BPA Free

We all know that eating fresh foods offers us a multitude of culinary joys and health benefits, but now you have yet another reason to mosey on over the farmer’s market, dust off your Dutch Oven, and get cooking – protection from BPA. Bishphenol A, the much reviled substance that can be found in food cans, plastic-packaged foods, water bottles, baby bottles, and even store receipts has been linked to everything from breast cancer to infertility to early puberty. Such an overwhelming amount of studies purporting the dangers of BPA have been published in recent years that Canada, Europe, and China have banned the substance in baby bottles.

A new study from the Breast Cancer Fund and Silent Spring Institute found that families who ate a diet of fresh foods instead of canned and plastic-packaged foods for a mere three days saw their BPA levels drop by an astonishing 60%. When the families resumed their normal eating habits, their BPA levels rocketed back up.

Despite the abundance of admittedly alarming evidence that BPA could potentially be harmful, the US has yet to deem the substance as anything more than a “chemical concern.” Janet Gray, Ph.D., science advisor to the Breast Cancer fund commented “This study suggests that removing BPA from food packaging will remove the number one source of BPA exposure… The study should serve as a call to action for industry and government to get BPA out of food packaging and to fix the broken chemical management system that allows it to be there in the first place.” For easy steps to avoiding BPA. [Huffington Post] [Fast Company]