Food and Drug Administration OKs BPA in Food Containers
Despite multiple studies that have demonstrated its toxicity, bisphenol-A will continue to appear in America's food and beverage containers. The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that they had decided not to ban the chemical from product packaging.
BPA can be found in many plastics used to store food and beverages, as well as in can linings. It's ubiquitous in Big Food's products--and the industry has fought to keep it that way. The research cited by the FDA to prove that BPA is a harmless compound doesn't seem to come from as neutral a source as some scientists might like. All the studies in the FDA's report were funded either by companies within the food industry or by the FDA itself. No neutral research was included.
Meanwhile, hundreds of scientists continue to publish third-party studies that demonstrate the harm that BPA can do when ingested continuously over the course of an adult lifetime. The chemical can mimic certain hormones within the human body, ultimately causing conditions like asthma, diabetes, and cancer. Unborn fetuses, babies and children are the most vulnerable to the chemical's effects. And because companies aren't required to label their BPA-containing products, many parents unknowingly allow their children to ingest it on a daily basis.
Environmental scientists had petitioned the FDA to ban the chemical, but it looks like the big corporations won out on this fight. BPA remains unregulated and consumed en masse. While some distributors of reusable food storage have profited from marketing their products as BPA-free, companies that produce processed food can't make such claims. Plastic bottles and lined cans continue to leech the dangerous chemical into our food supply--and it continues to interfere with our bodies' natural hormones.
So how do we keep ourselves safe from BPA when the FDA refuses to protect us from it? Avoid buying canned food or anything stored in plastic when possible. Stick to buying fresh, whole foods instead of processed, contaminated goods. Store your leftovers in glass containers instead of traditional tupperware (start reusing jars if you don't want to spend money replacing all your containers). And kick the bottled beverage habit altogether. Soda is bad for you as it is, but soda laced with BPA does even more harm. The FDA may have been bought out by Big Food, but we can still dampen the profits food corporations think they're defending by boycotting as much plastic-packed product as possible.
