Did you know? Bisphenol A (BPA), a high-volume industrial chemical, is routinely used in plastic food, water containers and even the lining of food and drink cans.
With the widespread use of BPA, exposure has been connected to dietary behaviors and poor health outcomes, including miscarriage, disrupted immune function, obesity, cardiovascular disease and breast cancer, according to the paper titled “Dietary Quality and Bisphenols: Trends in Bisphenol A, F, and S Exposure in Relation to the Healthy Eating Index Using Representative Data from the NHANES 2007–2016.”
Given the public health concerns about BPA, there have been some policy regulations restricting BPA in food-related products. Manufacturers have started removing BPA from their supply. However, newer bisphenols, such as bisphenol F (BPF) and bisphenol S (BPS), have been developed as substitutes.
Consequently, BPF and BPS have also contributed to harmful effects on health. Limited research has looked at how the substitutes are linked to dietary intake, according to the paper, co-authored by Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health Assistant Professor Devon Payne-Sturges.
She—along with Idaho State’s Irene van Woerden, Arizona State’s Corrie M. Whisner and Arizona State’s Meg Bruening—explored how the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), the healthy American diet, the Mediterranean diet, the vegetarian diet and other dietary quality behaviors are related to BPA and the newer substitutes in a representative sample of US adults.
HEI is a “gold standard for quantifying dietary quality, and scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating healthier diets,” the article said.
The researchers found that healthier diets were associated with limited exposure to BPA but not BPF or BPS. To the team’s knowledge, their study is the first to assess how a comprehensive nutritional quality score is associated with bisphenol chemical exposures.
Existing analyses solely focus on specific foods as a source of exposure. However, that doesn’t provide an accurate representation of people’s whole diets, Payne-Sturges added.
More research is required examining dietary quality and food groups to “understand and minimize exposure to bisphenols and maximize nutrition-related health outcomes,” the paper explained.
“Based on our work, if people follow a healthy diet, they can minimize their exposures to these endocrine-disrupting chemicals,” Payne-Sturges said.
The paper was published in April 2021 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It is an extension of earlier work with the same collaborators examining social disparities in exposure to BPA.
Related Links