Tinned tomatoes - a health risk?

[mothhawk]

I don't use a lot - gave up toms completely in the nineties when I worked out that they were one of the foods that gave me (look away chaps) instant hot flushes when I was menopausal. Now I'm a bit out of the habit - and mostly just use fresh when I have some, or what I have preserved at home. I buy the tetrapaks when I do want some, lighter to carry home and take up less shelf space.

[julesapple]

We eat a lot of tomatoes, being Italian recipe addicts. We use tetrapacks of passata (both Aldi & Lidl's are excellent) and glass jars of pasta sauce, but we also use tinned chopped toms. Maybe I'll buy cheap fresh tomatoes instead....

The BH read something this morning about ultrasound scans causing infertility in men and had a complete panic as he has regular scans of his back and, just lately, the testes as he found a lump which turned out to be a varicele. Don't know why he was panicking - we've got four children and he had a vasectomy 14 years ago......

Jules

[Alison]

Shooting off at a tangent..............as I usually do . I won't buy or drink bottled water............I am probably wrong, but always believe I can taste the plastic from the bottle.

You can taste the plastic and it's a total waste of money - the ads that claim you can be healthy by buying the bottled stuff really wind me up, especially if you live somewhere like I do where the stuff out the tap is really good - even where my mum lives on the edge of the Fens you can filter it to make it almost drinkable . Have always drunk loads of water but just have a stainless steel refillable bottle on my desk all day that doesn't taste or leach any nasties.

[binley100]

We use a lot of tinned toms supplemented by fresh or frozen home grown. I never buy dented tins and if I don't use a whole tin of something then whats left is transferred into a covered container in the fridge.
that is cos me mam used to say once the tin is opened the air can make stuff react and you can get ill ......there's always a scare going about something or another .

[mothhawk]

Does anybody know what tetrapaks are lined with? Personally I try and avoid using them as they're such a mixed up thing which doesn't recycle easily even though we can now take them to the tip I'm not exactly convinced about what they do with them

This will show you how tetrapaks are recycled

[Alison]

This will show you how tetrapaks are recycled

Interesting although I still much prefer using things that aren't such a composite as they're so much easier to make use of in the future as you don't have to use loads of energy splitting them back up again. Spend quite a bit of time looking at this sort of thing in relation to construction materials as part of my day job.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Way back when I was in the 'mob' boil in the bag had not been invented so ration packs were 90% tinned food. In the early 80s we were still using stuff that had been sent to the desert during WW2 and then brought back again.

The only test we had was to push the end of the tin, if it did not give then scran was on.

Colin

[veggiechicken]

Wos Scran?

[binley100]

scran = grub

[veggiechicken]

Why didn't Pots say that then?

[binley100]

cos it's Army and Navy speak.........
World Wide Words: Scran

[salome2001]

This will show you how tetrapaks are recycled

This does assume that your area has the facilities to recycle tetrapak, which is by no means universally available. Whereas recycling tin cans is pretty straightforward, and can be done over and over.

For this reason, I tend to buy cans over tetrapaks (and went from UHT milk to bottled milk delivery).

I am not convinced that there is a risk about bisphenol-A. The Americans banned it in plastics for baby stuff years ago, I'm sure they would have addressed this as well if there was actually a problem with tinned foods.

[veggiechicken]

cos it's Army and Navy speak.........
World Wide Words: Scran

Thank you Bins for explaining that so succinctly. I will add "scran" to my vocabulary of words that I like to understand but will never ever, in a month of Sundays, use.
There's always something new to learn on the Vine!!!

[bramble]

I'm still using my frozen tomatoes from 2010. I have a freezer in the shed and just kept bagging the tomatoes up and freezing them as they ripened as i had a bumper crop. I just thaw them out and use them in sauces stir fries and anything else i fancy.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Oh VC do keep up.

'Scran' was used when we were out in the field. I was in a armoured recce unit so we were always on short notice to move, therefore you ate when you could and always at top speed.

The usual method was to wire the tin cans to the vehicles exhaust at the start of the day to heat through. Then when he saw a chance the vehicle commander would shout 'Scran up' The driver would nip round the back and recover the tins, the gunner would pour the hot water from the 'pots boiler' (no puns please) into the coffee cups.

Every one carried a miniature can opener and 'gobbling rods' spoon to you in their breast pocket. The tins were opened and we then took turns, a spoonful of stewing steak, a spoonful of peas, spoonful of spud followed by a gulp of coffee. This went on until the food was finished or we were ordered to 'Move to' when the cans would be disposed of and the spoons cleaned by much heavy licking.

If we hadn't been ordered to move they may even have been time for a 'shovel job' I'll leave you to work that one out.

Proper gourmet dining that was.

Colin