Eating Safe

I was going to title this post "Eating Healthy", but before that can even be addressed, you have to consider if you can even eat safely in the U.S. There are so many pesticides, herbicides, diseases in CAFO animals, etc... that it's hard to even make heads and tales of what you should and shouldn't eat.

One of my favorite not-for-profit organizations, the Environmental Working Group, has done great work in making it easier to keep your family healthy with their Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen food lists

But my latest obsession is reducing the amount of BPA in our bodies (probably an impossible task). Canned goods, glass jarred goods (the lids), waxy paper used for food wrapping, checkout reciepts, etc... can all contain BPA. I've been avoiding cans lately, but that is frankly causing me to eat LESS healthily, or give up entirely and go to Chick-Fil-A.

So I did a little research on BPA free cans the other night. Here are some brands that have BPA free canned goods:

1) Eden Organics - beans
2) Trader Joe's - beans, veggies, seafood
3) Vital Choice - tuna
4) Oregon's Choice - tuna
5) Wild Planet - tuna
6) Eco Fish - tuna
7) Edward & Sons - fruits, veggies, coconut milk

Notice that tomatoes aren't listed for any of these companies. So sad. And even if you can your own, the lids are pretty much guaranteed to have BPA in the lining. So what can you do? There are plastic canning lids (but really, what do those have in them that we just don't know about?), or live with it, I guess. I went ahead and bought a couple of cans of tomatoes at Whole Foods the other day, and just gave a big sigh about it. :) At least they are organic, right?

Oh, and I want to report that I'm pretty sure that the giant can of tomatoes I bought at Costco appeared to be unlined of any plastic coating! If that Italian company can do it, why can't the U.S. companies?