One of the most important things in the office is a simple mug. It’s there to hold your coffee in the morning when you need a pick-me-up, to show off your style with a cool pattern or funny joke, or to keep you warm when someone else is running the air conditioning. Though it cares about you, are you giving it the love and attention it needs? To put it another way, do you wash it often?

People on Reddit clean their coffee mugs in a lot of different ways. Some wash them every day, some just rinse them out between uses, and some like to let the flavors of all the drinks they’ve ever had mix.

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The results of a poll of more than 2,000 British adults were the same. A majority of people (those who were telling the truth) cleaned their office mugs after every use. However, many people went between uses without giving it a good scrub, and 3% admitted to never washing it at all. It’s even worse for Brits when it comes to washing towels.

That might be a problem if some nice, fluffy mold starts to grow, but the bacteria that live in a dirty mug aren’t always a problem.

An infectious disease expert, Dr. Jeffrey Starke, told the Wall Street Journal, “If I went and cultured the average dirty coffee cup, of course I’m going to find germs.” “Remember, though, that most of them came from the person who used the cup.”

What about the germs that don’t come from the person who owns the mug? The University of Arizona’s Dr. Charles Gerba is a professor of microbiology, environmental sciences, and public health. He told LifeHacker that “about 90% of most office coffee mugs harbor dangerous germs, and 20% of those carry fecal bacteria.”

If no one else in the office is getting ideas from Andy Samberg’s character’s antics in the “Like a Boss” music video, Starke and Gerba both say that any germs that might be in your mug might have come from… cleaning it.

“The sponge in the break room probably has the most bacteria of anything in the office,” Starke told the Wall Street Journal. That makes a lot of sense. It touches a lot of things, stays wet, and probably doesn’t get replaced very often. Starke came to the right conclusion when he said, “Most people would call that gross.”

That being said, it might seem better to not wash it at all, but a lot of people would find that idea gross. Soap, hot water, and paper towels are what experts say you should use to clean and dry your office mug. Even better, if you have a dishwasher, take it home and wash it there.

Some people say you should do it after every use, but we won’t tell if you don’t.

The epidemiologist who came up with the term says that ultra-processed foods are so bad for you that they should be sold with warnings like those on tobacco products.

Carlos Monteiro, a professor of Nutrition and Public Health at the University of São Paulo, told the Guardian that UPFs (ultra-processed foods) are becoming more popular around the world, even though they are bad for your health because they raise the risk of many chronic diseases.

According to him, these foods are replacing healthier, less processed foods all over the world. They are also making diets worse because they have many bad qualities. “These foods, along with others linked to diet, are causing a huge rise in obesity and other long-term diseases like diabetes.”

This week at the International Congress on Obesity 2024, Monteiro said that ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are so common and bad for people’s health that they should be heavily restricted in their sale and consumption, and foods that break the rules should have “front-of-pack warnings [like those used for cigarette packs]” added to them.

The idea seems reasonable at first glance, even if it is a bit extreme. Many people in the West now eat mostly UPFs. In fact, more than half of the average diet in the US and UK is made up of these kinds of foods. They make people eat more calories, even when compared to unprocessed diets that are the same in terms of salt, fat, and sugar. They have also been linked to a lot of bad health effects, like a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer. They can even make you feel less mentally healthy.

Monteiro has a good point when he says that UPFs should be seen as a public health risk, like tobacco products. Monteiro emphasized that multinational corporations that produce both tobacco and UPFs use the sizable profits they generate from creating alluring and addictive products to support aggressive marketing campaigns and lobbying against regulation. These products are also pathogenic, which means they are meant to be harmful. “Reformulating is not the answer.”

But some people have said that banning or limiting UPFs is too simple. One thing that might surprise you is the types of food that would be affected by such a move: “ultra-processed” only refers to foods that have multiple ingredients and additives. This includes baby formula, fruit yogurt, and even store-bought bread. Okay, so the fast-food hamburger you’re thinking of counts.

