Check out these links:
- http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/is-there-bpa-in-your-home-canning.php
- http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=921820
- http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages/home_canning_faq/42.php
- http://frugalcanning.blogspot.com/2009/09/used-jar-lids.html
That's just a small sampling.
BPA has even been found in some baby food jars! Yes, those we find at the grocery store! AND supposedly in most pre-canned products on any grocery shelf.
Those purported to have BPA in the lids/rings are Ball, Kerr, Golden Harvest, and Bernardin brands. I heard a rumor that Weck Canning jars don't have BPA but can't find confirmation on their website ... they don't even address it.
This makes me very glad that I dehydrate almost everything.
I gotta figure out an alternative to canning. It was bothering me, anyway, about how I needed to buy new lids every year. What did people do to "put up" their harvests before jars were invented?
6 comments:
Don't you wonder how "big Brother" is always trying to "watch" out for us but we have more and more products that are poisoning us. So are they really trying to help us OR are they secretly trying to kill us?
GRITS
There's are two books that are popular among the non-canning food preservationists in blog-land: Preserving Food without "Freezing or Canning" by The Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante and "Wild Fermentation" by Sandor Ellix Katz. I have tried some of the recipes in the first book... but I won't say they have all been successful. Traditional food preservation is sometimes hard to learn from a book. :/
Root cellaring and drying are a couple of the older methods.
Have you looked at the resusable canning lids? They are more money, but you wouldn't have to keep buying lids.
Also, All of hte canning companies (Ball, Kerr, etc) are owned by one company, and have been for several years.
Grits: While that is a bit paranoid, it sure can be accurate. Give pause to think.
Nicole: I'll have to track down those books. Experimenting can be fun but it's also discouraging when failures happen too often. I love dehydrating!
Prudent: I've never had a root cellar but did use my basement last year. Still have 1 more pumpkin left from harvesting Summer 2008! As I said above, I love dehydrating, and I'll just make sure I store the dried foods in a canning jar that has fabric between the jar and lid. I never did get the hang of canning but wanted to learn. I'll look into the reusable lids. Thanks. And I didn't know all the canning jar companies are owned by the same. Horrible monopoly!
Vikki
Tattler canning lids don't have BPA and they're reusable. They are, however, extremely expensive in the short-term. I'm saving up money to get them. I use vintage jars whenever possible to store dry goods - there's no BPA in a glass lid - but the supply of these is limited.
Weighing all things, home-canning is still an incredible improvement over using commercially-canned food where the BPA is throughout the jar. Home-canned food touches the lid only during the actual canning process.
In the old days they used wax. You usually find Gulf wax in the canning section at the store. I've never used it but with a little research on the internet, I'm sure you could find something.
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