The FDA has an update for consumers on its efforts to determine the safety of BPA (Bisphenol-A), an industrial chemical unfortunately found in many plastic bottles and cans containing foods and beverages. This is happening less than 2 years after the FDA declared BPA was safe, back in August 2008.

The safety approval was given despite the over 200 animal studies that have linked BPA consumption in tiny amounts to a host of reproductive problems, brain damage, immune deficiencies, metabolic abnormalities, and behavioral oddities like hyperactivity, learning deficits and reduced maternal willingness to nurse offspring.

In December 2008, the FDA’s own advisory board accused the FDA of weighing 2 industry-backed studies much more heavily than the hundreds of other independent studies. The FDA’s excuse: all the other studies did not meet the FDA’s guidelines for determining safety for human consumption, did not provide raw data, and a host of other “reasons”.

What caused the FDA to change it mind now an reopen the “BPA Files”? Possible answers: a new administration, a BPA ban in Canada in 2008, and / or general public outcry.

At a press event yesterday, an FDA official diplomatically said the drug agency “had become more receptive to new techniques of studying the safety of chemicals.”

What you need to know:

7 billion pounds of BPA are produced annually, for use in food packaging, PVC water pipes, electronics, and more.All of us are exposed to tiny amounts, whether drinking canned juice, milk from a baby-bottle, or any other product sold in a plastic container or a can.

BPA is a chemical compound. It is used as a building block of  polymers and polycarbonates that are found in plastic bottles and cans. BPA behaves like the hormone estrogen once it enters the body and disturbs the normal working of certain genes. Estrogen mimicking chemicals like BPA are potentially harmful even at very low doses, such as those found in plastic bottles and cans.

In March 2009, six manufacturers announced that they would voluntarily stop manufacturing bottles with BPA. Playtex Products, Gerber, Evenflo, Avent America, Dr. Brown and Disney First Years decided to so in order to preempt legal action being considered at the time by several state attorney generals.

What to do at the supermarket and home to decrease your exposure:

1. If you have a baby or toddler, purchase BPA free plastic bottles.
2. Throw away scratched or worn bottles or cups made with BPA , because the chemical can leak from the scratches.
3. Don’t put hot liquids in plastic cups or bottles containing BPA.
4. If microwaving baby formula, do so in a glass bottle.
5. Opt for fresh or frozen products rather than canned.
6. Drink tap instead of bottled water.

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The December Edition of Consumer Reports, already out, is bringing BPA, a controversial chemical, back to the headlines. The non-profit publisher, Consumers Union, tested various canned foods for BPA and found alarmingly high values in daily staples such as tuna, beans and soups. You can read more about it here.

This is a good opportunity to get reacquainted with a chemical we  all consume in some form, whether we know it, like it, or not.

What you need to know:
1. Bisphenol-A  is a chemical compound used as a building block of several polymers and polycarbonates that in turn are found in plastic bottles and cans. Which means all of us are exposed to tiny amounts, whether drinking canned juice, milk from a baby-bottle, or any other product sold in a plastic container or a can.

2. The chemical has been sold since the 1940’s and starting in the 1960’s has been lining the insides of cans in order to extend shelf life.

3. 7 billion pounds of BPA are produced annually, for use in food packaging, PVC water pipes, electronics, and more.

4. In 2008, more than 22 billion cans for food and more than 100 billion cans for beer and soft drinks were produced with BPA.

5. BPA behaves like the hormone estrogen once it enters the body and disturbs the normal working of certain genes. Estrogen mimicking chemicals like BPA are potentially harmful even at very low doses, such as those found in plastic bottles and cans.

6. Toxicity questions have been around for decades, raising safety issue, especially for babies who ingest a proportionally larger amount due to their small size. Potential problems include hyperactivity, learning disabilities, brain damage, and immune deficiencies.

7. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculated that people consume 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight every day over the course of a lifetime. Over 40 studies have found adverse health effects in rats given less than one hundredth of that amount!

8. Over 200 animal studies that have linked BPA consumption in tiny amounts to a host of reproductive problems, brain damage, immune deficiencies, metabolic abnormalities, and behavioral oddities like hyperactivity, learning deficits and reduced maternal willingness to nurse offspring.

9. In 2008, Canada added BPA to its list of toxic substances and plans are to ban BPA from all baby bottles.

10. The FDA has zigzagged on BPA safety. In August 2008 it deemed BPA safe. However, in December 2008, the FDA’s own advisory board accused the FDA of weighing 2 industry-backed studies much more heavily than the hundreds of other independent studies. The FDA’s excuse: all the other studies did not meet the FDA’s guidelines for determining safety for human consumption, did not provide raw data, and a host of other “reasons”.

