This is from The Green Guide. Jamie questions from a public health standpoint if advising people to can their own food is riskier, due to human error causing food poisoning, than just injesting the chemicals. I'm not going to can my own food because it's such a pain in the ass.
1. If you already own polycarbonate bottles, including the Nalgene bottles popular on college campuses, labeled #7 on the bottom, wash them by hand with mild dishwashing soap, not in the dishwasher, to avoid degrading the plastic and increasing leaching of BPA.
2. Even plastic does not last forever. Look for cracks or cloudiness on your reusable clear plastic bottles.
3. Use glass baby bottles or plastic bag inserts, which are made of polyethyelene, or switch to polypropylene bottles that are labeled #5 and come in colors or are milky rather than clear.
4. Choose soups, milk and soy milk packaged in cardboard "brick" cartons, by Tetra Pak and SIG Combibloc, which are made of safer layers of aluminum and polyethylene (#2) and also recyclable.
5. Choose canned foods from makers who don't use BPA, such as Eden Foods (www.edenfoods.com), which sells certified organic canned beans and other foods.
6. Eat fresh foods in season and save the canned foods for convenience or emergencies. The exception is some canned fruit such as that found in smaller fruit-cocktail cans, which do not require a liner, according to the Can Manufacturers Institute.
7. Buy or can your own fruits and vegetables in safe glass jars.
8. Some wines have been found to contain up to six times the BPA of canned foods. While most wines probably don't, it's another good reason to drink in moderation.
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8 comments:
Hmmm..canning your own food. This brings back memories of my attempt to can food when I was in my thirty-somethings. Took classes in "canning/freezing your own food", bought a pressure canner. Then...I remembered my mother canning spaghetti and the canner exploded and spaghetti went all over the kitchen ceiling.
My bright, new pressure canner had a place of honor for 30+ years in a kitchen cabinet all it's own. Until I gave it away to my sister-in-law.
Something I learned at my mother's knee...or watching spaghetti fall from the ceiling...canning is not all it's steamed up to be.
This tale goes along with the tale of a city girl, living in the "country" for the first time and a husband who planted the "north 40" in every vegetable imaginable.
Hence, classes in "canning/freezing your own food".
No...the canner was never used. It sat in all it's glory and splendor taking up valuable cabinet space for 30+ years.
"Freezing" was my specialty.
Some plastics can be turned into a good thing...Polartec comes to mind. Polartec winter clothing, blankets, etc., are made from recycled plastic.
Some companies are using their recycled plastic shopping bags for other uses. I've forgotten what..just recently read this and was impressed.
Some companies can reuse some of their ground plastic (regrind) and mix with virgin raw plastic particles to make products.
That's very cool. I hope companies find more and better ways to recycle plastic. Also, to produce cheaper biodegradable plastic. Right now it says the biodegradable plastics are 2 to 10 times as expensive as the regular kind.
(Of course, greatly increased production of plant based plastics would crowd out land currently used for agriculture, making food more expensive. That in turn makes life a lot worse for the world's poor. We're already seeing that with increased use of corn for biofuel. There are never any simple answers with this stuff.)
Hi, Mom! That was a fun spring and summer! :) That's cool about the polartec.
That's interesting about biodegradable plastic but kind of leary about it. Just because it can, doesn't mean it will if it's not given optimal conditions to do so (I'm sure you could go to any landfil and find a 40-year-old newspaper in spiffy condition because it's packed in there so tightly).
The article talks about that. Landfills would need to be handled differently, so composting can actually happen.
Not to get off topic, but I'm not clear on this "drink in moderation" concept...
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