Daily Loaf

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about BPA (Bisphenol-A) being found in plastic bottles and food containers and its harmful effects on humans, it also being linked to causing aggressive behavior in children. Use of this chemical has been banned in Canada and in some parts of the US.

Now you don’t have to look much further to get your daily dose of BPA – just open a can of soup or tuna! Tests recently performed by Consumer Reports showed traces of BPA in almost all of the 19 name-brand cans of soup, tuna, vegetables, and juice. There were even some cans labeled “BPA-free” that contained the chemical. And don’t think your organic canned foods are safe either – the chemical showed up in some of those as well.
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This month, Consumer Reports puts their enormous resources to work tasting pre-fab, packaged chocolate chip cookies from 13 manufacturers, with nine classified as “good”: Nabisco’s Chips Ahoy! Real Chocolate and Real Chocolate Reduced Fat, Trader Joe’s Dress Circle Crispy Crunchy, Back to Nature Chocolate Chunk, Pepperidge Farm Nantucket Soft Baked Chocolate Chunk Dark, Mrs. Fields Semi-Sweet, Newman’s Own Organics Champion Chip Cookies, and Famous Amos Bite Size.

But the big winners were: Keebler Chips Deluxe Original (”a little like shortbread”) and Health Valley’s Mini (”buttery”).

They also ran down the best standing mixers, for those who deign to make their own cookies from scratch. No surprise, KitchenAid won the testing.

Full Consumer Reports press release after the break: Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone in the Bay area needs to pay attention to this if we’re going to win Most Caffeinated again this year:

Need to curb your $5 daily coffee habit, or need a desk-top alternative to crappy office Joe? After testing 34 different coffee makers, Consumer Reports has picked the unlikely, curvy, blue-adorned coffee maker from Target (inevitably designed by Michael Graves) as the best of the bunch. And it clocks in at a mere $40.

See below for CR’s take on coffee grinders and 100% Columbian coffee, too:

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