Soup is good food. It’s especially good for weight loss. Bob Barnett and Barbara Rolls based the best-selling Volumetrics around the idea that dishes low in calories (i.e., lots of water) and slow-to-eat (i.e., soup!) were the best for losing weight. There’s something to that.
It’s a cruel paradox, then, that a new JAMA report on BPA shows a level 12x higher (a 1200 percent increase) in eaters 12 hours after they ate 12 ounces of any of 5 Progresso canned vegetable soups, than when they ate homemade vegetable soup.
It is little known that the obesity epidemic coincides with a similarly linear increase in industrial chemicals–endocrine disruptors that act as estrogens in the body–over the past decades. Coincidence? I doubt it.
BPA may be stored in fat. It interacts with a thyroid hormone receptor, potentially slowing metabolism. BPA acts as a weak estrogen in the body, causing men to lose some ability to build muscle and metabolize sugar. In the lab and in animals, BPA acts as an androgen receptor antagonist. Men need testosterone to build muscle and keep weight off. In all adults, BPA is associated with heart disease and diabetes.
Why do we have BPA? It protects plastics and prevents the inside of cans from rusting. But it may also prevent you from losing weight.
Are there canned alternatives? Yes: you can buy BPA-free Eden beans, Crown Prince salmon and Muir Glen tomatoes; you can buy BPA-free Earth’s Best baby food and travel mugs; you can buy BPA-free espresso makers and jet soda makers.
But there is no alternative to knowing what’s in your food, and to beginning to look at how what’s in your food changes your weight.