Is it safe to eat hot pot cooked in the standard plastic broth base?

What's actually in it

Ready-to-use hot pot broth bases come in a sealed plastic packet or a plastic tub. The packet meets hot oily food first, then the broth sits in the pot and simmers with added meat, vegetables, and chili oil. Phthalates used to soften plastic packaging migrate fastest when three conditions stack up: heat, fat, and time. Hot pot delivers all three for the whole meal.

DBP and DEHP are the two phthalates most often found in the food-contact plastic used for these packets. Both are endocrine disruptors, linked to reproductive and developmental effects.

What the research says

A 2026 study in Toxics ran a risk assessment on DBP and DEHP in hot pot bases using a hybrid modeling approach. The baseline levels already sat near tolerable daily intake, and a single real-world hot pot meal pushed some scenarios over the line. Kids and pregnant women were flagged as the populations where the margin disappeared fastest.

The fix is to make the broth from scratch with whole ingredients: stock, ginger, scallion, dried chili, aromatics. A one-hour simmer in a stainless or ceramic pot gives the same flavor with none of the plastic migration. If using packaged base is the only option, cut the packet into a stainless bowl first rather than dumping it straight into the cooking pot, and don't reuse the broth for a second night.