Poor people are also more likely to buy UPFs than rich people. «We already know that eating snacks and foods that are highly processed and high in sugar is linked to rising rates of obesity. “Socioeconomic differences in health and diet are also known,” said Paul Coleman in November 2023. Coleman was an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Food Policy, City, University of London, and a Senior Public Health Registrar at Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust.

More labels wouldn’t help these parents. Coleen said, “they know [UPFs] are bad for their child’s health, but they have little choice but to buy these unhealthy options.” Even though parents want to buy healthy snacks, unhealthy snacks are the most logical choice because they are cheap and last a long time.

Some scientists disagree with Monteiro’s comparison to tobacco products. Hilda Mulrooney, a reader in nutrition and health at London Metropolitan University, told The Guardian, “There is no such thing as a safe cigarette, even second-hand, so banning them is relatively straightforward in that the health case is very clear.”

“However, we need a variety of nutrients, such as fat, sugar, and salt. These nutrients do more than just taste, flavor and hedonic properties; they also help foods stay structurally stable and last longer,” she said. “Some types of foods are harder to change in order to make them less harmful, and they’re not the same as tobacco because we need food, just not as much as most of us eat.”

The World Obesity Congress 2024 takes place in São Paulo, Brazil, from June 26th to June 29th of that year.

If you don’t want to drink a bunch of chemicals that could be harmful, keep your water bottle out of the sun. Plastic water bottles that are left out in the sun break down and release many different types of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

VOCs are chemicals that evaporate quickly at room temperature. They are found in a lot of different products, like paints, cleaners, fuels, and solvents. They’re also made of plastic, like those used to make water bottles and food trucks. Many of them are safe, but some may be bad for your health in the short and long term.

In the most recent study, UV-A light and sunlight were used to test six different kinds of plastic water bottles in China. They discovered that this process let out a wide range of VOCs, such as acids, alcohols, aldehydes, and alkanes.

Some signs pointed to “highly toxic” VOCs, such as n-hexadecane, which is known to cause cancer.

A single sip of contaminated water doesn’t pose much of a health risk, but the researchers found that long-term exposure may pose a greater risk.

“Our results are strong proof that plastic bottles can release harmful chemicals into the air when they are exposed to sunlight.” “Consumers need to be aware of these risks, especially in places where bottled water is left out in the sun for long periods of time,” said Dr. Huase Ou, lead researcher from China’s Jinan University’s Guangdong Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution and Health.

However, the researchers were quick to point out that the risk seems to be pretty low since the bottle only releases a small amount of chemicals.

“Given that a container weighs about 20 grams on average, the VOCs that were released from a single container were only a few nanograms.” So, even after long-term exposure, opening a bottle and drinking water from it doesn’t pose many health risks to people, the study’s authors write in the conclusion.

The bottles in the study were all made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is one of the most common types of plastic. However, the VOC composition and concentration of the different bottles were very different. The different production methods and additives seem to have something to do with this.

Most likely, the chemicals leaked out of the bottle because of a process called photodegradation. This is when light breaks down the structure of the plastic.

There are more things than just sunlight that you should think about when it comes to your plastic bottle’s “health.” A study from the past found that leaving water in a plastic bottle for just one day could let hundreds of chemicals get into your drink. Several of these chemicals are thought to be harmful to health, such as those that cause cancer or mess with the hormone system (endocrine disruptors).

In the same way, there is some evidence that heating plastic bottles might not be a good idea. A study done in 2020 found that the sterilization process recommended by the World Health Organization put between 1.3 and 16.2 million microplastic particles per liter into child bottles.

In the 21st century, plastic is found everywhere, from penises to ice in Antarctica. It was once thought to be mostly harmless, but it’s becoming clearer that it’s having a bad effect on us and the planet, and we’re only just beginning to understand how bad it is.

The study was published in the magazine Eco-Environment & Health.