When it comes to dealing with BPA, how negatively do all the prepackaged foods impact our health? While it goes without saying that I choose unpackaged foods whenever possible, a lot of products in my city inevitably come in plastic packaging—spices, cheeses, sausage, frozen meat, etc.—so even though I only use ceramic and glass containers in my home, I’ve lately been wondering whether repackaging these foods even makes a difference.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. The BPA research suggests that basically all of us—infants, kids, adults, elderly people—have detectable levels of BPA in our blood, or cord blood in the case of developing babies, and so there’s no question that we’re exposed to it, even those of us that are careful about it. From a practical perspective, I think you always have to consider the kind of 80/20 rule with these types of things. If you choose unpackaged foods for the most part, if you are using glass and ceramic and stainless steel at home, if you’re not handling receipts on a regular basis, especially just after you apply hand sanitizer to your hands, which dramatically increases the absorption of BPA from the receipts, I think you’re probably doing about as well as you can, living in a modern environment. I wouldn’t worry about it beyond that, and I don’t think the levels of BPA that you would be exposed to from that kind of lifestyle are problematic, from what I’ve seen in the literature.