08 February 2010

BPA

I am getting on the BPA-concern bandwagon a little late here, but I am now firmly on it. When I first heard of it, I basically threw out my old gym bottle and got a new aluminum one. But, all it took was a scary TV show to send me scouring our cupboards for clear plastics that might contain it, and to the internet to find out how much is out there.

I only found a few things in my kitchen with the (now ominous) 7 on the bottom. Unfortunately, two new storage containers and two of my favorite measuring cups have to go. But the rest of my storage containers and the clear plastic storing my juice all seemed to be fine. So I can breath a sigh of relief, right?

Well, no. I like canned food, and it turns out the liners in a lot of canned food (including soft drinks!) contains BPA. Combine that with how long canned food stays canned, and it seems a little scary. So I decided to do some more research to find out if there was any way to tell if my can was safe.

In one study, the highest BPA concentrations were found to occur in infant formula (!), raviolis, and chicken soup, all things you might feed to your kid. BPA was even found in cans labelled "BPA-free". Gah!

On the up side, my BPA fear made me reconsider how to get the things I used to get in cans. Primarily these were staples like black beans, garbanzos, kidney beans, crushed tomatoes, and tomato paste.

Sadaf, a middle-eastern brand available at many stores near here sells tomato paste a glass jar (which in addition to being safer, is also handily re-sealable). As for the beans, I soaked and cooked a pound of black beans the other day. Not only were they delicious, it yielded about 3 cans worth of beans for about one-can's worth of cost. So, this might be a good scare.

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