BPA Free – guide to Bisphenol A free safe products in Australia

We’ve been doing as much research as we can on finding organic tinned food without BPA in the linings. We can confirm that unfortunately, the tinned food at Global Organics does contain BPA in their linings (as of January 2012)

Their press release states in part, “Test results from the can manufacturer show that the levels of BPA are well below the International Standards set.” and also “Therefore in conclusion, human exposure to BPA from can coatings is minimal and poses no known risk to human health. Can coatings have been and continue to be recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.K. Food Standards Agency, the EC Scientific Committee on Food and other government bodies worldwide”

So, tests show the levels are safe, but if you’re removing all BPA from your life, you’ll need to give this brand of tinned food a wide berth.

While we knew this already, it’s so great to see more coverage in the media about BPA being in the linings of tinned food.  In this Sydney Morning Herald article, they talk about illness & disease that can come from the regular consumption of BPA. These include:-

• Breast Cancer
• Prostate Cancer
• Infertility
• Early puberty in teenage girls
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Obesity
• ADHD

While this was a US study, in Australia, Choice did their own BPA study on tinned food and found that 33 out of the 38 products tested contained BPA in them. Read more about this 2010 study here.

While the baby bottle and water bottle market have self-regulated (for the most part) in Australia, I’m afraid the food industry have not followed suit. It’s about time food manufacturers stopped putting this harmful toxin in to tinned food, some of which gets fed to children.

We were pleased to find out this morning that Eden Foods also publicly declare that their food packaging is BPA Free.

Eden Foods are an American organic food company specialising in Beans – Canned Beans, Condiments & Sweeteners, Fruit & Juices, Oils & Vinegars, Pasta, Rice & Beans and more.

A selection of their products are readily available in Australia via Spiral Foods, who distribute a portion of their range.

We’ve been buying and road testing a large variety of organic food for the new category in our store, Shop Naturally.It’s been lots of fun, as you can imagine.

This week we purchased the Bioitalia Organic Tinned Tomatoes from one of our suppliers. It was very hard to get information on the product, so we just bought them and cracked them open.

They were a nice rich colour and the taste just fine, but I was very disappointed to see the white lining in the tin. While I can’t say this with 100% certainty, white linings inside canned goods usually means there’s bpa in the lining.
UPDATE 22nd Oct 2011 – The Spiral Foods tomatoes which we have confirmed are BPA Free also have a white lining. At the moment, we have no confirmation one way or the other whether the Bioitalia tomato tin lining has BPA in it or not.

If you’re looking for tinned food with no bpa lining, stay away from the Bioitalia organic tinned tomatoes until we cna confirm their BPA status.

While we haven’t tasted them yet (that’s coming soon), we can confirm that Spiral Foods are bpa free in the packaging of all of the products we’ll be stocking, including their tinned tomatoes.

Getting information from manufacturers & distributors about the BPA status of their packaging is next to impossible, especially when it comes to tinned food. We were pleasantly surprised to find out this week that organic food company Spiral Foods use BPA Free packaging for their products, including their tinned goods.

We have sampled a small selection of their range and here’s what we thought.

The Brown Rice Chips feel like prawn crackers in your mouth. That beautiful light bubbly texture that starts to melt in your mouth if you leave them sit on your tongue.

They have Nori in them for added flavour. Let’s just say I don’t like sushi or fishy tastes, so when I opened up the packet I wasn’t sure what to expect. Ok, I thought I’d open them, eat 1 and then hand the packet to my staff to eat. Instead, I ate one, let them have a couple and snatched the packet back. The Nori taste is mild and pleasant and it’s super hard not to eat the whole packet.
More info >>

Organic Mung Bean Chips. Sounds like ‘hippy food’ doesn’t it? You’re tastebuds will never know. They taste like thin, crunchy mini corn cakes with a hint of nuttiness to them. One of our staff thought there was a hint of broccoli. I didn’t think so, so since kids don’t like broccoli, let’s say there isn’t any!! They’re nice and crunchy and can easily be eaten out of the packet or would equally be at home in a bowl next to some kind of dip.
More info >>

At Shop Naturally, we’ll shortly be stocking a wide range of Spiral Foods, including the chips mentioned above, their best selling soy milk, coconut oil and a host of other goodies.