Paul Saladino on Microplastics: His Advice, Checked Against the Evidence

Who is Paul Saladino, and why does his advice spread?

Paul Saladino is a US physician who trained in psychiatry and became known first for the carnivore diet, then for what he now calls an animal-based diet built on meat, organs, fruit and honey. He hosts a podcast, posts short clips and appears on large shows such as the Shawn Ryan Show and the PBD Podcast. He also founded Heart & Soil, which sells organ supplements, and the nonprofit Animal Based Nutrition Research Foundation (ABNRF), which has published its own product tests.

His wider diet advice draws heavy criticism. Wikipedia describes him as promoting pseudoscientific claims about health and diet. That criticism is about his diet advice. It does not decide whether a given microplastics tip is right or wrong, so we judged each one on the studies, the same way we did for Bryan Johnson’s routine.

Paul Saladino’s microplastics claims, checked one by one

We pulled each claim from his own channels: posts on X, podcast transcripts and the Heart & Soil blog. Where we could not see the original, we say so.

Are plastic cutting boards really a big microplastics source?

On June 18, 2024, a post on his X account said studies identify “drinking water from plastic and using plastic cutting boards are the biggest source.” He repeated the idea on the Shawn Ryan Show in March 2025. The cutting-board half has decent support.

Yadav and colleagues chopped carrots on polyethylene and polypropylene boards in a lab, counted what came off, and scaled it up. Assuming about 500 cuts a day, they estimated 7.4 to 50.7 grams a year from a polyethylene board and 49.5 grams from polypropylene. Those are modeled figures from a small study, not measured intake, and the authors’ preliminary test found no effect on mouse cell viability over 72 hours. Still, a board you can see scarring is a board losing material into food, and wood is an easy swap. Our cutting-board guide covers wood hygiene and which board to replace first.

Is drinking from plastic bottles the biggest source?

Bottled water does carry a lot of tiny particles. Using a newer imaging method, Qian and colleagues counted about 240,000 particles per litre across three US brands in 2024, about 90% of them nanoplastics. Most particles were not matched to a known plastic, so some may be something else. Our bottled water guide walks through why counts differ so much between studies.

“Biggest” is the problem word. The board study reports grams per year; the water study reports particles per litre down to 100 nanometres; air and dust studies use other units again. No study has measured all sources in the same people. Bottles and boards are reasonable places to start. Calling them the top two is a guess.

Do tea bags release microplastics?

On the PBD Podcast in January 2025, Saladino said plastic tea bags were the worst in the study he had read, that even cellulose bags may use plastic to seal, and that “anytime you’re putting hot water onto plastic it’s a very bad idea.” He recommended loose-leaf tea in a stainless steel basket.

The direction holds up. Hernandez and colleagues reported 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles from a single plastic bag steeped at 95°C in 2019, but Germany’s BfR later argued that dissolved residues could have been counted as particles. A 2024 study by Banaei and colleagues found particles released from nylon, polypropylene and cellulose-labelled bags under hot-water extraction. His point about seals is fair too: some paper bags use plastic fibres to heat-seal. Loose-leaf tea removes the bag; it does not prove the cup is particle-free. Our tea bag guide breaks down the bag, seal and string.

Do glass bottles have microplastics?

His July 20, 2025 post asked “Glass bottles = microplastics?” over an 80-second video. We could not view a transcript of the video, so we cannot say exactly what he concluded. The question matches a study published a month earlier by France’s food safety agency.

ANSES found that cola, lemonade, iced tea and beer in glass bottles averaged about 100 particles per litre, 5 to 50 times more than the same drinks in plastic bottles or cans. The particles matched the polyester-based paint on the metal caps, which was scratched from caps rubbing together in storage. Water in glass held about 4.5 particles per litre against 1.6 in plastic. Blowing and rinsing caps cut contamination sharply in tests. ANSES said it could not judge health risk without reference values. Glass is still a good container; the cap is the weak point. Our Perrier guide applies this to a glass-bottled brand.

