“If We Take the Plastic off, the Bread Might Be OK” – TikToker and Boyfriend’s Epic Oven Fail

With the popularity of the air fryer rising each year, regular, old-school ovens seemed to have taken a back seat. But as one TikToker, Hailey (@haikkey), and her boyfriend learned, ovens are still very functional appliances. Not just for cooking, but for offering up extra storage space, and giving the internet a hilarious fail to laugh about, too.

In a video that’s racked up over 6 mllion views, Hailey documented what happened when her boyfriend preheated the oven without checking its contents. The clip, with a text overlay reading "POV: your man preheats the oven without looking inside," pans to several loaves of bread, their plastic wrapping melted and clinging to the loaves, and a dried-out bundt cake sitting below them inside the oven.

Her boyfriend, trying to troubleshoot the disaster, pulls one loaf out with a pair of tongs in what appears to be an attempt at saving it. Hailey appears to expand upon his intentions in the title of the TikTok, which reads, “He said "I think if we take the plastic off, the bread might be OK."

While the video’s comments are only accessible to users who are mutual friends with Hailey on the app, it’s not hard to imagine what they may have said: "The number of times I’ve done this smh," or, "My dad keeps the cereal in the oven, and we’ve almost burnt the entire house down."

Though this wasn't necessarily a “macro-plastic” issue, it can warrant a reflection of the prevalence of microplastics in food.

As it turns out, the image of melted plastic on loaves of bread in Hailey's video isn't just off-putting; it’s a serious health problem. Microplastics — tiny plastic particles less than five millimeters long — are, unfortunately, everywhere. They’ve been found in oceans, rainwater, and disturbingly, in our food.

Ominous studies have shown that microplastics are now found in grocery store staples like rice, salt, and even the protein we eat. One scientific report estimated that the average American consumes, at minimum, 70,000 microplastic particles annually.

The potential effects on one's health sound troubling, too. Microplastics are known to cause inflammation, hormone disruption, and potential long-term health issues. Moreover heating food in plastic receptacles, whether it’s in an air fryer, microwave, or through fails like Hailey’s, releases harmful chemicals that seep into what we put into our mouths.

Chronic exposure to these chemicals has been linked to all sorts of issues like high blood pressure, diabetes, and increased risk of heart disease—conditions that are already prevalent across the United States.

While it's easy to laugh off Hailey’s mishap, this incident might make you wonder about our particular eating habits, and the types of packaging that's used to house the food that we eat.

In Hailey's situation a simple and smart thing to do would've been to simply check the oven before preheating it. When it comes to heating up or storing one's food prioritizing glass and metal over plastic can go a long way in sparing you the potential inadvertently consuming small plastic particles in your next meal.

Another debate that could arise from Hailey's video is the fact that her boyfriend didn't even bother to check the oven prior to preheating it. Which means it probably never dawned on him to use an oven for storage in the first place.

This concept was the topic of conversation in this Reddit post, which was uploaded by a user who thought that it was common practice for folks to stash things away in the oven when it wasn't in use.

In their r/cooking post, they asked: "Doesn’t everyone use the oven for storing dishes when not in use?"

But there were some folks who disagreed with this logic. Like this one user who argued that ovens are indeed, not suitable places to store household items.

"My mother keeps her cookie sheets and oven pans in it, and it drives me a little nuts when I go over there to cook. Mine gets used 2-3x per week. It isn’t a storage space.

Another wrote: "My oven gets used a lot, so no I don’t store anything in it."

Someone else argued it doesn't make sense to store stuff in an oven because, when it needs to be used, where does its contents go? "This doesn't make any sense to me. What do you do with the stuff when you need to use the oven?"

What about you? Do you use your oven to store items when you aren't cooking anything in it?