Just goes to show--what was once thought of as safe....MEN article

[freemotion]

Love ya, Pat, but have to disagree on this one.

There is really no reason why we can't have some of it both ways. Tomatoes can be in glass jars. If they are sold in canning jars, as they were years ago, the jars will be recycled, especially if people catch on the the fact that people like me will pay them to save their jars for me.

There are preservative methods that don't cause the health issues, they cost a bit more, but save lots of money in the long run in health care costs.

If there are viable alternatives, I see no reason to take the risks. Many of these things build up in our bodies, our built-in systems for detoxing can't handle the loads that are thrown at us today.

The last time I had pets vaccinated for rabies, one of the cats and the dog, they both had seizures for the next few weeks. Cheap preservatives in the batch, obviously. And my cats don't leave the house. I don't vaccinate them anymore. The dog is another matter, he is at higher risk with his avid hunting.

We are an intellegent society.....at least that is the theory....so I see no reason why we can't reduce or eliminate risk when we discover it. We got rid of DDT. BPA's are relatively new. As are hydrogenated fats, HFCS, soy foods in their current forms....all things we can live (longer and healthier) without.

Yes, I am happy to have things like NICU's and properly used anti-biotics and surgical techniques, cancer treatments and the like. But we are not discussing life-saving necessities here. We are talking about money-saving non-necessities that are poisoning us.

I'll pay a bit more for a safer lunch. Or make my own.

 

[patandchickens]

Oh, I totally agree with you Free, there ARE things we can (and, using common sense, should) do to reduce risk in life. (Cannot *eliminate* risk altogether, except by trading over to a different kind of risk)

And as more is learned about what the risks are, our decisions will change accordingly. No argument there!

But you know. Originally, there was no canning. This was unfortunate because vegetables etc were pretty hard to preserve for winter use and for travel, especially if you didn't want to lose most of their nutritional value. So then canning was invented. Woo hoo! Of course sometimes it gave you botulism and you died. So methods of pressure-canning (for low-sugar low-acid items) were developed. This was nice, but canning things in metal cans was a useful further development because it was cheaper (on an industrial scale) and improved some storage properties (b/c no light gets in) and, most importantly, transports WAY better than glass does. So more people can access more off-season vegetables using metal cans than glass jars. Unfortunately using lead solder leaching into food killed or sickened a lot of people. So other can designs were invented that did not use lead solder (although there ARE still a number of lead soldered cans being used today). Metals used for the cans were improved. Linings (like the white plastic layer inside tomato and tomato-sauce cans) were developed to allow long-term storage of high-acid things that would otherwise look/taste weird and lose nutritional value as they reacted with the can metal. Now high-acid products could be safely and effectively stored for longer AND more cheaply, as compared to normal cans or glass.

Since no risk was at the time known from the can lining (epoxies have always been regarded as quite chemically inert), and it serves a valuable purpose better than other alternatives, was that really such a stupid thing for them to use?

It's a process. Like anything else. It continues.

Frankly, I think that realistically if tomatoes and other high-acid foods were only sold in glass jars, next to none of those jars would be reused for home canning etc, no higher fraction would be recycled (as glass) than currently exists for the metal cans, and the tomatoes would definitely cost more than they do today. Since unfortunately the most widespread attitude is that food should be dirt-cheap, fewer people would EAT canned tomatoes and similar products, they'd just head out to McDonalds instead

I would think that things will probably continue to change, perhaps back towards glass in some situations, perhaps with some mfr coming out with BPA-free canning lids (although that seems to me like it would just be a cold calculating gimmick if it happened, unlikely to be of practical significance), perhaps with a new can lining being developed (until, someday, *it* turns out to have some sort of risk associated with it).


Pat

 

[freemotion]

I hear ya. What frightens me the most is the lack of choices for those few of us who choose to be informed. It is getting harder and harder to find basic, healthy ingredients. Now I am hearing that the new silver-tone canning lids don't hold up in the pressure canner! They crumple!

 

[freemotion]

Gonna start a thread on glass top jars and pressure canning and see what we come up with. Watch for it, please!