Would you like a side of Estrogen?

So I knew I was supposed to avoid BPA but I had no idea why.  

Sometime around the birth of my second son I became aware of the fact that I did not want BPA in his products.  If all the other new mommies were freaking out, I figured I should too.  So I bought him some glass bottles and made sure his plastic sippy cups were BPA free.  That ought to do it, right?


Yeah, not so much.  When I finally read more about BPA, I wanted to throw sh*t at the sky.  BPA is found in plastics - including food and drink containers, in the linings of canned foods and beverages, the linings of takeout containers and food wrappers, and on receipts from the store.  BPA leaches into our food and drinks and has been linked to "infertility, breast and reproductive system cancer, obesity, diabetes, early puberty, behavioral changes in children and resistance to chemotherapy treatments".  This really shouldn't be a surprise since BPA was originally designed 80 years ago as synthetic estrogen. That's right, we are all ingesting synthetic estrogen from multiple sources and the cumulative effects of this on our health is serious. 

Once I stopped screaming, I decided to start by getting rid of as much plastic in our kitchen as I could, whether or not it contained BPA:

• Since you shouldn't microwave in plastic containers, I figured I didn't want to make my morning coffee by forcing hot water through plastic every day.  But mornings at our house would make you wonder if the children had just arrived in our lives that very morning.  I knew whatever I bought needed to be as easy as a drip coffee maker.  I settled on an old-school electric percolator - a stainless steel Presto for $42 on Amazon - and I love it!  Very easy and makes a nice, clean cup of coffee.
• Next, I replaced all of our plastic food storage containers with a set of glass containers.  I bought a set similar to these Glasslock Snapware for about $40 at Costco.  To be honest, the lids make me nuts because they are all over the place and you can never find the right one.  If I could do it all over again, I wish I had gotten something like these Pyrex ones.
• I like to leap without looking and I started serving the kids food and drinks using our everyday glassware and dishes.  When my three year old dropped a glass and it shattered into a million tiny pieces, I needed a better solution.  On one of my favorite sites - 100 Days of Real Food - Lisa Leake has a list of her kitchen essentials which included these great Durex tumblers which are 5 times as strong as regular glass.  For $19.95 my problems were solved - they are the perfect size for little hands...or for late night ice cream once the kids are sleeping.
• I also replaced our plastic cutting boards with some bamboo ones that I found at Target.
• Finally, my husband found a good resource on canned goods that are not lined with BPA: http://bpafreecannedfood.wordpress.com/bpa-free-canned-food-brands/. 

If you are skeptical, I don't blame you.  The data is conflicting, confusing and correlational.  What I do know for a fact is that limiting my family's exposure to BPA isn't going to make us less healthy.  There are simple steps that can be taken fairly inexpensively.  For a more reasoned approach than my BPA hysteria, check out this article.