Musings of a Modern Mom

There is a storm raging in the Bowling house these days. A storm that involves the expulsion of canned coke (the horror!), canned beans, and the persecution of canned tomatoes. Long gone are the questionable plastics: the bottles, sippy cups, and food storage containers suspected of guilty chemical possession. Though transparent from the start, these plastics were easily outed as offenders while the canned goods were in the pantry, sneakily biding their time. The guilty suspect: BPA.

I was introduced to BPA research a few years ago, when parenting circles started pointing out how this chemical leaches into the contents of the containers that contain it's ingredients. For a preview of all the delights BPA promises, check out the health effect headings on Wikipedia: "obesity, neurological issues, disruption of the dopaminergic system, breast cancer, thyroid function, sexual dysfunction..." Fun stuff, right?

BPA, abbreviated from Bisphenol A, is an additive used to make plastics shatter proof. The first bad press that I encountered taught me that it was used in most water bottles, sippy cups, and baby bottles. It is even used to line cans of baby formula. The articles I read mainly focused on baby products and of course my interest was piqued for those products that then two year old Alastair was most likely to come into contact with.


Fast forward to a few weeks ago. In addition to being used to help make plastics shatter resistant, it is used in epoxy coatings. When I started hearing about this a few years ago, the focus was on plastic, when in reality, the greatest health threat posed by BPA is in those epoxy coatings. Because they line virtually every canned good in our pantries. Let me emphasize this point: BPA is in every tomato can, every soup can, every can of beans, and every can of madarin oranges we eat or cook with, thinking we are making healthy choices for our families. Whether the lining of that can is white or clear is irrelevant. The can is lined to prevent the food from tasting like metal and as I write this, I have only been able to find one company that sells BPA free cans for their bean products: Eden Organic. No one packages BPA free tomatoes in cans because the acidity of the tomatoes. I was able to locate a BPA free vacuum sealed tomato product (Pomi) available through Amazon.com. The equivilant of eight cans for $25.


This has really been bothering me lately because we eat a lot of black beans and tomatoes in our house. I don't feed the kids processed chicken and junk food (often) and I make an effort to buy organic whenever the produce is good and the prices reasonable. Two weeks ago, I had a real shock. In one of the articles I read that talked about BPA in can linings, it mentioned BPA in some soda cans. In retrospect, I think that was a vague way of avoiding the legal clout of those giants at Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Yep, that same Coke Zero that I asked my OB about when I was pregnant and was given the all-clear for the sugar substitutes it contains, has BPA in the can. Every single can that I have consumed during both of my pregnancies and as I breast fed both kids had that magical chemical in it. I still feel like I have been sucker punched in the gut by that! And if that wasn't good enough, the article also said that new research suggests BPA may even be passed from mother to child. Did I mention that BPA has been known to be estrogenic since the mid 1930's? So why doesn't the FDA require testing for food packaging ingredients?

Coca-Cola is taking the stance of trying to educate the public that BPA isn't harmful in small doses. Instead of trying to fix the product, their approach is to tell consumers that science is wrong and that "it's all OK in moderation." Sort of sounds like Big Tobacco in the sixties, doesn't it? How many people do each of us know personally that enjoy this product in doses totally out of the "moderation" realm? A friend's husband drinks six a day. My mom? (Sorry to out you, Mom.); At least three. And I'm personally good for one a day, two on a challenging day, and three if all hell has broken loose around here.

The research indicates that the harmful effects of BPA and the like are the most harmful on developing fetuses, infants, and small children. That is surely because they have so many hormone-directed development going on and probably because those "small doses" that the manufacturers claim are not harmful aren't so small relative to a baby's size. And we wonder with pestisides, Phalates (that is another post in itself), and this insanity why the rate of autism, ADHD, and a whole host of other childhood maladies is on the rise.


So that's what we're thinking about around here. Anyone care to sell me a bushel of tomatoes for home canning? I'll rant another day about Phlalates. Oh, and for the record: I'm a republican.