Thursday, January 31, 2013

Tattler Lids

You probably know by now that the regular Ball brand canning lids have BPA in that coating on the underside of the lid. I try to avoid BPA which led me to trying out Tattler lids.

I read reviews and I knew people had a few issues that they felt were resolved by their being more attentive to screwing the lids down just so before the jars went into the canner. I read the instructions carefully. My first batch of canning summer before last showed a surprising failure rate. By this I mean that I owned 24 Tattler lids that were applied to 24 jars of tomatoes or jam and of those 24, I had failed seals or mold within that season in at least 10 of those jars. I attributed this to my perhaps not being careful enough.

So this past summer I gave it another go; I even bought another dozen of these lids at the local coop.

This is the fifth jar of tomatoes I've found like this:

I found at least four others early in the season with their lids just not sealed that I also threw out.

When you find this in your pantry, you doubt everything in there. I made a point of doing only mixed batches of Tattler and BPA lids. None of the regular metal toxic lids have failed. None. I did 90 quarts of tomatoes, 36 of those were canned with Tattler lids. I was extremely careful about the tightening and not tightening and ring and lid placement. I figure whatever that black mold is, it's probably worse for my family than the BPA in the metal lids.

Don't waste your money on these lids. It's not worth the risk.

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