Avoiding plastic drinking products? Metal? Glass?

[osker]

Okay, I can't for the life of me figure out where to ask this question. Since the point of this is to keep my (and my family's) body healthy, I've decided it might be okay here..

After reading about how even BPA-free plastic is bad for you, I'm stumped on two things. My 6mo daughter LOVES and is really good at drinking out of her straw cup. It's BPA-free plastic, however, and I would love to not have her drinking out of plastic all day every day.  Would you use a metal straw made out of copper nickel?  Are those metals fine? Bad for you?  

Do glass sippy or straw cups exist?

The other one, and slightly less important, is that I'm looking for a glass pitcher that I can pour tea into and keep in the fridge with a lid. Right now H is making tea every day and pouring it into plastic when it's still pretty warm.  I'd rather she use glass, but how do I find glass that won't break?

Thanks!!

[cparkly]

I completely understand your concerns. I do not know anything about metal straws or glass sippies, though.

DS liked his Sigg a lot but when we found that they were not BPA free, we switched to using Kid Kanteens.

I really like these glass fridge pitchers.

[PAgreenmama]

i'm not sure about glass sippies or metal straws but there are glass straws http://www.glassdharma.com/

[mumm]

When my kiddos are really little and I don't trust them with glass (like until they are 2ish) we used kleen Kanteens in the house.  Then they get the same little glasses at the table as everyone else.  Typically whatever the cheap glasses at Ikea are.  We break them regularly. 

But we all like our hot cocoa with a straw.  (Hey, we're wierd that way!  )  So we have glass straws from Strawsome.  (They tend to be half price if you wait for a groupon, buywithme, etc type voucher.)  We bought 9, broke one the first use, but haven't had any trouble since.  I think the broken one was a fluke, and they replaced it for $3.

I wonder if you proposed a built in straw to a strawmaker if they could make one for you.  Personally, I think cleaning it would be tough.

Ikea does sell a stainless steel cup.  We use them in the bathroom for toothbrushing but I wouldn't want to use it as a regular drinking cup, but my kids don't seem to mind.

And no, I 'm not an Ikea sales rep.  Nor do I like most of their furniture!

[Veslemor]

I keep used jelly jars, make a hole in the lid with a hammer and nail,  and use disposable straws.  We do that for smoothies where washing a straw is pretty much impossible- I don't think I would be Ok with throwing away a straw that was used for water tho.  We use kleen kanteens for sippies with water.

[calynde]

I recently saw some stainless steel straws here:

http://www.noplastic.ca/stainless_steel_straws.shtml

[laohaire]

I bought these stainless steel straws 3 or 4 years ago:

http://www.amazon.com/Handy-House-Stainless-Drinking-Cleaner-/dp/B0036ZH5KO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1301341069&sr=8-2

I don't think there's any problems with stainless steel. That's the metal of choice used by Sigg and Kleen Kanteen, for example. I'm no metallurgist but I assume that if stainless steel was a problem, then someone would have challenged that material and Kleen Kanteens wouldn't be everywhere.

Handwashing the straws are a pain, but I:

1) promptly rinse after use (just running a bit of water through it so milk doesn't congeal or anything in the meantime - takes 3 seconds)

2) put it in the dishwasher

3) rinse it out again after the dishwasher (I just want to be sure no detergent is stuck in there)

So we've been using them for YEARS, and they are great. They don't break or chip. They are clean, and it's easy for me to clean them. I know some people's utensil box in their dishwasher doesn't keep the straws in (they slide through) - this isn't a problem for us, but some people have reported good results impaling the straw onto one of the dishwasher tines (hopefully that makes sense). DD loves them.

[crunchy_mommy]

The issue I've heard with stainless steel straws is that they can chip your teeth... especially young babies' teeth (and they might 'latch on' to the straw too forcefully, maybe making it more likely)... but that's second-hand info there, not sure how true it is.

We use open stainless steel cups (I didn't like the bathroom tumblers at IKEA because they had hard edges but they also have stainless steel espresso cups and the edges are more rounded so they don't seem to pose the same tooth-chipping risk). We are starting to transition to glass cups now that DS is breaking things less often. For out & about, we use a stainless steel straw cup (sports bottle, basically) but the plastic straw is obviously still in contact with the liquids so it's still not ideal IMO, but better than most of the affordable alternatives I've found... We also have a Safe Sippy that we use with just the valve (not the straw) so the liquid is only in contact with the plastic as you are drinking it, not all day long.