Most replayed moment: How to prevent microplastics entering your body | Dr Sabine Donnai & Dr Federica Amati

Microplastics are everywhere. Tiny fragments we can’t see, taste, or smell and yet they’ve been found in our water, our food, and even our brains. Emerging research has linked microplastic exposure to hormone disruption, chronic inflammation, and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. But with plastics embedded in almost every aspect of modern life, is there anything we can realistically do to reduce our exposure? Today, Dr Sabine Donnai and Dr Federica Amati separate the fear from the facts. They explain where our biggest sources of microplastics come from, which everyday habits may be increasing our risk, and the simple, practical swaps that can meaningfully reduce the amount entering our bodies. 🌱 Try our science-backed and tasty wholefood supplement Daily30 🌿Let your gut microbes snack on the ZOE Gut Health Bar Get our brand-new app and Gut Health Test designed by world-leading gut health and nutrition scientists to build healthy eating habits 👉 Join ZOE Follow ZOE on Instagram. 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati The Appetite Reset by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Good Mood Food (preorder) by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE The Smart Snacking Guide: How to feed your gut, fuel your day, and snack without guilt The Hormone Harmony Guide: Tuning Your Body’s Internal Orchestra Eating for Better Brain Health: Your brain-gut blueprint How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks Better Breakfast Guide Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here. Episode transcripts are available here.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Microplastics are everywhere, tiny fragments we can't see, taste or smell. Yet they've been found in our water, our food and even our brains. Emerging research has linked microplastic exposure to hormone disruption, chronic inflammation, and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. With plastics embedded in almost every aspect of modern life, is there anything we can realistically do to reduce our exposure? Today, Dr. Sabine Donnai and Dr. Federica Amati separate the fear from the facts. They explain where our biggest sources of microplastics come from, which everyday habits may be increasing our risk, and the simple practical swaps that can meaningfully reduce the amount entering our bodies.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  What do we know about plastics in our food? What do we know about where they crop up most? And which dietary patterns of foods are kind of the worst culprits?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Well, when I think of food and plastic, there's, I think there's three different elements to that, isn't it? I mean, there's one is food packaging, which is a big one. I mean, if I'm gonna buy my cold sushi, okay, the likelihood that that sushi's been in there for a very long time and it's not been heated, therefore, am I really gonna be worried too much about getting a lot of plastic from that? Unlikely, but if I would get a takeaway and that is in plastic and they've put a warm curry in there and then I'm gonna warm it up in the microwave, that is a big problem. Okay, so I would definitely not do that. So there's contamination to food, but there's in food itself. Okay, there are plastics that have been found in food. Clearly, the biggest culprit in that would be fish.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Even in wild Alaskan salmon, you find plastics now. I think it's mainly in the digestive tracts of the fish that you find the microplastics. Those who those, whether it's the shellfish that you would be eating, mussels and things like that, where you eat the whole thing, or whether it's sardines, which are super healthy from an oil point of view, but you tend to eat the whole fish and therefore you eat the intestine with it, where you find most of the microplastics. So the bigger fish where you actually leave out the intestine are tend to be a little bit healthier, but then they've eaten a lot of the small fish. So that accumulation adds into that. So, so you kind of a bit of a catch 22. Red meat would be the same, okay?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  There's a lot of microplastics in the feed to beef.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  So just to confirm, you're saying fish is bad, but then you're like, red meat, which has got nothing to do with the oceans, you're basically saying it's in the same situation as well?

