Health fears as experts find roast dinner can contain up to 230,000 particles 

This is a meal families traditionally enjoy eating at Sunday lunchtime.

But experts have now found that a single roast dinner can contain up to 230,000 microplastic particles.

Eating the same type of food every day would swallow the equivalent of two plastic bags a year, the researchers said. The study was carried out by scientists from the University of Portsmouth and ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

Microplastics are defined as less than 5 mm long. To see how many find their way into the food, GMB reporter Michelle Morrison and her children cooked up two roast dinners with chicken, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and Yorkshire pudding.

Although one meal was made from ingredients purchased wrapped in plastic, the other was mostly purchased without any plastic packaging. Corn made from plastic-wrapped ingredients contains up to seven times more microplastics than others.

Experts said this shows that packaging is a major route for plastic to enter our bodies. Non-plastic packaged goods also cost 37 percent less.

Dr Fay Coucero, environmental pollution expert at the university, said: ‘It appears that most of the microplastics in our food come from the plastic packaging it is wrapped in.

‘However, there are other ways that plastic can enter the food chain. This can happen through soil in vegetables or through grazing in our meat.

‘There are also lots of microplastics in the air so they can end up on food. And lastly it can be from cooking utensils which are used while cooking.’ He added: ‘Generally food samples are analyzed for microplastics in the raw state under laboratory conditions.

‘This study is different because we chose to actually look at what’s on your plate after cooking.

‘Rather than a sterile laboratory, the food was cooked in a typical kitchen, so it is likely that the microplastics would have come from a combination of food, packaging, cooking utensils and the air.’

Miss Morrison said: ‘Previously there has been little research into the amount of microplastics contained in whole food.

‘Our new investigation clearly finds that we ingest far less microplastics when we reduce the amount of packaging we buy. Now we need to know are these microplastics harmless? Or, as many believe, are they really little plastic timebombs?’

Professor Shaji Sebastian, gastroenterology specialist at Hull University Teaching Hospitals, said: ‘The key is to understand what microplastics are doing to the body.

‘Do they go to the limbs? For example, do they cross the barrier between the blood and the brain?’

He added: ‘The results of this investigation are surprising and call for more research into the effects of microplastics on the human body.’

Tory MP Alberto Costa, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on microplastics, said: ‘We don’t yet know what impact this has on our health, but I would welcome more research and investigation.’