LStump and Tom, Saying that eating sugar and grain is the direct cause of obesity does not conflict with saying that BPA is the source of the problem.

According to Dr Atkins, we gain weight when the glucose available in our blood and the insulin we produce do not balance up correctly. Being exposed to BPA for a long time is suspected to be the cause for our bodies' inability to make this balance happen.

If we were normal (fortunately some people still are), our bodies could have been able to manage the balance properly and we could have been able to eat as much carbs as we like without gaining weight.

triple-post cleanup

fat fingers

If BPA is found in 95% of people's blood at levels high enough for it to have estrogenic effects, then how come 95% of people aren't exhibiting these effects?

I don't think we could ever eat "as much carbs as we want" without gaining weight, simply because carbs make you want more carbs and that snowballs into excess calories and fat storage.

Your version of what Atkins says, is a bit skewed too. Its not a matter of insulin and glucose not "matching up". Its a matter of insulin receptors "wearing out" from constant bombardment. The system wasn't designed to handle the throughput of the Standard American Diet.

Are you sure they're not?

Nancy, I don't think more than 66.8% of the men I see have man-boobs. I'm borderline myself, a little more plastic and I'd never leave the house. But there is a suspicious amount of interest in ballroom dancing and cooking shows these days. So you may have a point.

If I grow a uterus, I'll give in and join the anti-BPA campaign.

LOL!

Be sure to watch out for the lavendar and tea tree oil, those will make your man boobs more womanly.

Some people can resist more than others. Even the Cholera epidemic could not get everybody. Also, we don't eat more carbs now than we used to. Actually, we eat much less.

2000 years ago, at the time of Jesus, bread has been the main food for everybody. You can easily know that when you say the phrase "Give us this day our daily bread" among your prayers.

Actually at that time, meat has been only for the rich. Poor people have been eating mostly nothing but bread. Most people have probably been getting over 400 carbs a day. The Romans used to feed their soldiers plenty of bread too.

The bread of long ago, has been extremely dense and loaded with carbs. It was nothing like the spongy bread which people eat today.

The problem with BPA was not invented by Vom Saal. Actually, it was discovered by a medical research center in Spain where they sprayed some mice with the chemical and found out that they became extremely obese. Saal has followed with some research by his own, but the ban against BPA by the city governments of San Francisco and New York has not been based upon his research.

The human body could not have a design flaw. Therefore, you can't say "carbs make you eat more carbs" unless if you have an explanation to why this could be good for you. If you can't find such explanation, you must assume that your body's behaviour is due to a damage. The people who are blaming "BPA" are trying to find what could have caused that damage.

New BPA free plastic

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/...031/LIFESTYLE01

http://www.csrwire.com/News/8403.html

Apple and Dell Computer companies will replace unsafe plastic.

5.03.2007 - 11:04amET

News from: Investor Environmental Health Network

Trillium Asset Management Congratulates Apple on Moving into Environmental Leaders' Circle

Firm Withdraws Shareholder Resolution on Safer Materials

(CSRwire) Boston, MA -May 3, 2007 - Trillium Asset Management (http://trilliuminvest.com), filer of a shareholder resolution pending on the May 10 proxy at Apple, Inc., today applauds Apple and CEO Steve Jobs on their newly disclosed commitments (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple) to using environmentally safer materials in Apple products. Trillium announced that it is withdrawing the resolution, which requested a corporate report on safer materials policies from consideration at Apple's shareholder meeting.

The Trillium shareholder resolution appearing on the Apple proxy asks the Apple Board of Directors to publish a report on the feasibility of "adopting a policy of becoming a leader in the use of safe materials, by eliminating persistent and bioaccumulative toxic chemicals, and all types of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics, in all Apple products, including an expeditious timetable to end the use of all BFRs and PVC."

Said Shelley Alpern, Vice President of Trillium Asset Management, "With Apple’s new commitment to eliminate PVC and BFR’s in all products in 2008, the company has taken its rightful place in the environmental leaders’ circle." By contrast, Dell has announced that it plans to eliminate these two chemicals by 2009. "With Apple's announced plan to eliminate BFR's and PVC in 2008 they have addressed the most specific issue raised by our resolution. Now, we're looking forward to seeing Apple move from aspiration to implementation, as its new, less toxic products enter the marketplace over the next year."