Should you eat red meat instead of fish to avoid microplastics?

On the Shawn Ryan Show (released March 5, 2025), Saladino said “even wild caught fish has a significant amount of microplastics,” warned against farmed salmon, and advised people not to make fish most of their protein. His case mixes two issues. On mercury he is broadly in line with the FDA, which lists shark, swordfish and bigeye tuna among fish to avoid for pregnant people and children.

On microplastics, the evidence does not favour beef over fish. An FAO review found microplastics in wild fish mostly in the gut, which is usually removed before eating, while shellfish and small fish eaten whole are a different case. The one US study that compared proteins directly, Milne and colleagues in 2024, tested 16 protein types and found no significant difference between seafood, land meat and plant proteins. Processing mattered more: per-serving means ran from about 2 particles in chicken breast to about 370 in breaded shrimp. A fresh steak is a reasonable choice for other reasons; it is not a known microplastics escape. See our seafood guide for which fish carry the most.

What did Saladino’s salt test find?

Social posts often link Saladino with Colima sea salt from Mexico. We found “microplastic-free” Colima claims only on sellers’ pages, not in his own posts, so that pairing is unverified. His foundation’s own test is on record.

On November 13, 2025, ABNRF published results under his byline for seven salts. Particles were reported only in Maldon (0.081 per gram) and Jacobsen (0.034 per gram); Celtic, Redmond, Kirkland, Morton and Diamond Crystal were reported as none detected. The page does not name the lab or give a size cutoff, and it says itself that these amounts are quite low and unlikely to matter much. That is a fair reading. For context, a 2018 study found microplastics in 36 of 39 salt brands from 21 countries, with sea salt highest. Our salt guide compares the main salt types.

Do microplastics get into the brain and testicles?

Heart & Soil’s October 2024 article, fact-checked by Saladino, links detection studies in the brain, blood, lungs, testicles and placenta. The brain source is real: Amato-Lourenço and colleagues found microplastics in the olfactory bulbs of 8 of 15 people autopsied in São Paulo, one to four per bulb. It is a small case series with no health data.

Larger brain figures come from the 2025 Nihart study in Nature Medicine, which measured plastic by mass using a method that heats tissue and reads the fumes. In January 2026 The Guardian reported that several scientists had challenged this and other tissue studies, arguing that fat can create false polyethylene signals. The study’s authors defended their work. Particles in bodies are not in doubt; the exact amounts are. Our brain explainer covers the studies in more detail.

The article also cites Marfella and colleagues in NEJM: among 257 surgery patients followed for about 34 months, those with polyethylene found in neck-artery plaque (58%) had a higher rate of heart attack, stroke or death, with a hazard ratio of 4.53. Heart & Soil’s “4.5-fold” wording reflects that number. The study was observational, so it shows an association, not that plastic caused the events.

The weakest claim in the article is the familiar one about eating about 5 grams, a credit card, of plastic per week. A 2022 critique by Pletz argued that figure contains serious calculation errors and overstates intake by several orders of magnitude; another estimate he discusses puts adult intake at a median of 4.1 micrograms a week.

Use the App

Check the products his list is about

Scan a cutting board, tea box, bottled drink or protein tub. The app shows declared or estimated contact materials, flags plastic parts like caps and seals, and saves swaps you want to make. It does not measure particles in your food or body.

What about his products?

Heart & Soil’s microplastics article sits beside product promotions. The company says its organ supplements come in glass and markets its animal-based protein as “the first 100% plastic-free protein powder on the market.” That is a packaging claim from the seller. It may well be true of the jar, but it is not an independent particle test of the powder, and a glass jar does not guarantee zero particles from processing. None of this makes his kitchen advice wrong; it is worth knowing when advice and a product line point the same way.

Which parts of Saladino’s advice to follow