Who Wants a Bowl of Hormone Soup?
Want to get pumped on estrogen? Want 1,200 times a normal amount of hormones? Of course not – not any more than you want to eat rat poison!
However, if you’re eating canned soups or foods and beverages from plastic bottles, your body may believe you are on an aggressive hormone therapy.
Most food cans have been lined and sealed with bisphenol A (BPA). What’s wrong with BPA? Well, it is a dangerous endocrine-disrupting chemical that mimics estrogen so well that it acts like the hormone inside your body!
If you’re eating canned foods, there is a bunch of this stuff in your body right now. A recent study found that just one can of soup a day for five days causes BPA levels to surge by more than 1,200 percent! (That’s one boost you do not want.)
In fact, that number is so outrageous Harvard researchers repeated their experiment twice – and had volunteers switch places. It didn’t matter. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, whoever got five days of canned soup experienced a 1,200 percent boost in BPA.(1) Can-free soup did not have the same effect.
BPA has been Linked to Nearly Every Ailment Under the Sun:
Sexual dysfunction,
Obesity,
Diabetes and
Heart disease, (to name a few).
For good measure, you can add a measure of soy protein, which is yet another form of estrogen, to your soup and give an extra surge of unnecessary hormones!
Top it off with some MSG, a dangerous additive in many soups linked to everything from headaches to mental illness.
Canned soup companies are right about one thing:
Soup IS good!
But not ALL soup is good for you.
What Can You Do to Begin to Eliminate BPA From Your Body?
A good start is to cut down how much you eat – but let’s get real.
BPA is in a lot of things – from newspapers to toilet paper! But, many food cans are lined with BPA. Many plastic containers also leach-out BPA into food and beverages. Start to move away from buying foods in cans and plastics that can put BPA into your body.
One option is to purchase soups and foods packaged in paper/cardboard containers.
Another Way: is to take guidance from a source we trust, The Environmental Working Group (EWG). EWG is a reliable source of research and they have published results to help us sort this out. In 2014, EWG analyzed 252 canned food brands to find out which of brands packed their food into cans coated with BPA-laden epoxy. They found 78 food brands used cans with BPA-based epoxy lining for all their products. On the plus side, EWG also found 31 brands using cans that are BPA-free!
Here’s the list of BPA-free brands:
Ace of Diamonds, American Tuna, Amy’s, Annie’s Homegrown,
Beach Cliff, Bearitos, Bionaturae,
Earth’s Best Organic, EarthPure, Farmer’s Market,
Genova, Gluten Free Café Health Valley,
Health Valley Organic, Imagine, Juanita’s,
Jyoti Natural Foods, King Oscar, Lucini Italia,
Muir Glen, Native Forest, Natural Sea,
Pillar Rock, Port Clyde, Raincoast Trading,
Seneca, Sprouts Farmers Mk, Tyson,
Walnut Acres, Westbrae Natural.
(You can view this list at: www.ewg.org/research/bpa-canned-food.)
Don't wait for government regulations to act to eliminate BPA from your diet. If companies insist on using BPA, buy alternative products. Hit 'em in the wallet and they'll get the message. In return, you may experience piece of mind and better health!
References:
- Jenny L. Carwile, MPH; Xiaoyun Ye, MS; Xiaoliu Zhou, MS; Antonia M. Calafat, PhD; Karin B. Michels, ScD, PhD. Canned Soup Consumption and Urinary Bisphenol A: A Randomized Crossover Trial. JAMA. November 23/30, 2011, Vol 306, No. 20:2218-2220.