Nowadays food containers can be seen everyday, in different materials, plastic, stainless and glass. People carry their own food for the work day lunch because it’s convenient and environment friendly to avoid disposable lunch box. But how to choose a safe food container? Let’s talk about it today, the glassware food container, in 2 different aspects.
1, Is the glass toxic when it’s with food? Obviously no, glass is just made of silica sand SIO2, sodium carbonate NA2O3 and limestone CACO3. A glass food container is not different to any other glassware we use everyday, such as a glass cup, it doesn’t cause any chemical reaction with our food and daily liquid for human beings. Therefore, it’s safe to use a glass food container.
2, When you need to heat your lunch, is it safe to use a glass food container in microwave or oven? There are 2 kinds of glass for this glassware, one is normal glass and the other is borosilicate glass, also known as Pyrex glass. Normal glass, it’s same as our glass cup, so never heat it because its temperature resistance is normally from -20°C to 105°C. However, a borosilicate glass Pyrex glass food container is absolutely safe to be heated in microwave or oven, as its coefficient of linear expansion can be 0.1x10-6/k, with more than 13% boron while normal glass has about just 1%. Borosilicate glass melts to liquid when it is heated to 821°C, but microwave can only reaches to 600°C max, oven 300°C max, so you’ve got to use a borosilicate glass food container, pyrex glass, is 100% safe to use.
