- the plastic glove (and not e.g. hand washing) is the only way to solve this problem
- eating meat is necessary at all, as the OP states, it's not; certainly not in typically accepted volumes, anyway
Plastics have helped a lot in the hygiene aspects of food, as much as some people think (very naively) that food can't make you sick. Especially if you live in a country with warmer temperatures and low infrastructure (hello Climate Change)
If you follow the simple rules, most illness is caused by tainted supply.
The most common infraction I saw was failing to wash hands, followed by not separating meats from other stations. (Work surface, knives, hand washing, etc)
In a busy kitchen, you would be shocked at how much cross contamination occurs every single day, plastic or not. Plastic is not the solution, training and oversight is the essential thing.
For example: delivery of water to locations where the local source is suspected to be contaminated, packaging of meat products from market to consumer, handling of refrigerated or wet products, to name a few
Of course it's not the whole story, a lot of food-borne illnesses have their origin at the producing farm.
No more chocolate bars, ready meals, pot noodles, bags of crisps or whatever else.
Even if you end up buying a bag of rice in plastic you're cutting down the waste by a huge amount because even a small one gives you ten or more servings.
Which is why I really hate it when manufacturers reduce pack sizes.
Some small number of people are travelling.
For the rest, 500g of rice is a pointlessly small amount. It lasts forever, is dense enough to stash, etc.
Yes, this uses plastic, but all of it is reusable when using certain bag-sealing methods.
Pasta: 1kg to 908g.
It’s bullshit.
But yeah, it is possible to avoid a lot of it. And if you're really dedicated, you can essentially get to zero waste. Here's someone that was able to fit 5 years of their trash into mason jar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT0uqEPzbd0
I accept that, and I understand that under our economy, it's better (cheaper) for people with such aliments that these fruits are just another item in grocery stores, and not specialty item in special stores (which would be sold for a much higher price). Still, I can't shake the feeling that this is wrong, there must be a better way of supporting people with motor problems than carpet-bombing shops with environmentally absurd individually packaged fruits, and exposing those to regular people without motor problems, some of which will start buying (and thus creating demand) out of convenience or false perception of quality...
The insane amounts of damage we are doing with all this plastic needs to be controlled. Recycling is not the answer, reduce and reuse is.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BW1DSMV
Way better than the plastic bags at the store.
We were able to reduce our garbage and recycling in half.
But I also think taxing and or regulating packaging at the manufacturer for the rest is needed.
Now I have a load of garbage to empty a little less than once a year and a load of metal and plastic recycling once or twice a year.
Plus my food tastes better and costs less.
Everyone is free to do what they want, and experience shows someone will have to tell me the solution doesn't work for someone, but I hope people do similar so the manufacturers' warehouses fill with plastic instead of the oceans and they stop producing it.