11. In March 2009, six manufacturers announced that they would voluntarily stop manufacturing bottles with BPA. Playtex Products, Gerber, Evenflo, Avent America, Dr. Brown and Disney First Years decided to so in order to preempt legal action being considered at the time by several state attorney generals.

12. In May 2009, Chicago became the first city to ban sales of baby bottles and sippy cups with BPA. Denmark became the first European country to do the same.

13. Many other European countries conducted reviews in the past 2 years but decided to maintain BPA’s safe status for now.

14. If you think you’re safe, 93% of the population has BPA in their bodies, according to urine sampling conducted by the Center for Disease Control, CDC.

15. There’s hope – Many Japanese manufacturers voluntarily stopped using BPA in 1997. In a 2003 study, BPA levels in people’s urine had dropped by 50%.

What to do at the supermarket:
Here are some tips on how to reduce your family’s  BPA intake:
1. if you have a baby or toddler, purchase BPA free plastic bottles.
2. If microwaving formula, do so in a glass bottle.
3. Opt for fresh or frozen products less than canned.
4. Drink tap water instead of bottled water

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1. pepper corns
2. small furry animal poop
3. canola oil
4. none of the above

Answer below. Read more…

Thank you Fooducate reader Mark G. and family for testing out 4 flavors of Crofter’s Superfruit Spreads over the past few weeks.

Crofter’s is a small Canadian company focusing on jams, jellies, preserves and spread. Everything is organic.

Earlier this spring they introduced a new line of supefruit spreads, riding on the antioxidant halo associated with these fruits. There are 4 flavors to choose from: Europe, North America, South American, and Asia. Each comes with a different fruit blend.

Here’s what Mark had to say:

My wife, my two grade-school sons, and I tested these jams out on toast, waffles, in plain yogurt, and (of course) PB&J’s.

While I can’t say I’ve been on the lookout for a “fun, new way to get my daily antioxidants,” I did appreciate that Crofter’s new Organic Superfruit Spreads contain no artificial anything. And I had to google a couple of those so-called “superfruits” (and here I thought yumberry was a Capt’n Crunch flavor), but apparently they do all really exist!

The PB&J sandwiches was the least successful use of the jams. Their flavor was just too subtle to stand up to the domineering peanut butter. You just could not taste them, and at $4.99 a jar, you want to be able to taste them!

The other applications – especially the toast – allowed the jams’ flavors (and textures) to come out much more. It was surprising just how much flavor they had when they had the spotlight to themselves.

All four jams were tasty enough – definitely worthy of the extra cost for a Sunday morning breakfast treat. But they all suffered from a sameness between them. Despite not having any evil additives, all four jams have cherries, the cherry tartness overwhelms most of what the other fruits might offer.  Out of all those “superfruits,” I would say that the blueberries and black currents held their ground the best. The black currents (paired up in the “European Blend” with the uber-trendy pomegranate) also benefited from it’s unique texture.

These are tasty sour-cherry flavored jams, but I would have liked some of the more exotic superfruits to shine a little more (unless yumberries taste exactly like cherries? maybe? who knows?). I’m always on the lookout for natural jams and jellies for me and my family, but these are a little to subtle (and too expensive) for my sons’ lunchbags. That just means more for me and the Missus to put on our toast and in our yogurt.

What you need to know:
Here’s the ingredient list for the South America blend:
Organic Fruit (Organic morello cherry, organic red grape concentrate, organic passionfruit puree, organic maqui concentrate), organic fair trade cane sugar, natural fruit pectin, ascorbic acid, citric acid.

Maqui berry is a “superfruit” from Patagonia (the chilly southern part of Argentina). Some claim it is much more potent than the revered acai berry from an antioxidant perspective.

While there are 4 fruits mentioned in the list, only the cherries come in their natural form. The other 3 are purees and concentrates, which means they’ve lost many of their health benefits by oxidation (exposure to air).

Ascorbic acid is just vitamin C.

Citric acid is a natural preservative that is used to add an acidic, sour taste to foods and beverages. Although it is naturally found in citrus fruit (oranges, lemons), industry has a found a cheaper way to manufacture it, using molds.

Nutrition label:
A serving is one tablespoon. it contains 30 calories, no fat, and 7 grams of sugar. The addition of ascorbic acid bumps up the vitamin C to 50% of the daily requirements. Unlike the fruits in their original form, these jams do not contain fiber.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re going to buy a jam, Crofter’s is about as nutritious as it gets. Not that jams are a major source of nutrition. But at least there are no artificial anythings. Enjoy on whole wheat toast of course.

Disclosure: Ah, the perks of food blogging…Crofter’s PR firm contacted us and offered to send  evaluation samples. We had them sent to a family of volunteer testers. We did not pay for the samples. We were not paid to post this blog nor were we instructed in any which way regarding its content. In fact, we forewarned the manufacturer that we are skeptical and scathing of most processed products available at the supermarket.