"Apple’s announcement makes its chemical policies far more transparent," added Sanford Lewis, attorney and author of the resolution. "This is great news for the environment and for Apple computer users," said Lewis. "As a longtime Apple user myself, I'm looking forward to obtaining a greener Apple just as soon as they're available."

Lewis noted that the company's next frontiers will be to reinforce the steps announced May 2 with a "commitment to eliminate all persistent and bioaccumulative toxic chemicals" and to adoption of the "precautionary principle" as an operative principle of design, thereby cementing Apple's leadership role.

Trillium Asset Management is a member of the Investor Environmental Health Network, a group of financial managers and advisors who are actively monitoring the risks and opportunities posed by toxic chemicals in products of their portfolio companies. The withdrawal of the resolution due to successful completion of dialogue with Apple follows several other successes by IEHN at other companies. Resolutions were filed and later withdrawn at Mohawk Carpets (on PFOA and PVC), CVS and Johnson & Johnson (on safer cosmetics), Conagra (on PFOA), Sears (on PVC), and Whole Foods (on Bisphenol A and other hormone disrupting substances). Shareholder and business efforts to address these safer materials issues are described in documents and reports at http://iehn.org and in a recently released 20 minute video online at http://video.investorenvironmentalhealthnetwork.org.

While the safer materials resolution continues to appear on the proxy ballot, Trillium will not present the resolution in the May 10 shareholder meeting.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, I'm just curious about something. The toxic element added to plastics that this thread is talking about is added to soften the plastic, right? So those silicon bread/muffin moulds I see around, are they softened with silicon instead? Or a huge dose of the toxic stuff? Or a mix??

Thanks in advance,
e

Maine Lawmakers Look to Ban Plastic Used in Baby Bottles.

By Fred Bever on Thursday, May 3, 2007.

Baby bottles, toys and other items used by very young children may contain a potentially dangerous chemical. That's according to some scientific studies. Other scientists say that's not so, and a debate is about to break out in Maine's legislature. Some lawmakers there want to ban sales of items that contain the suspect chemical, called bisphenol-A. Maine Public Radio's Fred Bever reports.

Bisphenol-A could be part of the formula except that I'm not an expert on this subject.

A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control tested a demographically diverse group of almost 400 Americans for evidence of exposure to BPA and found that 95% of study participants had the chemical in their urine. (Calafat 2205; Wolff 2007) BPA has been linked to a variety of health outcomes which are prevalent and in many cases increasing in the United States and responsible for a major toll on our collective health. These include breast and prostate cancer, and infertility (Maffini 2006).

BPA's toxic effects in lab animals are on the rise and common in people

Correlations only. And partially due to better screening methods, and more people undergoing screening.

I quote form the CNN article: "The presence of a chemical in blood or urine does not imply that it is causing disease." This is straight from the biomonitoring people at CDC.

And the pregnant rats were treated with 500mg per kg body weight PER DAY to see effects. Know what that converts to for a human weighing 100kg? A gram of phthalate PER DAY. Freakin' ridiculous. I'll bet there isn't a gram of unpolymerized phthalate in all the plastic your food comes into contact with in a day. Let alone what might leach into the food and make it through cooking.

The article in Chem & Engineering News article is interesting stuff. My take on it, is that the biomonitoring people are generating a market for themselves. They find these trace levels, and they are careful not to say that any of it causes helath problems. But enough people react to the news, that it doesn't matter. Its guilt by association.

Samuel, I think one line of reasoning behind "carbs make you want more carbs" is something like paleolithic times man would get a boost of carbs in the summer with fruits becoming ripe, this would be a time of plenty and also it was important for man to eat as much as possible to get ready for winter and food scarcity. A biochemical mechanism for this would be to boost his hunger using something that showed up at the right time of year.

As fas as Biblical tiimes goes, that is a drop in the proverbial genetic bucket (get it, biblical and proverbs). All of agriculture is just a cup in the pool of adaptive time.