Canning With BPA

In the last few years I've become aware of the plastic lining in store-bought food cans. Did you know canning companies use plastics (with Bisphenol A - that's BPA - linked to reproductive dysfunction, breast and prostate and blah blah cancers, etc.) to line the cans that hold our food? You did? Huh. I was clueless.

Even more horrifying to me when I think of all the times I put a can of food on the campfire to heat when we're out in the woods, is that I not only ingested some horrible poisons from heating up tin or whatever the cans are made of, but I also ate plastic. Eeeeewwww.

So, for these and some other reasons,  I'm casting around for replacements for my commonly used canned foods. Thanks to some generous people on Pinterest who post their recipes for free, I make my own cream of whatever dry soup mixes. I can my own veggies and tomato products. I can some soups, stocks, spaghetti sauces and other ready-to-eat meals. I recently began canning dry beans and have even come up with a baked bean recipe that uses bits of a couple on-line recipes and that rivals Van Camp's (which is at the pinnacle of baked bean goodness according to this family).

I snapped a photo of the last batch that came out a couple days ago:

Then, right on the heals of my self-righteous canning spree, I found out that BPA is in that rubbery ring on the canning lids you find in the store and have used forever. Wow. Bit of a buzz-kill.

So I look around for a remedy for that and find these:

Tattler REUSABLE canning lids.  AAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHH - angels singing, a spear of light coming down from the heavens! They're BPA free. They're American made. AND they're reusable. It doesn't get any better than that.

I got 'em for myself and Sister two Christmases ago. There's only one problem with them. I have to ask that people give them back when I gift some of my home-canned stuff. Actually, there's one other problem. What do I do with my supply of regular canning lids? Well, BPA leaves our system fairly quickly in urine, but I found out that plastics are so pervasive in our society that people who were FASTING and then tested for BPA were found to have it in their system. So I'm gonna use up my supply of regular canning lids. I just told myself it was ok. 'Cause everybody is exposed to BPA loaded plastics in this day and age. Yeah. That's it.