After a long week my husband and I sometimes skip making our own dinner and call for a pizza. Our favorite is a salty-sweet combo of pepperoni and pineapple.
Just as I was picking up the phone to call for the pizza last week, I started to think about all of the cans that could likely be used on our pizza—canned tomato sauce, canned tomato paste, canned pineapple—and realized that we might have to change our pizza order if we wanted to steer clear of BPA, a chemical linked to breast cancer that's used in the lining of food cans.
What a bummer! We love ordering pizza. It's such a treat and after wrangling our 8-month-old into bed on a Friday night, the last thing I want to do is cook. But I wanted to make sure we stayed true to our pledge to kick the can this month, so I geared myself up to ask the order-taker if any canned goods go into my pies.
As I placed the call, I crossed my fingers and hoped that our local pizza place only used fresh ingredients.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. While the pineapple was fresh, canned tomatoes do go into the sauce. I called around to a couple of other places. Either they used cans or couldn't say for sure if they did or not.
It looked like we were out of luck.
Then my husband had an idea…what if we just ask for olive oil and fresh tomatoes on the pizza instead of sauce? Brilliant!
It was good (and can-free!), though I still missed my usual pizza.
Fortunately, you can find tomatoes in Tetra Paks instead of cans so I'm hoping my pizza parlor will make the switch soon—and I'll encourage it! Until then, I might try my hand at making pizza at home.
The thing is, I shouldn't have to make these calls in the first place and small businesses shouldn't have to worry about losing business because their suppliers use a toxic liner in their cans. It's time for canned food manufacturers to wake up and stop using BPA in their products. Join us in pledging to kick the can and sending a message to these companies!
Well, I think we always have to take time cooking for our selves and get the fresh ingredients.
Posted by: CNA Training | April 17, 2013 at 08:04 PM
Thank you for this comment, DaveR. We encourage the use of stainless steel and glass as the best alternatives to BPA-based plastics and resins.
We consider PET (which is used also in the inner lining of Tetra Paks) to be a better option among plastics, particularly when compared to polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene (both made up of building blocks that are carcinogens) and bisphenol A.
PET itself is not an endocrine-disrupting plastic, but other compounds are often added to PET to give it certain properties. Some of these “additives” can be endocrine disrupting compounds, and some of those mimic estrogen. However, PET can be made in a way that is not estrogenic. We find it disconcerting that consumers have no way of knowing whether plastics they purchase have hormone disrupting additives. There are dozens and dozens of approved additives, which is one of the reasons we need to reform the laws that regulate the kinds of chemicals that can be used for food packaging.
Posted by: Breast Cancer Fund | January 10, 2013 at 01:01 PM
BCF rightly voices concern about BPA, yet totes PET and Tetra Pak containers. These also contaminate food (even plain mineral water) with hormone-disrupting substances according to this study: http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/files/6628/fulltext_6.pdf .
So what is the take-away? Are cans with BPA the worse of two evils? Thanks for input! -D.
Posted by: DaveR | December 22, 2012 at 03:03 PM
Great idea, but we need to remember that there might be BPA in the lining of the pizza delivery box or in the cash register receipt you might take when you pick up the 'za! It never ends.
Posted by: Sarah @ Semi-Sweet | August 01, 2011 at 08:47 AM