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Not as bad. I would say fish is definitely on the top. Okay, so, so then, then beef would be, would be less than that. Vegetables, we do find microplastics in vegetables because the soil is full of microplastics now. But out of all the foods that we can eat, for sure, I would say the, the vegetables and the fruit are the least affected. Well, those are the ones that will help actually eliminate them as well. It's a double benefit, you're saying, well, fine, A, it is very healthy food, least in microplastics, and they will help you eliminate the microplastics. So we're all for that.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  What can we do about this? It seems pretty clear to me that I can't completely avoid this microplastic. I'm thinking right now, I'm sitting in this studio, breathing it in. Could you now tell us about actionable advice that also doesn't leave us sort of so paranoid that we're sort of unwilling to live our lives?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  And I've been down that rabbit hole, okay? I've, I've been there, I said, I can't breathe, I can't eat, I can't sleep. And I think it is all about relativity. I think we need to accept that the world is what it is and then say, what are the easy wins? Okay, there are things we can all do. And the first thing we need to do is put things in perspective. I think it is about creating an awareness that plastics are not just a problem of the oceans. So what can we do? I think your biggest win, the way I see it, and the biggest impact that I've seen people have made is water. There is such a thing called a reverse osmosis water. Do you have, have you heard of that?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Please explain.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Okay, so there's water filters and the vast majority of water filters that you might be aware of, they'll take out heavy metals, but they won't take out those smaller particles. So reverse osmosis filter is a type of filter that actually really cleans the water completely. It also cleans it from the good minerals, because you kind of need to re-mineralize the water then. But they've become quite affordable now. Okay, and, and therefore it is a good way to somehow say, at least when I'm gonna be boiling my rice or my steaming my vegetables, or whether I'm gonna drink water or tea or anything. I mean, tea is another one we need to talk about. Actually, I think I saw you earlier tipping your tea bag. I said, there's a lot of microplastics that come from a tea bag.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  A lot of the newer, more upmarket bags say that they're made from like non-plastic, compostable from plant. Is that actually gonna be fine for me or is it?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  That's a better option, yeah, absolutely.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  And that isn't gonna cause these problems because it comes from a...

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Or loose leaf tea, clearly. For example, I mean, in my kitchen, I use cling film, but I use cling films made from sugar cane. There are now, thankfully, quite a lot of alternatives. So water, a reverse osmosis, I think is a very good option.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And Sabine, what do you think about the sort of more accessible filters, the jugs?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, at home, I've got an on the counter one and perfectly fine. I mean, we've measured it afterwards and they work very well.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Your top tip is water?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  What else should I do?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  I think what would be worthwhile doing always is just avoid warming food in plastic. I think that's not negotiable to start warming food in glass rather than in, in plastic. I think it's a no brainer. Utensils in the kitchen, whether you use spatula, I mean, don't use plastic ones, I mean, just use wooden ones. Okay, so, so they're very easy wins. I think once you start looking around in your kitchen and you say, actually, okay, do I need to drink out of a, a plastic bottle of water? No, I mean, you can buy a metal bottle, which I've got, okay? And, and they're inert. A soup tin, it's made out of metal, so you might think it's fine, but, but it's lined with plastic on the inside,

• 6:27Speaker 02

  just like your coffee cup, you go to any coffee shop and can you buy some coffee? It's made out of paper on the outside, but it's got a plastic lining on the inside.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And going to your kitchen utensils as well, go back to stainless steel, porcelain. So using things that are like your grandma would have cooked in and less of the plastic coated non-stick cookware.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  So ceramic glass metal?

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  Not plastic?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Children's toys nowadays, including things like teething toys, are made of plastic.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  So I send my daughter, who's six, into school every morning with a plastic water bottle. And my son, who's almost 18, I did that similarly for 10 years. I'm pretty sure he's gonna tell me that I need to do something differently.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  No, you need to do exactly that, but put clean water in it and don't put it in a plastic one. You start putting things into perspective and say, okay, as a totality, this is what I can do. This is sensible and that's all I do and then I move on. It's a two-pronged approach. One is try to reduce input, okay? And the biggest ones would be water, would be physical plastics that you warm your food into. It is indeed dry cleaning clothes, try to wear natural fabrics. Am I going to wear only cotton when I go to the gym? No, I, I wear Lycra when I go to the gym, okay? And, and I know when I sweat, my pores will be a little bit more open, I probably will absorb a little bit, but that is way more comfortable in the gym than wearing something in cotton. So it is about the balance, okay, for sure.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  And then it's about what can we do to actually try to eliminate it? And we've got a beautiful detoxification system and just let's stimulate that.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  What can I do to detox myself of these plastics then?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  I'm not sure whether detox is the right word because you're never gonna get rid of it entirely. But can you eliminate as much as possible? And then it comes down to our gut. The vast majority that we ingest can be eliminated through our gut, as long as you don't have what we call a leaky gut. Soluble fibers are brilliant because what they do is do two things, actually. They improve transit through your gut, increases the speed of things. Okay, so just make sure, get constipated, you can just see that you have more likely to really absorb things, okay, in your system. If you actually just have that transit going nice and smoothly, okay, that will help. So that's where fibers come in, that's where water drinking does come in. Bacteria as well help, things like mushrooms help. There are definitely things we can take.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I mean, there was a trial, actually, I think it was with fenugreek. They had water, put a lot, a lot of plastics in there, they put the fenugreek in there and then measured it again and almost, I think something like 80, 85% of the plastics were gone. Okay, so the fenugreek just kind of completely encapsulated the plastics. Now, that is in water, it's not in human, but you can kind of somehow see, hmm, if that does it in a glass of water, okay, how is it not gonna help in my gut? So there's a lot of fibers that will help, Ocrad did the same thing. They actually just will grab those microplastics, encapsulate it and through the transit through your gut actually eliminate it.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  So you can poop the plastics out?

