Going BPA free?

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The myth of the BPA-free diet

Consider a typical cold-weather, American meal: chili. Filled with beans, protein and vitamin-packed peppers and tomatoes, it’s pretty healthy, right? Perhaps not when you consider the packaging some of its ingredients come in. If you’re like most Americans, you make this meal with a couple of cans of beans, a big can of tomatoes, maybe a can of tomato paste. To wash it down, you crack open a can of beer.

All of those products come in packaging lined with bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that mimics estrogen and is raising concern among consumers and many scientists for its links to a host of health issues: prostate, breast and testicular cancer; lower sperm counts; obesity; aggression in girls; reproductive and neurological defects; cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes. It’s commonly found in everything from canned foods and drinks to hard, clear plastic adult and baby bottles, pacifiers, sippy cups, dental sealants, sales receipts and plastic utensils.

So what to do? The author spoke with BPA researcher Dr. Frederick vom Saal - guess what he does not like BPA. His suggestions:

• Get an inexpensive carbon filtrating system to attach to your home and work faucet. The carbon can get rid of the BPA before you drink it.

• “Plastics and heat, just stop that,” he says. Even if it says BPA-free, the other chemicals in the bottle aren’t known, so it’s best not to expose it to heat. That means no microwaving plastics—even if they’re labeled microwave-safe—or putting them in the dishwasher. “Anything you buy in plastic that tells you you can heat it, assume that is an absolutely insane thing to do,” he says.

• When possible, choose glass over plastic or cans. Even if the glass has a metal lid, it’s likely to be less BPA than a container fully lined with it.

• If you have to choose between one plastic over another, vom Saal thinks the least worrisome ones are labeled #2 or #5.