Meatless Monday: Kicking BPA from Cans

By now most of us know to avoid cans when we can. But cooking without canned ingredients is pretty hard to do, particularly during winter and spring in New England. I finally found barramundi in my store’s freezer case, and three of the ingredients for the recipe I’ll be preparing tonight come in cans! More on barramundi sometime soon.

But there is good news on the can front. Early in March, Campbell’s Soup added their name to the growing list of companies pledging to remove BPA from their can linings. Campbell’s products showed some of the highest-ranked levels of BPA in studies conducted by Consumer Reports in 2009. Organizers for the Breast Cancer Fund’s  “Cans Not Cancer” campaign claim that over 70,000 letters were sent to Campbell’s urging them to make this change. 

According to information in the April edition of The Voice, the email newsletter of Women’s Voices for the Earth, the list of companies with BPA-free cans includes: including Eden Foods, Muir Glen, Trader Joe's, Heinz, Hain Celestial Group, ConAgra, and now Campbell’s. Consumers do have the power!

Consumer groups had called upon the FDA to issue a ban on BPA in cans, similar to the one it issued for  infant bottles.  But late in March, the FDA made the announcement that it will continue to study BPA. 

Earth Day is coming. What’s on your agenda? I’ll be biking in Rock to Rock, New Haven’s Earth Day Ride. [Note the link goes to my fundraising page. ;) ] It’s been sunny and dry here, but there is rain in the forecast. Here’s hoping it arrives a day early. We could use it. Brush fires in Connecticut in April? Really. Check out these weather tables for 2012 and 2011.

Happy Monday. Have a great week.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”