HOW SAFE IS CANNED FOOD?

The safety of food in cans and bottles is a big deal. Unlike nylon packed or pet packaged products, you hardly can see the state of the product inside. You can feel how strong or soft biscuits are from touch. How can you tell if a canned or bottled product is in good condition regardless of the expiry date?

Canned and bottled foods are supposedly safe because of the hermetic sealing in cans and possible heat treatment and corking for bottled products which ensures less or no interaction with the environment around it.

Does this mean these products do not spoil? All food products degrade over time and as such spoil-few exceptions exist for this.  Indicators of spoilage in products include texture in wheat products, odour in fermentable products and colour change in meat and meat products. All these involve physical encounter with the products. How then do u get to know what the inside of a sealed can or bottle looks like?

Heat treatment in canned foods will kill all microorganisms except if the spore of any high ranking thermophiles exist. These spores may later develop into the organism that has to be anaerobic in nature. The only Microbe that best fits this description is Clostridium Botulinum and the existence or absence of this organism is used to judge how safe a canned food is.

 While we may not be able to see the organism in canned food, it produces gas during growth which in turn enlarges the container beyond normal. Wow! So easy to see.  So next time you see a can with a bulge, avoid it like a plague- it is an indicator of C. Botulinum or any other unsafe microbe. It also means there’s possibly the toxin Botulin that can cause a severe disease called botulism in that can.

If you also notice any form of oily spillage or space in a canned food, please do not consume! This shows that the content must have been exposed to different microbial and physical hazards.

Remember the food safety rule, “whenever you are not sure of what you have, do not consume”. You are what you eat!