If you want to stir up online controversy, wooden spoons are the perfect tool with which to do so. Every few years, influencers go viral with warnings about how the wooden spoons in your kitchen are covered in disgusting gunk and if you don’t boil them immediately you will poison yourself and everyone you love.
In 2023, for example, a woman called Lulaboo Jenkins posted a TikTok video of her boiling spoons. Millions of people watched the water turn brown and it triggered a deep-cleaning craze. The Guardian’s Tim Dowling had a go, detailing the results in an article that prompted more than 1,000 comments. Who knew spoons could inspire such a feverish response? (Well, Jenkins, I suppose.)
Seizing on this formula, another influencer has gone viral this week with a video proclaiming that “your wooden spoons might be making you sick”. The accompanying post warns that “they absorb bacteria, oils and food particles deep into the wood – even with regular washing”.
Perhaps it’s all the microplastics in my brain, but I can’t summon up the energy to care about spoon bacteria. I have simply accepted that everything in my kitchen is poisoning me. My gas stove is pumping out pollution that may shave two years off my life. My tap water is probably full of Pfas (“forever chemicals”). When seemingly everything in modern life is toxic, trying to mitigate the risks can drive you to distraction.
It’s hard to know where to focus. A few months ago, I came downstairs to find my wife rifling through our kitchen drawers in a frenzy. She had read about a study that showed that black plastic kitchen items were full of toxic compounds. You probably read a similar article: the findings got a lot of attention. Suddenly, everyone was throwing out their utensils and buying silicone spatulas. Then it turned out that the study had got a calculation wrong and overstated the risks.
The good news is that your black fish slice and your old wooden spoons probably won’t kill you. The bad news is that everything else will: research has shown that 100% of us will die.
