School lunch full of plastic
If someone handed you a shredded credit card and said:
“Just sprinkle this into your child’s lunch.” -you’d be outraged.
And yet, that’s essentially what’s happening — invisibly — in school canteens every day.
Plastic in school meals
Every time kitchen staff chop fruit, vegetables, sandwiches, or meat on a plastic board, microscopic fragments of that board are shaved off and end up in the food.
You can’t see them. You can’t taste them.
But they’re there — in every meal, every day, year after year.
One study [1] estimated that a person could ingest 7.4 to 50.7 grams of microplastics per year just from food prepared on plastic chopping boards.
(For reference plastic card weighs 5 grams)
So even at the low end, that’s more than a full credit card a year.
At the high end? It’s like eating ten credit cards — just from your food prep surface.
Now, this estimate is based on adult consumption, but even if a child eats less by weight, the exposure is still significant — and their bodies are more vulnerable.
It Gets Worse With “Healthy” Food
One of the most surprising findings?
Cutting a simple carrot released three times more plastic particles than chopping without food.
Why? Because carrots are firm.
When you apply pressure and the knife finally breaks through, it drives deeper into the board, gouging out more plastic in the process.
So ironically, the more effort that goes into a healthy meal…
the more plastic may be going into your child’s body.
The hidden ingredient
This isn’t about takeaway trays or water bottles.
It’s about the tools used every day in schools, nurseries, and professional kitchens.
Plastic chopping boards are cheap. Common. Overused.
But they’re turning into a hidden ingredient — one none of us ever agreed to feed our children.
This Is Why I Started Velcorian
I’m not here to sensationalize.
I’m here because, as a vet and public health specialist, I’ve spent years keeping the food chain safe.But what happens in the kitchen — especially school kitchens — matters just as much. And now, as a father whose own children are about to start school, I feel that urgency more than ever.
We can’t control every plastic in the world.
But we can control what touches our food.
Especially when it’s our children’s food.
If we wouldn’t feed them a credit card, why are we letting them eat one — or more — every single year?
[1]Cutting Boards: An Overlooked Source of Microplastics in Human Food? - PubMed