September/October 2010 Issue

Which Canned Goods Contain the Most BPA?

The surprising list.

Stephen St-Maurice/iStockphoto.com

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Read also: Plastic liners leach BPA into our food. So why have manufacturers and regulators failed to act?

CONSUMERS UNION recommends ingesting no more than .0011 micrograms of BPA daily per pound of body weight. But it found at least 20 times the limit for a typical adult in a single serving of several canned foods it tested.

 

Product/Model BPA PER SERVING (AVERAGE IN MICROGRAMS) EXCEEDS DAILY LIMIT BY A FACTOR OF
Progresso Vegetable Soup 22.0 115
Del Monte Blue Lake Fresh Cut Green Beans 14.9 77
Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup 10.2 53
Annie’s Home Grown Organic Cheesy Ravioli 7.70 39
Hormel Chili with Beans 6.10 31
Green Giant Whole Kernel Sweet Corn 3.80 19
Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli in Tomato Meat Sauce 2.50 12
Nestle Juicy Juice All Natural 100% Juice Apple 2.3 11
Libby’s Corned Beef 1.8 8
Vital Choice Tuna 1.15 5
Similac Advance Infant Formula (concentrated, liquid) 0.85 3
Slim Fast High Protein (extra creamy chocolate, liquid) 0.78 3
Bush’s Best Original Baked Beans 0.6 2
Swanson White Premium Chunk Chicken Breast 0.47 1
Starkist Chunk Light Tuna in Water 0.2 Less than Limit
Valley Fresh White Chicken in Water Organic 0.19 Less than Limit
Eden Baked Beans with Sorghum & Mustard Organic 0.15 Less than Limit
Hunt’s Tomato Sauce 0.04 Less than Limit

Source: Consumers Union; based on limit for a 173 lb. adult.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate