So I have to be honest with you guys, life is busy and I’ve become a green slacker. I’m eating more packaged (diet/health) foods, not looking for new ways to be green and just generally stuck in a rut. But last week I had 2 moments that shocked me back out of that. So look forward to Green Wednesdays being back on target.
Both of my moments last week dealt with canned soup. First off when I was eating my soup at work I noticed it had 4 grams of sugar in it. That really caught me off guard. I know its not a high number but the problem is I know that not all 4 grams were from the vegetables, some were from the ‘extras’ the added to the soup. I’m sure you cant read the picture so I’ll give you a few of the ingredients that I know would never be in a homemade version: Modified Food Starch, Sugar, Carmel Color, Salt + Potassium Chloride (who needs both?) and Calcium Chloride. Blah
Eek the one I’m eating today has 14g of sugar!!!!
Then over the weekend I read an article in one of my fitness magazines that referred to a study claiming that
“People who consumed one serving of canned soup a day for five days had a more than 1,000 percent increase in urinary BPA over people who consumed fresh soup for five days.”
~Canned Soup Consumption and Urinary Bisphenol A: A Randomized Crossover Trial
You can’t read the full trial info without subscribing but based on this article from the NY Times you would have to eat a lot of soup but its a drastic increase 1000 times eek. I would imagine that even 1 can a week would increase it a little bit…
So why is BPA bad for you?
Well in the New York Times article states “Most of the research on BPA, a so-called endocrine disruptor that can mimic the body’s hormones… It has been linked in some studies to a higher risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity…”
I checked around and found another article on Scientific American states a lot of the same things as above but it also adds that the Canadian government has banned it in baby bottles and have lab led it a toxic substance. Eek! It also cautions against heating up any foods in a container with it (normaly marked with the recycle symbol #7) or pouring any hot liquids into it. So keep that in mind better safe than sorry though right?
My BPA free soup Plan
So based on those bits of information, I’m going to try and make and freeze my own soup before I run out of my current stash. I’ll keep you updated about my soup progress.