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45 Comments

  1. Lol are you serious?If you want to have a healthy baby you should AVOID fish because of high levels of heavy metals and pollutants ESPSCIALLY CANNED which contain ALOT more heavy metals.

      1. It wasnt hard at all especially when you think about the lives of the animals that have to die for your ego and taste buds.Also you hurt yourself with it.You should also check your amalgam fillings because heavy metals also pass from generation to generation and pass into your child and can cause many problems.thank you for answering and Merry christmas 😊

  2. Campbells has a Well Yes line of soups, BPA-free, and looks like they are steel cans? They are definitely thicker/heavier than normal. Have you looked into how good they are?

    1. Hi, Ellen: When it says BPA-free, most of the times we do not know what they use instead of BPA. And when they do not disclose it to us, how can we trust that the substitute is safer? Can you trust them? ~Irina

  3. hi, i’ve now given up sardines in tins after hearing about bpa,i’m from the uk and my local supermarket fish counter sells fresh sprats at £3 a kilo very tasty in fact cheaper and tastier than tinned sardines and totally free of bpa

  4. Talk about an eye-opener! I have been pretty proactive in choosing better options for several years now, and ALWAYS look for BPA-free cans… But wow. I had no idea! Looks like I will be looking for glass jarred alternatives and finally trying to do dried beans (such a daunting task! LOL)

    Thank you for this info!

  5. Hey! This was super helpful! Thank you!

    Quick question– do you think it’s harmful to eat food out of cans if it’s something like chips? I understand how the metal toxins would leak into beans, tomato sauce, etc…. but something like chips are pretzels bought in a metal can would be fine…. right?

    Thanks again!

  6. I use Native Forest, they are supposedly BPA-free, but I have done no further research into it. i order bulk packages of it on Amazon when the price is right. I’d be curious to know if I’ve substituted one demon for another.

  7. reading up on this. the cans use a 90 minute high heat process. Wilderness Family Naturals has a different packaging technology that only uses high heat for less than 6 minutes. Isn’t high heat, high heat? You don’t want ANY high heat really do you? Still looking for the best option here, these are all pretty good, not sure if they are GREAT yet…

    1. No we do not want any high heat. Six minutes high heat is enough to heat 5 oz can up to a temperature to break the chemical bonds of many of plastic linings and can produce VOCs and also can speeds up undesirable chemical reactions degrading food quality and/or produce toxic byproducts.

  8. Any progress on the canned coconut milk research? Eden Organic doesn’t seem to carry it, to my knowledge.

    Natural Value? or Native Forest? Those look like the two choices on amazon…which do you think is safer? Which is fresher? I buy coconuts fresh but would be great to have some high quality canned stuff if it was clean and healthy and reasonably fresh? Does coconut milk stay fresh in a can? I’m finding that coconut OIL does have a shelf life definitely, especially once it’s opened, not sure about canned coconut milk yet. Of course once you open the can, the game is afoot, but if you stored away 100 cans for a rainy day, how long would that coconut milk still be yummy.

    Just to take a random segue…I know the ancient Egyptians were able to preserve some foods for 1000’s of years, like licorice I think. I wonder how they did it? (non-bpa ceramic jars?) just kiddin, but I am interested in how they preserved food for 1000’s of years successfully, they seem to have been amazing with preserving food somehow.

  9. scratch that. they are the same price really, the Eden cans are twice as big! Thanks so much, I’m going to order some of the Eden.

  10. those are cool, but twice as expensive as the Westbrae Natural. I wonder if Westbrae Natural is ok, they also claim to be BPA free on their cans.

  11. for vegetarians, salads sometimes really need more than just a hardboiled egg for protein. can you maybe fine us some BPS free garbanzos? are these Westbrae Natural Garbonzos REALLY BPA Free, for example….

    http://amzn.to/1Q85emJ

    I also wonder if you can find out if they use something else that might be even worse for the new bpa-free cans. Anyway, so far, I found that one can of garbanzos, Westbrae Natural. Looks great!

  12. looking forward to learning more and please let us know if you find other safe cans of coconut milk that might be just as good or better. I also wonder if some canned coconut milk might be fresher than others…

    1. Thank you so much for this question, Martin! Since I published this post, I have wanted to start researching safe coconut milk products. But nobody asked me this before. I will get on this as soon as my schedule permits. Stay tuned. ~Irina

  13. I would say the thing I buy the most is organic chicken broth. I know I need to make my own :(. So pacific brand and Swanson and wild oats. I think the box packaging is from the same company for most of these foods. I think it’s called Tetra Pak. I feel like I’ve even seen this brand on certain milk cartons. I hope that helps!

  14. Thank you for all you do! I feel like I read about it once on a blog but like you found, it’s sometimes difficult to get information. I do use the boxed stuff but I’m wondering if that’s any better.

  15. I try to avoid canned foods as well. You are right – it isn’t that hard just sometimes more time consuming, which is fine 🙂
    I would love to know what is in the lining of the alternatives – soups in boxes and tuna in pouches, etc.

    1. It’s an interesting balance to think about. The tuna Dana mentions has high levels of pollutants (being a large fish) from all the different ways we use plastics in our society. So any packaging that is not reusable, plastified boxes, or pouches or what have you, will impact our health ultimately. It’s important not to look just at the packaging that the food comes in. Convenience is the problem.
      On the other hand, when you make your own soup, or tomato sauce, maybe make a large batch, freeze, and trade with a friend–perhaps even buy local produce–there are multiple layers of benefits, hopefully enough to offset the time you spend cooking!

      1. Thank you, Dr. Ashe! It is SO heart-breaking to know that our oceans and rivers are so polluted now that there is no safe fish. It is a matter of a degree now. The bigger fish, the more toxins it was able to accumulate. When we were in Hawaii, we visited the Maui Ocean Center. The scientists there told us about the devastating pollution of the oceans. One of the scientist told me to avoid eating shellfish altogether because shellfish get their nutrients from the water along with all the industrial chemicals we produce. I love mussels and oysters and clams. I guess no more. So sad. I came back inspired to do whatever I can to stop further pollution. When we buy a product, we have to think about our oceans, rivers, air, and soil. What are leaving behind to our children?

  16. Thank you, Irina, for this great blog. Very helpful info. We do give our kids Wild Planet sardines, so this is helpful info. We will have to decide what to do there. Oy! Also, I am wondering about the cardboard bowls used at Chiptotle, which has now gone GMO-free, but the bowls seemed to be lined with some shiny coating. I am suspecting this isn’t very good either. Thank you for your great work!

      1. I think some of the grease-proof containers (including pizza boxes and some of the shiny cardboard) consists of non-stick coating PFOAs–associated with a number of adverse effects, even if you don’t heat them up. They are also the coating on Post-It notes.

  17. Just as an FYI, Eden Foods has eliminated coverage of all birth control from employees’ healthcare plans due to the religious beliefs of its CEO, Michael Potter. I will personally not purchase its products despite their relative safety due to its discriminatory practices.

  18. “A lot of times, what happens is once a chemical becomes notorious for its harm, manufacturers easily switch to another chemical that is often as harmful as the original one but which has not received the same notoriety.”

    In my experience, truer words have never been spoken. Thanks for a great article. Think I am going to start omitting canned products from our diet. It always bothers me whenever I open one, no matter how good the product inside. It’s a shame it has to be this way.

    Luckily for me, I won’t be having any more kids and I don’t care for sardines(: