If you’ve been following this blog, you know we preach to ditch soft drinks in favor of plain old water. But not the expensive bottled water. From the faucet – tap water. Water is healthy because it has no extra calories, no artificial colorings, and no preservatives or additives. And it takes a weight off of your wallet – the savings for an average American family of 4 that quits soft drinks are over $500 a year.

And for most western world locations, tap water is absolutely safe, we reported in the past. That’s why we were so upset to read The New York Times story about toxicity in American tap water:

• The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 and required monitoring of 20 dangerous chemicals.
• The list of toxins grew to 91 by the late 1990’s.
• It is still miserably short when one considers the SIXTY THOUSAND chemicals that are used in this country, hundreds of which are known carcinogens and many of which have found their way into our water systems.
• Tens of millions of people could be affected by multiple contaminants in their drinking water.
• The EPA says that very long studies are needed to verify the effects, but even then it’s hard to determine causality because pollution is also in the air we breath, food we eat, our clothes, toys, homes, and pretty much everywhere.

The Times article is part of a series called Toxic Waters, a frightening and interesting read.

What you need to know:

So we must drink bottled water, right?

Not so fast.

Where do you think all the bottled water comes from? Many bottlers take their water from the same sources as municipal tap. True, they filter it, but do you think they do more testing for toxins than the minimum they should by law? Not!

Large public water supplies are tested for contaminants up to several times a day. But the FDA requires bottlers to test their water just once a month or year.

And bottled water is stored in plastics that leach out PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, another carcinogen. Not to mention the huge environmental impact of billions of plastic bottles polluting our planet.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re debating between tap and bottled water, you’re already in a good place, not drinking soft drinks. Many people choose bottled water because they have gotten used to the taste. Before you commit yourself one way or the other, check out your local water supply safety reports. You can also opt for home purifying and filtering systems.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

Consumer interest in omega-3 is not as high this year as it was in the 2005-2007 time frame. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been inundated by so many omega-3 messages on the news, web, and supermarket that most of us have simply come to accept the easy to remember association:  “omega-3 = good”.  In the same time period we also learned that “trans-fat = evil”.

It’s a bit like Star Wars , what with the dark and light side of the force. The “force” here is fatty acids, or what dietary fats (animal fat and vegetable oils) are composed of.

While the trans-fat message is quite simple at the practical level – just avoid products containing it – with omega 3 things are a bit more complicated. And when something is not as simple as good/bad, you can be sure there’s lots of money to be made off of the public’s ignorance. Enter the thousands of processed products now marked with “omega-3″ in large font type on the front of the package.

The analogy to Star Wars ends here because not all omega-3’s are created equal. Which means you may be buying a product fortified with omega-3 that has almost no health benefits for you. Yet you will likely be paying more than you would have for the standard, un-enriched version. In order to better understand what’s going on, here’s a quick primer on omega-3, in 10 bullet points. Read more…

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

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

Who would you prefer to buy your water from?

A company that discloses the water’s source, how the water has been purified, and what pollutants each bottle of water may contain? Or a company that discloses nothing?

We’ll take option A please.

The good news is that it’s the cheaper option too. Way cheaper. Yes, the 50,000 tap water suppliers, whose “product” is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have a high standard to adhere to. They are required to publish an annual report describing their water’s status.

In stark comparison, the bottled water companies, regulated by the FDA, aren’t required to disclose anything to anyone.

This, and other interesting details are available in a new report from the Environmental Working Group (a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, DC that uses the power of information to protect human health and the environment.)

What you need to know:

Bottled water is a textbook example of marketing genius. There is absolutely no reason to be drinking it in most parts of the US. As the recent report shows, from a health perspective, tap is scrutinized more carefully than bottled water. It’s a drain on your pocketbook. And the plastic bottles are an ecological nightmare.

What to do at the supermarket:

With all the cash you saved by not buying bottled water, how about splurging on some of those more expensive / exotic fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle?

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

flickr photo: FreeCat

Fish is supposed to be good for you, right?

Did you know, however, that the government actually recommends limiting fish intake for certain populations due to the risk of mercury poisoning? In the past 15 years, pregnant women and young children have been advised to limit consumption of certain types of fish that have been shown to contain high quantities of this brain damaging heavy metal.

That is, until now. From the Washington Post:

The Food and Drug Administration is urging the government to amend its advisory that women and children should limit how much fish they eat, saying that the benefits of seafood outweigh the health risks and that most people should eat more fish, even if it contains mercury.

If approved by the White House, the FDA’s position would reverse the government’s current policy that certain groups — women of childbearing years, pregnant women, nursing mothers, infants and children — can be harmed by the mercury in fish and should limit their consumption.

The FDA’s recommendations have alarmed scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, who in internal memos criticized them as “scientifically flawed and inadequate” and said they fell short of the “scientific rigor routinely demonstrated by EPA.”

Read the article…

What you need to know:

Fish are rich in protein, vitamins, and minerals. They are a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, and generally perceived as a healthier alternative to meat consumption. Unfortunately, in this modernized industrial world, factory pollution has released huge amounts of mercury to air, land, and sea. The flesh of large, carnivorous fish, has become loaded with toxic chemicals such as methyl-mercury. This poison can harm fetuses and young children’s proper brain development.

What to do at the supermarket:

Buying fish used to be easy. There are now so many areas a shopper must master – nutrition, ecology, toxins – that it becomes almost impossible to make a correct choice.

The bigger the fish, the more mercury it has stored. So stay away from shark meat, swordfish, king mackerel, and albacore tuna. Small fry such as sardines and anchovies, are an excellent source of protein and omega-3, without toxins. This is because they live for a short period of time before being harvested, so their body does not have time to accumulate mercury.

For high risk groups, limit yourself to other foods rich in omega-3 such as eggs,chicken, beans, nuts and seeds. Granted, they have less omega-3 than some fish, but why take a risk?
Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription