Is it bad for your health to drink beer from a can?

The beer can is becoming more and more popular because of its many advantages.

1. Perfect opacity to protect the hops from the light.

2. Easy storage with the possibility of stacking more

3. Less pollution regarding transport (weight and storage)

4. Larger surface to decorate the support and communicate the brand to consumers

5. Virtually infinite recycling

6. Solidity

But what exactly is a can made of?

Aluminium and plastic.

The outside is made of aluminium and there is a thin food-grade plastic film on the inside which protects the beer from contact with the aluminium.

Aluminium is toxic to health.

The ASEF (Association de la santé et de l'environnement en France) warns us that aluminium in food packaging can migrate to food when heated and if the food is acidic. As for soda cans, ASEF recommends checking the DLUO (Best Before Date) because the longer the liquid remains in the can, the higher the risk of contamination.

The EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) has set the maximum weekly dose not to be exceeded at 1 mg/kg, while affirming that this limit would be exceeded by a significant part of the population: the exposure of Europeans would be between 0.2 and 1.5 mg/kg/week.

It should also be noted that aluminium production is dangerous for workers. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified the process of aluminum production as a definite (Group 1) human carcinogen (IARC, 1987) in favour of an increased risk of lung and bladder cancer in aluminum workers.

Aluminum production is harmful to the environment.

Aluminium is made from bauxite, which is extracted with great effort. The United States imports almost all of it from Australia, Guinea and Jamaica, where the environmental consequences of these mining operations are highly controversial.

In an article published in Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts, Christopher Exley, a professor at the University of Keele (UK), sounds the alarm about our exposure to aluminium. It's a recent phenomenon on a human scale: we've been exploiting aluminium industrially for less than two centuries. Now the most widely consumed metal after iron, demand for aluminium has increased 30-fold since 1950. It could double again by 2050. But most of the aluminium produced comes from new mining, not recycling.

Because of the environmental damage caused by the extraction of bauxite, making a conventional aluminium can costs twice as much energy as a glass bottle of the same size: 2.07 kilowatt hours of electricity compared to 1.09 kilowatt hours. However, the overall energy balance of the can is better than that of the (single-use) glass bottle, because recycling a can uses much less energy. Experts seem to agree that the glass bottle that is reused several times remains the best ecological solution.

The plastic film inside the can is an endocrine disruptor.

As mentioned above, there is a thin food-grade plastic film inside the can that protects its contents from contact with aluminium. But what is this plastic film made of? Is it harmless to our health?

According to INERIS (the National Institute for Industrial Environment and Risks, France) the transparent film lining the inside of beverage cans is a plastic based on BPA (bisphenol A), the famous endocrine disruptor that has been highly controversial for almost a quarter of a century. Banned in France in 2015, it is still authorised in Switzerland and the United States. In 2017, the European Chemicals Agency classified bisphenol A as a substance of very high concern, reinforcing the use of alternatives, mainly bisphenol S. Researchers in Toulouse have shown in a study that bisphenol S (BPS), a substitute for the controversial bisphenol A, persists longer in the body and at higher concentrations in animals, raising doubts about the consequences for human health.

According to the results of a study from the University of Newcastle (Australia) published in June 2019, an average individual could ingest up to 5 grams of plastic each week, equivalent to the weight of a credit card. The sources of this contamination are diverse but very often linked to plastic packaging and containers. The results indicate that water, shellfish, beer and salt are the products with the highest plastic content among the products studied.

Beverage cans can be very dangerous because of the microbes they carry.

Indeed, cans are stored in warehouses, not always protected from dust and other contaminants. When you put your lips on the can, or even if you pour the beer into a glass, the metal part on the outside is in contact with the beer and the microbes on it can contaminate the beer.

Some producers add a plastic film around the cans to protect them from microbial contamination. But this solution still adds plastic and is harmful to the environment.

In short, the growing use of cans to contain our beer is a major concern for our health and also for the environment.

Cans will not reduce the amount of plastic used in our packaging. People who thought they could reduce the amount of plastic by buying cans instead of plastic bottles will be disappointed.

Brewers, could you please review your packaging policy and continue to favour glass bottles (preferably reusable).

In the list of the healthiest containers, glass has a prominent place. Composed of only three natural raw materials (sand, sodium carbonate and limestone), it is 100% impenetrable. It thus prevents any reaction with external elements such as humidity and heat, and allows for optimal preservation of vitamins and minerals, except for some light-related losses. In addition, it prevents the migration of foreign substances into the food, while preserving its taste.

It is also an environmentally friendly container, as long as it is reused rather than recycled each time it is used. Recycling glass is very energy-intensive, but as energy becomes more and more renewable (solar energy, for example), it will no longer be a problem to recycle glass.

For a high quality beer with refermentation in the bottle, only the glass bottle with cork is optimal. Refermentation is not possible in cans.

Choosing 75cl bottles reduces the amount of packaging per litre of beer compared to the smaller 25cl or 33cl containers.

This is why we have chosen the 75cl bottle at Beermyguest.ch: all beers are offered exclusively in this format for optimal quality.