My biggest issue with paper straws is that the straw opening in plastic to-go lids is usually an X cut into it. This X compresses the paper straw such that it is almost squeezed closed. This makes it harder to get the liquid up the straw and weakens it such that it can start to break/tear and let air come through which is not Fun Sipping.
As long as we’re doing paper straws but still making plastic lids I’d like to see more lids go with a hole cut rather than an X.
Moderating: @Strenger was a returning troll. I have banned him and removed his trolling from this thread. Sorry for the delay.
That is the most likely culprit (depending on your age). From pub med:
… Intrinsic, permanent tooth discolouration is well known to occur with the use of tetracycline antibiotics if taken during tooth development (ie, the last half of pregnancy, infancy and in childhood up eight years of age)1. This is a result of tetracycline antibiotics binding to calcium and depositing in developing teeth and bones1.
There are several penicillin adjacent antibiotics that can stain teeth but dentistry has developed cleaning and topical remedies for those. With tetracycline the choice is to live with or do what you had to do.
I’m sorry your posts were met with callousness and rudeness. You have my sympathy as I sit here with $17,000 of work that my new dental insists I need to do if I am to avoid becoming a toothless hag slurping her gruel.
It’s worth it to go through all the trouble and expense of getting your teeth repaired (or whatever the correct terminology is). Mine took about a year of almost monthly appointments to finish but the work is phenomenal.
I wish you smooth sailing with all of it.
I think it was tetracycline. Nasty drug but it is what it is. Strangely I developed a severe penicillin allergy in my 30s so I have to have alternative antibiotics.
And thank you for your kind words and understanding.
I developed my penicillin allergy as a teenager. It can make things tricky.
FWIW it can be worthwhile to confirm a penicillin allergy with testing. A large fraction (the overwhelming majority in fact) had hives coincident with being on the medicine, or had a reaction that was not true allergy, or have simply outgrown it, and actually can have penicillin family antibiotics. It is nice to be able to have that antibiotic family usable if possible.
Misrepresented penicillin allergy drives unnecessary use of alternative antibiotics, which may be less effective, more toxic, and more expensive than using penicillin. In addressing the problem of penicillin allergy over-diagnosis, evaluation should go beyond risk for type 1 hypersensitivity. Our data suggest that 94.4% of 5056 participants with reported penicillin allergy determined to be clinically appropriate for allergy evaluation tolerated repeat administration of penicillin-based antibiotics without any adverse reactions …
The only reaction I ever had was hives which is why I check penicillin allergy on my medical questionnaires. Should I not do that?
You should. And getting tested to see if the allergy is real or not is worthwhile.
I had a severe anaphylactic reaction on the operating prep table.
Huge welts and hives sprouted up rapidly. I started itching and my throat started to close shut. I couldn’t breathe.
Thankfully they had IVs in and were able to give me benadryl to stop the reaction.
At the time they said I should never take penicillin or cephalosporin drugs again. But that was 30 years ago.
I could ask my doctor if I should be tested again but I’ve managed so far.
That specific history does not warrant it.
Is that because of the severity of the reaction?
Just curious.
And the timing.
Some cup lids are too stiff, I agree. If you try to jam the straw through on a full cup it usually geysers onto the lid and so you have to carefully slurp the pop off the lid or it will spill on you. I sometimes have to enlarge the X by sticking my thumb in first.
In general I find that lid/cup designs are better now. Some are so hard to pop off when throwing them away that you have to crush the cup to get the lid to disengage. Maybe Taco Bell?
Where is everybody finding paper straws? I don’t think I have encountered one in the greater Cleveland area and we eat out all the time. Are we behind the times? Yeah, there’s a shocker. Cleveland behind the times.
Becky mentioned her favorite straw and I have one also. The Dairy King near me has thick milk shakes and they provide a massive straw with a angled end to punch through damn near anything. It’s a beauty and I have a couple saved although we hardly ever use straws at home.
Walmart sells a 4 pack of stainless steel straws with various angles. They look great but I think of them as fabrication material. They would be great for a project requiring tubing. Now I have to think of something to build with them. And how to connect them. I have a TIG welder but I think the thin walls are beyond my welding skills.
At NASA we used 1/16" stainless steel micro tubing for instrumentation on wind tunnel models. We connected them with pre-made couplers and used silver solder. You needed special small torches or you would burn the tubing. We used “Water Welders” that used electricity to disassociate water into hydrogen and oxygen. That bubbled through an alcohol bath to add a bit of alcohol vapor to make a softer flame. The tips on the torch were just hypodermic needles with a flat end instead of a point. They worked great.
Back in the 80s I had gone to the doctor for what I thought was a bad cold and he prescribed penicillin for the infection. When I started taking it I broke out in hives, and an alternate antibiotic was prescribed, which worked well. At the time the doctor said that it would be a good idea to be tested for penicillin allergy because the hives could have been a reaction to a combination of the penicillin and the infection (I think it was some form of mono, but after all these years I can’t recall precisely). Of course, we never got around to following up on this; I had mentioned it to a few of my doctors since then, and all of them pretty much said that with all the alternatives available it was easier to just assume that the penicillin allergy was correct. So far this hasn’t been a problem for me.
So far I have encountered paper straws in Maine, Virginia, Washington, DC, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Ireland and a few other places in Europe.
I carry different sizes of metal ones with me.
If you go to 7-11 and buy a super big gulp, what are the weights of plastic in the cup, lid and straw. I suspect it is a false economy even though I dislike single use plastics.
Basically all paper here in England, I can’t speak yet for the wider UK.
The chief annoyance for me is if I’m having a fast food milkshake; if you put the straw in too soon, while the milkshake is still part frozen, the straw is soggy by the time the shake is liquid enough to drink. But that’s one reason I now keep reusable straws in my car.
Hey, when I was a teenager I could turn a McDonalds straw inside out with my teeth and tongue.
My one party trick.
As an aside.
Every fast-food outlet here has switched to paper straws. In fact, there are no plastic straws available at the supermarket, either. The only place I know of to get plastic straws locally is the stash I’ve been hoarding in my kitchen drawer, though they can still be ordered from Amazon.
Diollarama sells plastic straws, or did somewhat recently . I prefer these but reuse them when possible…