There has been a rapid increase in food prices in recent years, so families now tend to buy their food in bulk. Buying canned foods may result in some serious health issues, like botulism.
Botulism is a serious form of food poison that produces critical illness and is fatal in 1/4 of all cases. Unless strict precautions are followed, home-canned food may be contaminated with the spores of Clostridium botulinum. Eating the bacteria themselves is not dangerous and does not cause the disease. In fact, a great deal of fresh food contains the spores of the bacteria which, when eaten, pass harmlessly through the digestive tract. Home canning methods usually don’t get rid of the bacteria as they can easily survive 20 hours of boiling at normal pressures. Furthermore, additional deadly toxin may be produced during the storage time.
Home canning can be carried out safely if certain procedures are carefully followed. The right combination of pressure and temperature can kill the botulinum organism so it is always recommended to use a pressure cooking device which can kill the organism during the canning process. Boiling your home-canned food is a simple precaution if you want to make your food safe to eat.
If you boil the deadly toxin for 10 minutes or more, it will be made harmless, though the bacteria itself cannot be destroyed by the process of boiling. In order to destroy the deadly toxin, you must see to it that every food particle reaches its boiling point.
The important thing to remember is that you have to keep the right proportions of acid to low-acid ingredients for the products to be safe. If there isn’t enough acid, bacteria will grow and botulism could result. Deaths due to botulism from home canned tomatoes and from tomato pepper sauce have occurred.
You can lower the acidity by putting low-acid vegetables into your tomato juice, for instance. So you need to add extra acid in the form of vinegar or lemon juice.
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