9 Nasty Truths About Your Favorite Foods
Famous Death Row Last Meals
Photo: istorija, Flickr
First it was baby products, then reusable drinking bottles. Now a new report released last week by the National Workgroup for Safe Markets, a coalition of more than 17 public and environmental health groups, shows that bisphenol-A is present in most food preserved in cans (not just in the lining of the cans themselves, where it is used to protect food from corrosion and bacteria). BPA, as the chemical is also called, has been linked to a range of ills including cancer, infertility, and obesity.
For the new study (charmingly titled "No Silver Lining"), researchers analyzed 50 cans of food from 19 U.S. states and Ontario, Canada. BPA was found in a whopping 92 percent of the collected samples, with the top level being the highest yet reported in the U.S. -- 1,140 parts per billion. (In case you're keeping track, it was a can of Del Monte French Style Green Beans, and it came from Wisconsin.)
In the past, some have argued that while BPA is certainly present in a variety of plastics, the amount that actually leaches into our food is negligible. Not so here. Mike Schade, a co-author of the study, told AOL News that "real-life meals involving one or more cans of food can cause an individual to ingest levels of BPA that have been shown to cause health effects in laboratory animal studies."
The report further warns that the BPA was found across the board, regardless of brand, nutritional quality, or the price point of the foods. Whether it was the fancy gourmet stuff or the store label, BPA was in the can and therefore also in the food. Walmart's Great Value Green Peas from a store in Kentucky, and Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup from a pantry in Montana, also scored high according to researchers.
As one might expect, politicians have started crying foul. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D. California, had already called for a ban on BPA in food and beverage containers. "Nearly 200 scientific studies show that exposures to low doses of BPA, particularly during pregnancy and early infancy, are associated with a wide range of adverse health effects later in life," she wrote in a column for the Huffington Post. This report will certainly add weight to her argument.
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5-25-2010 @2:51PM markm72806 said... Scary numbers: 1,140 parts per billion. That's 1 part per million. If someone were handing out a milllion dollars in one dollar bills with a limit of one per person you probably wouldn't walk across the street to get one. Yet, the amount of some chemical in your food that you know nothing about at one part per million puts you into a state of alarm. So there is some BPA in your french beans. It makes the food safer for you. Also allowed, at least there was when I was a food inspector, is up to ten insect parts. They won't hurt you , though, due to sterilization and BPA.
Some ask why we haven't heard of this before. It's because it is only recently that we've been able to analyze at the parts per billion level. That's one hundred times greater than parts per million.
Do you can your own veggies at home? OK, but home canned food is now about the only way you can get botulism in the U.S.
Don't be concerned. The American food processing industry is not out to kill you slowly. It produces the safest food in the world. Even better than Grandma's home made. Enjoy it.
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5-25-2010 @3:31PM Lauryn said... Um, you don't become "immune" to chemicals that build up in your system. "Immunity" is when you are not vulnerable to a particular virus or bacteria because your body is able to fight it off and kill it. No one is telling you that you can't eat food from cans lined with BPA. We should just have the opportunity to know that our cans are lined with something, much less something that can leach into our food, and to be able to make alternate choices.
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5-25-2010 @8:10PM carolelinda said... Glass has always has been and continues to be the safer material for all foods and liquids. Plastics and metal leach into most products.....i.e., , milk: In glass there is no taste compromise ; Plastics and metal often leave a taste (and worse) in the product. You will NOT find BPA in glass containers. Like "Tell It" said, we never had a problem when grannny used Mason jars.
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5-25-2010 @7:54PM L said... I agree! Go back to glass and get rid of that lining in the cans.....in fact the only way to be safe is to eat naturaly.....grow your own and at least then you can know what your getting! Never heat up food in plastic in the microwave. Too many chemicals from the plastic gets released. And never reuse those plastic water bottles! Be pro active in your own health!
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5-26-2010 @4:33PM Lauryn said... Plastic water bottles are fine to use a few times as long as you don't wash them out with harsh soaps, and rather just leave them uncapped to dry overnight (drying them greatly reduces the presence of any bacteria that might be present). MUCH better though are stainless steel water bottles (check out greenfeet.com or kleankanteen.com, I use mine every day), and crate and barrel even has reasonably priced glass water-bottle lookalikes. Crate and Barrel also has glass bowls with plastic lids for only $2 (cheaper than the ones I saw at Kmart, and much better quality) that are perfect for taking for lunch, because you take the plastic lid off and can put the glass bowl in the microwave.
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5-26-2010 @4:52PM Lauryn said... Seriously, I'd rather go back to food and beverages in glass and stainless steel containers, even if they had a $5-10 deposit on them. Yes, we'd have to create the infrastructure to collect and clean these containers, but that would create jobs. The deposit wouldn't be a "tax" on the poor because they'd get it back when they return the ones they have just like the rest of us. I know that some small milk producers at farmer's markets have returned to glass bottles with a $5 deposit, and I'd love to see this on a much larger scale.
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