If you would like to have something new and possibly tasty sent to your house, why not become a Fooducate Product Tester? Just comment below or shoot us an email: blog [at] fooducate [dot] com.

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Dannon Activia

More good news for consumers. Dannon, manufacturer of 100 dairy products such as Activia, Light & Fit, DanActive and Danimals, will stop using milk from cows injected with bovine growth hormones (rBST / rGBH). The plan is to be 100% hormone free by the end of 2009.

From DairyReporter.com:

[Dannon] said the move is a result of consumer feedback. “This is a response to our market evaluation and consumer preference,” Dannon’s senior director of public relations Michael Neuwirth told DairyReporter.com.

“When General Mills make their announcement, we naturally got many questions. This is something we’ve been working on for some time but because there is no real safety issue here we’ve been quite low-key about it,” said Neuwirth.

Read the entire article…

What you need to know:

BST (bovine somatotropin) is a hormone cows naturally produce and found in their bodies. The more of this hormone a cow has, the more milk it produces. In the early 1990’s, an artificial growth hormone, rBST (a.ka. rBGH), was developed by agriculture giant Monsanto. While this seems like good news, when you mess with nature, there are always consequences.

The rBST hormone itself has no effect on humans, but the “consequences” do:
1. Cows injected with the hormone tend to be sicker due to inflammations of their much larger udders, and therefore receive more antibiotics. The antibiotics then find their way into your milk and your body.
2. rBST additionally increases the level of an insulin type growth factor in the milk (IGF-1). This, again, finds its way into the human body. Though in most cases our stomach acids digest it, sometimes IGF-1 gets into the bloodstream, and for some people this raises the risk of cancer.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the EU banned rBGH.

Dannon is an international dairy powerhouse, and owns about one third of the US yogurt market, tied with General Mill’s Yoplait. Having these two giants make the move will probably line up all of the smaller manufacturers as well.

What to do at the supermarket:

Until the end of 2009, buying organic is the sure way to avoid milk products from rBGH-free cows, albeit at a higher price.

On conventional products, you will not find a label mentioning the presence or absence of growth hormones or antibiotics.

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General Mills, parent company of Yoplait brand yogurts, announced this week that it will stop using milk from cows treated with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). The announcement covers the entire product line and will be fully implemented by August:

General Mills announced today that it has made the commitment to eliminate by August 2009 milk sourced from cows treated with rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin), a synthetic hormone also referred to as rBGH, in the production of its category-leading Yoplait® yogurts.

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Institutes of Health remain fully confident in the safety of products made from milk sourced from cows treated with rBST in accordance with current guidelines, Yoplait is taking the initiative to change its dairy sourcing strategy to provide consumers with the option to choose a category-leading yogurt with milk produced by cows not treated with rBST.

Read the full press release…

There are already smaller yogurt manufacturers that are rBGH free, such as Stonyfield, Nancy’s, and Cascade Fresh, but Yoplait is a much bigger and powerful brand to take this step.

What you need to know:

BST (bovine somatotropin) is a hormone cows naturally produce and found in their bodies. The more of this hormone a cow has, the more milk it produces. In the early 1990’s, an artificial growth hormone, rBST (a.ka. rBGH), was developed by agriculture giant Monsanto. While this seems like good news, when you mess with nature, there are always consequences.

The rBST hormone itself has no effect on humans, but the “consequences” do:
1. Cows injected with the hormone tend to be sicker due to inflammations of their much larger udders, and therefore receive more antibiotics. The antibiotics then find their way into your milk and your body.
2. rBST additionally increases the level of an insulin type growth factor in the milk (IGF-1). This, again, finds its way into the human body. Though in most cases our stomach acids digest it, sometimes IGF-1 gets into the bloodstream, and for some people this raises the risk of cancer.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the EU banned rBGH. The UN’s food safety body, Codex Alimentarius, has also opted not to endorse rBGH.

In the US, many smaller dairies decided not to use rBST. They also thought it would be a good idea to let consumers know about their decision.

In 1993, after heavy pressure from Monsanto, the FDA did 2 things:
1. approve the use of rBGH
2. disallow labeling of milks stating they are from cows free of rBST.

Despite this, organic milk and yogurt manufacturers have been stating more broadly that their products are hormone and antibiotic free, so the FDA cannot chew them out.

So Yoplait’s move, in response to consumer wishes, is a refreshingly good piece of news, even though it is most probably a marketing play rather than true concern for our health. Hopefully more manufacturers and grocers will follow Yoplait’s lead.

What to do at the supermarket:

Buying organic is a sure way to avoid milk products from rBGH-free cows, albeit at a higher price.

On conventional products, you will not find a label mentioning the presence or absence of growth hormones or antibiotics.

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