You have seen the badge. A little logo on the lid, or a line on the packaging: BPA-free.
It is meant to settle the question. For most people, it does.
We are not going to use it. Not on our packaging, not on our product pages, not in our ads — and we think it is worth explaining exactly why, because the reason is the entire reason this company exists.
First, what BPA actually is
Bisphenol A is an industrial chemical that has been used since the 1950s to make polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. It has been in water bottles, food containers, the lining of tinned food, and till receipts.
Over the 2000s, research raised questions about whether it could interfere with the endocrine system. Regulators looked at it. Consumers heard about it. And by around 2010, “BPA” had become a word people avoided on a shelf.
The industry responded quickly — and this is the part worth paying attention to.
What “BPA-free” actually promises
It promises exactly one thing: this product does not contain bisphenol A.
That is all. It is a statement about the absence of one specific molecule.
It does not say what was used instead.
What replaced it
In many cases, another bisphenol. Bisphenol S. Bisphenol F. Bisphenol AF. Chemically related compounds, structurally similar, and — crucially — far less studied, because they are newer.
A product made with bisphenol S is, truthfully and legally, BPA-free.
The epidemiologist Shanna Swan has a word for this pattern. She calls it whack-a-mole: you remove the compound that people have learned to worry about, and substitute one they haven’t learned to worry about yet.
We want to be careful here, because this is exactly the point where a brand like ours would normally start frightening you. We are not going to.
We are not telling you that bisphenol S is dangerous. We do not know that, and neither does anyone else with certainty — that is rather the problem. What we are telling you is narrower, and we think more useful:
“BPA-free” does not mean “no questions.” It means “not that question.”
The regulation is now catching up — to the original question
In December 2024 the EU adopted Regulation (EU) 2024/3190, which bans BPA and, notably, a list of other bisphenols in food-contact materials — explicitly including reusable containers and bottles. The general sell-through deadline falls in July 2026.
Read that again. The regulators did not just ban BPA. They went after the substitutes too.
Which tells you something about how much the original reassurance was worth.
This is a fact, and we are reporting it as one. It is not a claim that anyone was harmed. It is simply what happened.
Why we won’t print it on a box
Three reasons.
1. It is a claim with a shelf life. “BPA-free” was the confident answer of 2012. It is now the answer that regulators have spent a decade walking back. Any reassurance defined by what a product does not contain is one substitution away from being the wrong reassurance again.
2. It is their vocabulary. If we say “BPA-free,” we are playing on a board that plastic manufacturers built, using a term they introduced, in a game whose rules they will change again. We would rather not play.
3. It doesn’t apply to us anyway. There is no plastic in a Stainless Co. container to be free of BPA. Saying “BPA-free steel” would be like advertising sugar-free water. Technically true, and quietly ridiculous.
What we say instead
Not what is absent. What is present.
Two materials. Both named.
304 food-grade stainless steel, and one food-grade silicone seal. That is the entire list, across everything we sell — lids and bottle caps included.
That is a claim you can check in ten seconds, and it cannot expire. A list of what is in something does not need to be revised when a new compound falls out of favour. There is nothing to substitute.
If a third material ever appears in one of our products, it will go on the page before it goes in the box.
The honest summary
- “BPA-free” is true. It is also narrow, and it was never the promise you thought it was.
- We are not telling you plastic is harming you. Nobody can tell you that honestly, and the brands that pretend otherwise are selling you fear at a markup.
- We are telling you that the answer keeps changing — and that you have been the one expected to keep up.
- There is a material that closes the question instead of renaming it. That is all steel is. Not a miracle. Just stable, and finished being debated.
You should not have to be a chemist to feed your family. The burden of proof belongs to the material, not to you.
See what actually touches your food →
Food should be stored without doubt.