My son loves to eat. Eating is not a problem. It’s WHAT he will eat that drives me bonkers at about 6:30pm every evening. In other words…he’s a picky eater. One thing he does love without question, however, is tomato soup—he would eat it every single day if he could, preferably with one of my “bestest ever” grilled cheese sandwiches.
When I first started making him tomato soup, Campbell’s was carried a non-canned box version and it was perfect. I could cook some just for him without opening a whole can and refrigerate the rest and because it was in a Tetra-Pak, it was free of the BPA found in almost all can linings. Then one day the boxes of Campbell’s tomato soup disappeared from my store shelves, never to return.
We went months without any tomato soup and in that time, I fielded a lot of forlorn requests for my son’s fave food. I didn’t know what to do but I knew I didn’t want to serve the canned stuff because the acid in tomato products causes the BPA to leech out of the can liners and right into the food itself.
On a lark, I decided to try one of the other boxed soups in the organic section of the grocery store. At the time, they didn’t have any tomato so I hesitantly got some organic creamy butternut squash soup by Pacific Natural Foods instead and tucked it away in my cabinet. One day when I found myself completely out of any fruits or vegetables to have with dinner and decided to serve the butternut squash soup. My kids? THEY LOVED IT! BOTH OF THEM! This was huge because usually if you find something awesome that one kid loves, there’s some universal law that insures the other will not.
So, I bought the butternut squash a few more times and then one day, the soup gods smiled upon me for right there, on the shelf, was Pacific Natural Foods organic creamy TOMATO SOUP!!! in the BPA-free box. Very long story short—I bought it, we ate it, everyone including my son loved it!
Since then, I keep a variety of Pacific organic boxed soups in my cabinet, including organic chicken broth, which I use in various recipes and to make (semi) homemade chicken soup and my son has tomato soup just about whenever he wants it, totally free of hormone-disrupting BPA.
Find It Here: Pacific Natural Foods can be found in most organic grocery sections, at natural food stores, Whole Foods and in money-saving bulk at Amazon.com.
Bonus: Get coupons from Pacific
Update: I’m not sure of the accuracy of this article on the safety (or lack thereof) of Tetra-Paks but it’s worth sharing. You can read and decide for yourself.
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Oh, this makes me happy too. I’ve just been recently lamenting over our fave soups being BPA-laden & wondering what to do. I never even thought of this style of packaging for soup! I am not sure such a thing exists in my small town in northern Alberta but I will definitely be looking for these options next time I go.
Do you know if all boxed versions of soup and other liquid products are BPA-free, or is it sometimes used in the linings of these boxes? I have been trying to find out and can’t find an answer. Thanks.
All boxes (like the kind for soups, tomato sauces etc) that are made by Tetra Pak are BPA-Free. It should say Tetra Pak somewhere on the box.
Thanks for the article. I’ve read elsewhere that though the liners in these boxes don’t contain BPA, they do contain other chemicals that may be just as bad as BPA or even worse. Do you have any thoughts on that? At this point I’m wondering if the only truly safe soup is soup that we make & can in Ball jars ourselves…. :(