Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in plastics and food packaging, has made headlines in the past couple of years as it has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, breast and prostate cancers, and reproductive abnormalities. Many of us changed our water bottles due to BPA concerns. A new study from Consumer Reports suggests we might want to check our pantries, too...
For its December issue, Consumer Reports tested 19 name-brand canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans. They found that almost all of these contained BPA, including some that were labeled "BPA-free." Are the amounts of BPA they found safe to ingest? That's under debate. According to CR:
The debate revolves around just what is a safe level of the chemical to ingest and whether it should be in contact with food. Federal guidelines currently put the daily upper limit of safe exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But that level is based on experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating serious health risks could result from much lower doses of BPA.
The FDA is expected to release its reassessment of BPA safety later this month. There are also bills pending in Congress to ban BPA in all food and beverage containers.
If you're concerned about BPA, Consumer Reports and health advocates recommend choosing fresh or frozen food over canned, buying tomato sauce in glass jars and soda in plastic or glass bottles, and using powdered instead of ready-to-serve infant formula.
In our own kitchen, we have already minimized our reliance on canned goods in an effort to eat local and waste less. The BPA issue is just another incentive to use fresh produce, visit the bulk bin, cook our own beans, and do our own canning – although we might want to be careful there, too. According to Organic Gardening magazine, several brands of canning jar lids also contain BPA.
Further reading:
• Concern over canned foods, from Consumer Reports
• Naomi Starkman's coverage of BPA, from Civil Eats
• Home Canning: Pickles, Peppers, and a Dash of BPA?, from Utne Reader
Related: Good Question: Best Healthy Alternative Water Bottles?
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I've switched to tomatoes in glass jars -- which is an easy Switch here in Europe ( you can buy premium whole Roma tomatoes in glass jars). Do still wonder about the lids though.
I also buy tuna in glass jars -- another premium product, but we consider tuna a very occasional treat, and eat it may once or twice a year.
I think that is it for the canned stuff...
No! Not canning lids too (potentially)! We have pretty much phased out canned goods at our home. We would occasionally get tomatoes but I stopped that late last year with the idea of tomatoes being acidic and can linings. We do get beans every so often but only when we screw up and don't make a batch in time. This is good incentive not to screw up and plan better with the beans.
If you're that worried about BPA, you should probably cut soy products out of your diet too, since the phytoestrogens contained in those products are essentially the same thing as the synthetic estrogen contained in BPA...
I have no idea where to get tomatoes in jars. Do they even sell them in the US?
I see in the article that an Eden Foods product had BPA traces detected. Eden's gotten lots of positive publicity -- and at least me as a regular customer -- because of their supposedly BPA-free can lining. This is a big concern to me. Were they lying? Lied to? Does anyone know what's up?
Yes, do tell us more about tomatoes in jars. I live in a large metropolitan area and don't think I've ever seen those.
A "new" addition to Ball's website FAQ section claims that their canning lids do not have BPA.....so?
http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages/home_canning_faq/42.php
I've read elsewhere, and the Consumer Reports article mentions this too, that the plastic/foil packs and pouches are usually BPA free. Tuna comes comes in a pouch, and tomatoes are sometimes available in a "juice box" type package.
Of course, that means that we have to choose between avoiding BPA and buying non-recyclable containers. Sigh.
that really sucks for me, living in montana. we don't really have much fresh, local produce in the (8) winter months..
and i definitely haven't seen tomatoes in glass jars (which aren't recyclable here, anyway). so.. now i'm stuck with frozen veggies all winter? or are those plastic bags suspect too? sheesh.
Glass jarred tomatoes, someone please fill us in on an online source. I've been looking for a year, when we stopped buying cans because of the BPA issue...
To get around the tomato issues (BPA with the canned ones, scarcity and expense with the glass-jarred ones), I buy bulk organic sundried tomatoes online and rehydrate them.
So frustrating to hear this news. We don't eat a lot of canned goods, but we certainly eat some. Trader Joe's does sell tomatoes in the cardboard box (juice-box) type container, which is often a way that you see them in Europe as well. Definitely will be more diligent about making my own beans now....
Eden's statement on BPA (from before the study) is here:
"Eden Organic Beans are packed in steel cans coated with a baked on oleoresinous c-enamel lining that does not contain bisphenol-A (BPA). (Oleoresin is a natural mixture of an oil and a resin extracted from various plants, such as pine or balsam fir). These cans cost 14 percent more than the industry standard cans that do contain BPA. This costs Eden $300,000 more a year. To our knowledge Eden is the only U.S. company that uses this custom made BPA-free can."
In other materials, Eden has said that these cans come from Ball. If Ball certified that these cans were BPA-free and it turns out they're not (and I'd bet a quarter Eden is having empty cans tested now), then Eden has paid Ball $10 million extra over ten years for something that wasn't up to spec. That spells "lawsuit."
I don't subscribe to the magazine so I can't see the actual tested product, but from the picture it looks like one of Eden's prepared rice-and-beans seasoned blends. It's possible that BPA got into the food chain from one of the other organic suppliers, and they'll investigate that, too.
But I'm sticking with Eden tomatoes because I'm on a low sodium diet and their tomatoes are never salted, nor do they have calcium chloride added. Even if the cans have a trace of BPA, it's still less than in every other tomato can, and no other company makes such a wide variety of no-salt-added tomato products. If they sell them in jars, I'll buy them in jars. They sell them in cans now, and I'll buy them in cans.
I have heart failure and no pregnant or very young family members. I'll take traces of BPA and that risk vs. the very real, documented-in-my-medical-records results of eating too much sodium.
The metal lids that are used when home canning veggies are made with BPA. I just found this out and am horrified. The only alternative (Weck jars imported from Europe) is far far more expensive, and would require that I discard all my current jars, as the two systems are not interchangeable.
Quote from the Ball website...
"Ball and Kerr Home Canning Lids...
Jarden Home Brands manufacturer of home canning lids: Ball, Kerr, Golden Harvest, and Bernardin brands follow the same rigorous FDA standards used by the commercial food packaging industry. Like the majority of commercial food packagers using glass jars with metal closures and metal sanitary cans, the coating on our home canning lids is designed to protect the metal from reacting with the food it contains. A small amount of Bisphenol A is present in the coating. The FDA does not limit Bisphenol A in commercially packaged foods, and is aligned with the international scientific community’s position that a small amount of Bisphenol A in contact with “canned foods” is not a health concern for the general public.
This is so depressing. I eat very healthy, but supplement with canned foods...canned tomatoes, canned beans, canned pumpkin. (Those are the only canned foods I eat.)
@ indigoartisanry, if you're horrified, contact the company and express that. Start a petition, tell everyone you know about it and encourage them to do the same.
It's important to put these things into perspective. BPA is NOT the only dangerous chemical in our food supply. It just happens to be the one receiving the most attention at the moment. We all take risks simply by being alive, and contact with chemicals is one of those risks. Worrying about anything that could potentially kill you is no way to live. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be concerned, but hand-wringing will not help. Action will.
BPA in canning jar lids shouldn't be too much of a problem, as you are supposed to leave some headspace anyway. The food doesn't really touch it unlike it does in a metal can.
-like it does in a metal can- sorry