San Francisco Green Product Guide: Cancer For Everyone!

The city's green police are here -- you fat, carcinogenic slob

​San Francisco doesn't just hate Happy Meal toys. It hates flour tortillas, too. The city's Department of the Environment put its eco-friendly, S.F.-approved product guide online this week, boasting a list of products that the city is mandated or highly encouraged to buy.

But San Francisco being San Francisco, they thought everyone may enjoy some advice, too. Our fearless leaders mean well, yes, and it may help us go more green. But after clicking through the site, we're reminded that: A. San Francisco preaches more than church group kids with "What would Jesus do?" bracelets, and; B. There are so many products out there that will give us cancer, we might as well end it all now and save Healthy San Francisco some money.

Check out the more entertaining -- or just plain frightening -- dictums: 

• "Avoid aerosol cans. They can allow cancer-causing tiny droplets to easily enter your lungs, eyes, skin." Beauty queens don't know what they're in for.

• When buying lubricants for your car, avoid: Tetrachloroethylene (TCE), a suspected carcinogen in aerosols. Naphtha (central nervous system depressant). Hexane (neurotoxin)." Worried yet?
  

Bottled water? Big sorry there. The mere mention of bottles has a big red "X" mark and earns the warning: "This PROHIBITED product does not meet the City's standards." Instead, you must get a "bottle-less water dispensing system," which reduces "fossil fuels used to transport bottled water."

As for food containers, the city allows an array of aluminum or paper options that can either be recycled or composted, "unlike," the web page inserts rather passive aggressively, "polystyrene foam which contains hazardous substances and suspected carcinogens." Yep, cancer again.

As far as bags, it only seems right that a city that has banned chain stores from using plastic bags would only allow itself to purchase paper ones. Yet there was one exception: the Bio Bag gets the thumbs up; a 100 percent biodegradable plastic bag. Does Walgreens get that option? 
 
Messing with people's bags may garner a complaint or two. But folks really get riled up when the city food police step in (as in the legions crying "Leave my chubby kid's Happy Meal toy in place, Eric Mar!") Well, according to the site, since July 2009, the city has been required to provide meals of certain standards if it's on the city's tab. Ahem:

Locally produced and/or sustainably certified foods;

Vegetarian option at all meals;

2+ raw vegetables each meal;

Low calorie, low-fat foods;

Small portions (e.g. Cut bagels in half);

Fat free or  1 percent milk, soy milk, 100 percent juice, water or tea (unsweetened);

Whole grain breads, rice or corn tortillas,

AVOID butter, cream sauces, fried foods, chips, fries.

In summary, healthy San Franciscans: Drop that full-size bagel, no fatty fettuccine alfredo, and, apparently, no flour tortillas. Flour tortillas? I'm feeling a scandal coming on here, maybe even a resolution calling for more cultural sensitivity to the tortilla pinwheel and Tex-Mex community. 

But don't worry too much about what you put in your mouth. In the end, it won't matter much. That aerosol can is going to give you cancer anyway -- through your nose.

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