Mommy Goes Green

It’s not new news that the tin cans used for canned food is lined with a resin containing bisphenol-A (BPA).  The only new news is that every week there seems to be new research warning of BPA’s dangerous effects.  Unfortunately, avoiding canned food altogether is just not feasible for every family.  There are ways, however, to minimize your use of canned foods and the effect that BPA may have on you and your family.

1.  Buy tomato based products in glass or TetraPaks. Acidity causes BPA leaching and tomatoes have a lot of it.  You can get glass tomato paste and strained tomatoes from Bionaturae and crushed and diced tomatoes from San Marzano.  Trader Joe’s carries an Italian Tomato Starter Sauce in a TetraPak and Pomi has both chopped and strained tomatoes, along with a marinara sauce in TetraPaks.

2. Buy Eden Foods canned goods. According to their website, “All 33 Eden Organic Beans including Chili, Rice & Beans, Refried, and Flavored, are cooked in steel cans coated with a baked on oleoresinous c-enamel that does not contain the endocrine disrupter chemical, bisphenol-A (BPA). Oleoresin is a non-toxic mixture of an oil and a resin extracted from various plants, such as pine or balsam fir. Theshttp://mommygoesgreen.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1985&action=edite cans cost 14% more than the industry standard cans that do contain BPA. The Ball Corporation tells us that Eden is the only U.S. food maker to date to use these BPA free cans and we have been since April 1999.”   Buy online.

3. Buy dried goods and cook them. Searching through my pantry, I find that many of my canned food purchases are beans – kidney, white, garbanzo or black.  I can buy dried beans and cook them for my meals, it takes about an hour in a saucepan or just minutes with a pressure cooker.

4. Grow or pick your own.  Spring is around the corner so start thinking about planting a fruit and/or veggie garden.  I promise it’s not a lot of work – start small with a few easy to grow veggies this summer and keep adding year after year.  It feels good to walk outside each day and pick the fruit of your labor (literally).  What you don’t eat can be canned (in glass) for the winter.  If you don’t want to grow your own, go to a farm and pick them.  Last summer, we picked over 30 pounds of blueberries that lasted all winter and enough strawberries to make freezer jam for a year.

5. Buy soups and broths in TetraPaks. You can find a great variety of soups and broths in TetraPaks from brands like Pacific Foods, Imagine Foods, and Trader Joe’s.

6. Buy frozen. Frozen may not be quite as good as fresh, but it’s a better choice than canned. Frozen, organic fruits and veggies are not that more expensive than conventional choices and they are much healthier and contain less pesticides.

What other kinds of canned foods do you buy and can you find an alternative?

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How does a fresh juicy blueberry sound?  Want a little carcinogen or neurotoxin on the side?  How about a nice cocktail of 7 carcinogens, 22 suspected hormone disruptors, 12 neurotoxins and 6 developmental toxicants?  Those are the 48 pesticide residues found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program on conventional blueberries.

The Pesticide Action Network has launched a new online site, What’s On My Food, that you can search to find out what kind of pesticide residue is found on the fruits and veggies you and your family are eating every day.

Pesticide regulations in the U.S. are well behind much of the rest of the industrialized world.  In fact, atrazine, a suspected endocrine disruptor banned in Europe, is the most commonly used herbicide in the U.S.

Unfortunately, most of us are born with pesticides already in our body and the average child gets 5+ servings of pesticides in their food and water every day.  The health impacts linked to pesticide exposure range from birth defects and brain cancer in the young and Parkinson’s Disease in the elderly, with a host of other cancers and diseases in between. 

Some of the current studies linking pesticides to these diseases:

• Autism
• Birth Defects
• Brain Cancer in Children
• Breast Cancer
• Gestational Diabetes
• Parkinson’s Disease

Even organic produce has pesticide residue ( arriving by air, soil and water ) but it is usually much smaller than conventionally grown food.  The Environmental Working Group has compiled a list of produce, ordered by pesticide content.  When choosing produce, you should consider purchasing organic for the worst15 l isted below.  ( notice that blueberries aren’t even in the top 15, meaning that conventional peaches, for example, have a lot more than 48 types of pesticide residue on them! )

For a handy guide to shopping for produce, download The Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, either in PDF format or in an iPhone app.

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I’m not a big fan of chemicals, in anything, but especially in food my family eats.   In my effort to choose healthier products for my family, I found that produce can contain a lot of chemicals, in the form of pesticides.

Oftentimes, food that is free of chemicals is organic and therefore, tends to be more expensive than their non organic counterparts.   Instead of denouncing all organic foods, choose organic produce wisely.  Consider the following  list of produce, ordered by pesticide content, put together by the Environmental Working Group ( EWG ).   I’ve included the top 15 here and you can find the entire list at the EWG site.  In our household, we have chosen to purchase organic for the top 10 fruits and veggies on the list and non-organic for the others.  This keeps our grocery budget in check.

Another option to save money would be to serve only your children organic produce.  As the EWG says, “small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can adversely affect people, especially during vulnerable periods of fetal development and childhood when exposures can have long lasting effects.”

Keep in mind the ratings do consider how people wash and prepare produce such as rinsing apples or peeling oranges so while washing produce may reduce pesticides, it does not eliminate them.

If you’d like a handy wallet guide to tote the grocery store with you, download it from the EWG site.

Other options for organic produce:
1. Farmer’s markets
2. CSAs ( community supported agriculture )
3. Farms – pick your own!
4. Start a garden in your backyard.

Log in to the forums today and tell moms how you choose to find and use organic produce!

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