• 9:33Speaker 00

  And Federica, do I need to take some sort of supplement to get these soluble fibers?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  No, absolutely not. So it's exactly what we've been talking about diet wise. So it's having your whole grains, your legumes, so beans, peas, lentils, your nuts and seeds, plenty of fruits and vegetables, 30 plants a week, something we talk about a lot at Zoe. It really helps with that. But also herbs and fragrant spices are really helpful too.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Or your, your berries, our liver and our gut has got a two-phase detoxification process and that second phase, okay, which helps your toxins become more water soluble. Okay, it's gonna be very helpful to eliminate those plastics. And that's where your, your greens come in, your broccoli and your kale and your sprouts and your berries. They're really very helpful to, to really start eliminating and to supporting your, your detoxification.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I was struck when you were talking about the blood-brain barrier, the similarities between the blood-brain barrier and the gut barrier. They've worked together and when we have this inflammation, we really wanna help dampen that. And we know that colorful fruits and vegetables like berries help with that as well.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  So if I can be eating a really good diet that is reducing my inflammation in general, that could potentially be reducing the damage that these plastics are doing that are, or gonna be elsewhere in my body because of what I'm breathing in?

• 10:46Speaker 02

  I mean, there's enough animal studies that prove that that does make a difference. So if we can translate an animal to a human, I think we can kind of transposition it and say, listen, yes, actually, that is going to make an impact. So that's definitely a strategy I adopt, okay, and I would advise anybody to do. We can see that the impact of a healthy diet that focuses on elimination and capturing those things makes a difference in the blood levels of the plastics that we're measuring. The ones that we're struggling with are the ones that we're breathing in. Then you say, well, how can I eliminate that? Now you've got what we call a glymphatic system, which is the waste disposal from the brain. So it's very similar to the lymphatic system in our body, but from the brain.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Okay, and it's by stimulating that, which you do with deep sleep and exercise, okay, which is going to make a difference as well.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  It is possible that your body itself could be pushing these plastics out?

• 11:41Speaker 02

  I can't prove that because no trials have been done, but it makes clinical sense that that would happen because the particles are small enough to actually get into your brain, they're small enough to actually be as a waste to come out. So if we see, for example, PFAS coming out, okay, and we know that that actually gets reduced with the impact of stimulating your glymphatic drainage, I can't see why microplastics wouldn't be doing exactly the same thing.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  You can get air filters for your home. Some vacuums have HEPA filters in them so that when you are vacuuming, the microplastics get stuck in the vacuum and don't go back out.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, actually, I think it was two weeks ago, three weeks ago, somebody came out with a product that you can just put on any washing machine now that actually captures the microplastics.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  If you had to give just one piece of advice to somebody who's listening to this, what would that be?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  I think the easiest one would be, as in, stop cooking with plastic, because that's something everyone can do. And it's having that awareness of plastic is not just something I can physically see. Okay, it is something that eventually is going to be internalized and is going to inflame my system and it's actually fairly easy to control if I'm just becoming aware of it.

• 13:01Speaker 00

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