Most canned food these days have a plastic coating inside the can to supposedly keep the food, vegetables, and fruits – fresh. Eating of canned foods is also seen to be in vogue in Bangladesh.Well, it may keep themseemingly more fresh, but this can comes at the expense of harming the consumers.
The inner plastic lining is poisonous at small measures, although the USA authority FDA tells us that the small amounts should not worry us too much. Well this plastic coating is Bisphenol or BPA for short and it is harmful, first because humans are not supposed to eat plastic material made from crude oil and second because FDA should be honest and tell people the truth rather than serve the interests of big corporations. FDAgets large sums of money through back channel donations and hidden funds through partner organizationsto promote BPA.

BPA kills rats in laboratories even at smaller portions, like 1,000 times less than what an average American consumes per meal. I hope soon FDA would do a U-turn on this and come clean and tell people about the harm to humans caused by BPA like they do periodically about drugs which they have claimed for decades to be safe, only to tell us now that they were not safe. I just hope it does not take decades before they try to protect the public against BPA. BPA is a toxic chemical that causeshormone imbalances and wide variety of health issues ranging from hypertension, aggression, obesity to cancer and heart disease. Based on FDA 17% of the American diet comes from canned foods yet there are no regulation or safety standards regarding the amount of BPA in canned foods. A study by an Environmental Working Group shows that more than 50% of cans with brand names have toxic BPA in them.

Imported canned food is even worse than American canned food. In many countries where canned food is cheaper than Europe, Canada and USA, American food corporations are more and more importing to make higher profits, the canned food is even less nutritious than their counterparts in Europe and North America. First the foods are picked when they are not ripe and have 80 % less nutrients than fully ripe fruits and vegetables. Second, the facilities are not as hygienic and inspected on a regular basis as their counterparts in Europe and North America and hence have the cause of incidences of outbreaks in the last 20 years, like the famous incident regarding canned green beans from Brazil or the salmonella outbreak from sprouts from Columbia.

Just as aluminum pots and pans leak, so do aluminum cans. Over a period of timealuminium accumulation in human body can cause memory problem likeAlzheimer’s. More than 5,000 million pounds of aluminum is used every year for making food cans in USA. Aluminum cans have several advantages for the producer including light weight, compact packaging and lower price. Most canned foods like soups, vegetables, chicken or beef broth and tomato sauces are made of aluminum because it’s more economical.

Some believe that the plastic lining of the aluminum cans are supposed to prevent corrosion and contaminating food with aluminum. But the reality is that most of the time these plastic liners can’t completely protect food against aluminum since cans leak aluminum when heated and while they are sealed – they will contaminate.

The lovely, not so friendly, preservatives. They are referred to in a dozen different names, and every few months, a new name is established for the same few ingredients that are mixed up to come up with friendly-sounding names.

These preservatives are kept in state of non-compounding to other molecules with salt. Extensive amount of sodium (salt) is used to keep the preservatives in canned food from rotting so that it can keep the food from rotting. Lovely. FDA responds to all this by simply issued a statement, “… there has been no proof that these preservatives would cause major damage to human cells or that they are harmful to mass public”. The interpretation of uncompromised experts is ,”these preservatives are not drastically harmful towards healthy people, but they may be harmful to pregnant women, babies, children, elderly, or anyone who is suffering from a chronic disease”.

Let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that if the fruits and vegetables and other ingredients are of high quality, they will be sold fresh and for the highest price possible for a maximum of profit by the distributors. Now if the quality of the ingredients are not that great or the fruits and vegetables look old and stale or not so healthy, then they will be hidden from the eyes of supermarket shoppers and be forced into a can along with other such low quality food, cooked up in a mass oven and then shipped all over the world and sold may be one or two years later from when they were picked and were prepared. Therefore, don’t expect the ingredients inside your canned foods to be of high quality.

So, completely eliminate canned foods and if you are looking for your favorite tomato sauce use the ones in glass jars. Don’t consume vegetables or grains in cans, simply buy , nervous system disorder and Alzheimer’s goes down by consuming fresh foods that do not have any packaging.

The above is written with the aim of alerting our Bangladeshi consumers in time while on the plea of modernity, changing lifestyle and convenience( they are opting increasingly for canned foods), for them to shun this trend to be able to avoid the consequences of such hazardous consumption like their counterparts in developed countries.