which either uses factory-calibrated time and power level settings, or which uses humidity or sound sensors to detect when popping has finished.[5][6]

The concern about microwave popcorn bags has increased in terms of the waste and their harmful impacts on the environment. The coating materials used in microwave popcorn bags can have negative effects on the environment. Researchers have detected toxic chemicals in the bags, such as perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) and their potential precursors.

Harmful chemicals

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Researchers have detected many PFCs in microwave popcorn bags used as coating materials for oil and moisture resistance. The amount of PFOA in some microwave popcorn bags is determined as high as 300 μg kg−1.[7] Besides PFOA and PFOS, Moral et al. also determined other perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs) in popcorn packaging, including perfluoroheptanoic (PFHpA), perfluorononanoic (PFNA), perfluorodecanoic (PFDA), perfluoroundecanoic (PFUnA), and perfluorododecanoic (PFDoA) acids.[8]

Due to the toxicity of PFOA, major U.S. manufacturers volunteered to phase out production of PFOA by the end of 2015. In addition, the use of perfluoroalkyl ethyl-containing food-contact substances are no longer allowed by the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations in January 2016.[9] However, although the production of PFOA and PFOS was reduced, the production of fluorotelomer-based chemicals applied to food contact papers is still increasing. Some compounds, such as polyfluoroalkyl phosphate surfactants (PAPs) or fluorotelomers (FTOH), have been used in some brands of microwave popcorn bags.[8] Those compounds are precursors of PFCAs, and evidence shows that they are more toxic than PFCAs themselves. Furthermore, they may also be degraded to PFCAs, and therefore leading to the increase of PFCAs concentrations in the environment and generating adverse effects.[8][10]

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Environmental impacts

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Because of the large amount of production of microwave popcorn bags, they have also become a significant contaminant source (PFCs) to the environment. Due to the disposal of coated paper and manufacturing activities, PFOA has also been detected in wastewater and biosolids.[11] Soil near disposal sites are contaminated by PFOA as well.[12]

See also

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Notes

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We have said the word susceptor roughly 10,000 times in the past year, and finally I am going to explain what it is and why we don't use it. I touched on this in the bag dissection post but it's worth shedding a little more light on this.

This is going to hurt a little, but you need to know a little bit about how microwaves work to get the rest of this. Microwave ovens use a radio frequency that is tuned to heat up water. That's it. It's a radio wave not too different from what is sent out by radio stations. It was actually discovered when a worker noticed that the candy bar in his pant pocket melted when he stood in front of a airport radar dish. Okay, enough history.

Popcorn that is submerged in a pool of hydrogenated oil (or sometimes palm oil), as is the case inside most microwave popcorn bags, doesn't contain all that much water. The microwave only heats water. To remedy this the scientists put a metal coated patch in the bag that basically shorts the radio waves to make a ton of heat and get the kernels to pop more quickly. That's why it's in there.

The issue is that the susceptor is made up of paper coated with aluminum flake (or metalized film, or graphite) and PET (Polyethylene terephthalate - the same plastic use for most soft drink bottles). It gets incredibly hot so the chemicals in the paper, plastic, glues, and metal are more likely to be released. Also, the heat often causes the plastic and metal to burn off or delaminate. You can see that happened in the above photo. So where does all that crap go? Where else can it go? Into your popcorn.

There are other nasty details about the existing microwave popcorn bag, but that's just about enough negative for me for a while. I will eventually write about PFOAs which are substantially worse; so much so that the FDA and EPA both are trying to stop the use of this chemical.

That said, I don't want to come off as an alarmist. The existing microwave popcorn bag is pretty gross and chemical laden for sure, but in the end you need to make the call.

As you probably expected, we are not using any of these things in our bag. It's made from paperIt can mean that sometimes we get a few more dud kernels, but we think it's worth it.

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