We’ve just had an email at work –

Dear All,

Please can I remind you that opened cans of food should not be kept in the fridges, any food that needs to be stored from opened cans must be put into a sealed plastic container. The food standards agency advise that opened tin food can oxidize and should therefore be transferred to sealable containers for fridge storage. Please see extract from their web site below:

Tin cans

When you have opened a can of food and you’re not using all the food straight away, empty the food into a bowl, or other container, and put it in the fridge.

Don’t store food in an opened tin can, or re-use empty cans to cook or store food. This is because when a can has been opened and the food is open to the air, the tin may transfer more quickly to the can’s contents.

This advice doesn’t apply to foods sold in cans with resealable lids, such as golden syrup and cocoa.

Not doubting them (much!) but how much truth is there in this? And if so how harmful is it, if at all?
We do it sometimes. I’m still alive……
🙂

It will make your head grow disproportionately large and make you ugly. On the up side it will make you capable of marrying someone far prettier and nicer than you have any right to. 😉

Now i am not a fancy scientist, *gasp*, but i have always just put stuff in plastic sealable tubs because it is easier to do that then chuck ’em in the fridge to be forgotten. Whereas tins need to be kept upright.

As for the actual reasoning behind the email….god knows. 😉

WCA – Cheers. No really, thanks for your support….
😛

Here’s the deal. God save us from ourselves…

Tin is mainly applied in various organic substances. The organic tin bonds are the most dangerous forms of tin for humans. Despite the dangers they are applied in a great number of industries, such as the paint industry and the plastic industry, and in agriculture through pesticides. The number of applications of organic tin substances is still increasing, despite the fact that we know the consequences of tin poisoning.
The effects of organic tin substances can vary. They depend upon the kind of substance that is present and the organism that is exposed to it. Triethyltin is the most dangerous organic tin substance for humans. It has relatively short hydrogen bonds. When hydrogen bonds grow longer a tin substance will be less dangerous to human health. Humans can absorb tin bonds through food and breathing and through the skin.
The uptake of tin bonds can cause acute effects as well as long-term effects.

Acute effects are:
– Eye and skin irritations
– Headaches
– Stomachaches
– Sickness and dizziness
– Severe sweating
– Breathlessness
– Urination problems

Long-term effects are:
– Depressions
– Liver damage
– Malfunctioning of immune systems
– Chromosomal damage
– Shortage of red blood cells
– Brain damage (causing anger, sleeping disorders, forgetfulness and headaches)

its all fine until you open the can and let oxygen in. This then oxidises the plating metals in conjunction with the acidic contents, to make nasty metal salts in your food.

YOu know the stuff you spend a fortune to have removed from your water with your brita filter

I will try to get a more definative info but as I work for a large packaging manufacturer (can maker)… the majority of tin can are laquered, there is no chance of tin transfering to the food, even a dented tins will take decades for the tine (where the laquer is broken) to transfer to the food.

Tins are ace, get youself some of those platic caps so you can store them safely (if the fall over) and stop worrying.

It all sounds true, but wtf is your company doing sending out emails about this?

the majority of tin can are laquered

Yeah this was my thought – there is no tin touching any food in most cans.

Tins are ace

lol, this message is brought to you by the tin marketing board. 😉

tins are lacquered on the inside.

It will make your head grow disproportionately large and make you ugly. On the up side it will make you capable of marrying someone far prettier and nicer than you have any right to

Only partially true. the only upside is that small children run away crying when they see me.

The plastics coating the inside of the tim may be just as bad for you long-term as the tin itself (were it left uncovered as was once the case -not now). So the emil is basically rubbish, but it’s always a good idea to not eat out of tins at all!

Bisphenol-A is a hormone disruptor and has been identified in tin can plastic linings. (But might equally be present in certain plastic tubs you use subsequently, your camelback, etc..)

samuri – Member
Tins are ace
lol, this message is brought to you by the tin marketing board.

To be fair I do IT support & have nothing to do with the manufacture and marketing, but in these day of recycling and the campaigns against wasteing resources – tin can can be recycle indefinitely, food tends to last a lot longer inside them, and you loose no vitamins or goodness (as the food it actually cooked in the can, so where can the vitamin escape?).

I admit, I may have been taken in slightly by the company line though

you’ve sold it to me. I’m going to use tins for all my important foodstuffs now. (i.e. beer and baked beans)

Food cooked in the can? I’d expect to see heat effects on the tin surely?

I never worry about stuff like this, unless you eat out of them all the time and your staple diet consists of tin-based food that you leave open for days it’s hardly an issue. I think a level of corrosion that would be a problem would be more than obvious (rusty/corroded can surface) and you’d not eat it anyway. 2 days in the fridge is hardly likely to be a problem is it, at least not more than the chemicals that go into your tupperware.

I do find open cans make nasty smells in the fridge though.

Tins are ace, get youself some of those platic caps so you can store them safely (if the fall over) and stop worrying.

Oh, I’m not worried thanks! I just never heard this before.
🙂

Some good info there chaps. I’d like to know more about the laquer, mind….

Does the woman who sent this rubbish email, also run tupperware parties?

Possibly true if you’re leaving acidic food there for a fortnight, but it would go off quicker than that.

Scaremongering!

smiffy – Member
tins are lacquered on the inside.

which is why you are more in danger from dented tins than from sticking a carefully opened tins in the fridge for a couple of days
i’ve never understood how supermarkets have the cheek to sell dented tins off cheap as it is a potential health hazard – especially fruit less so fish in oil

How many people keep golden syrup and cocoa in the fridge at work? If you do can I come and raid your fridge please.

most tin cans aren’t tin – they’re aluminium.

bloody hell proper can of worms this… Apparently the original & subsequent email are correct, along with Mountain carrots comments but they should be tempered with (this is my interpretation of what I’ve just been told, and it got kinda technical and lost me..):

the shelf life of a can of ***** (well known brand) of baked beans is 18months, Heinz(opps) do not laquer their cans, they actually use the tin to flavour the beans. So it’s doubtful you will have the tin open long enough before the contents spoils for the oxidiation to occur (even at the increase rate of being open to the air) to cause any problems.

The organic tin bonds are the most dangerous forms of tin for humans. …. The number of applications of organic tin substances is still increasing, despite the fact that we know the consequences of tin poisoning

So the fact that weve been using tin can for the last 100 years or more and were not all dead or mutants counts for nothing? And the alternative is what, all that lovely plastic?

As for the Bisphenol-A is a hormone disruptor, again yes this exist, it been intensively investigated (one man made it his life work), and if you still 200 tonnes into a frog it’ll change sex, shortly before it exploded! The actual amount of it in packaging can be likened to a grain of salt in an olympic sized swimming pool. The science of it has been well proven to be safe by the EU, it now an emotive subject that is being used a ‘scare’ the uninformed.
What should be more convcerning is that it is only one of a huge amount of synthetic hormones that are present and they all need investigating to this degree..

errrrrrrrrrrr antigee …………… what exactly is your point?

Tins are traditionaly electroplated steel (tin is way too expensive to make pure tin cans).

The tin doesn’t corrode very quickly so stops the tin rusting.

So when the tin is dented it rusts, at worst making the food a bit funny, at best adding some valuable iron into your diet. Neither will kill you.

Recently its become more common to line the tins in plastic as this is even cheeper than tin.

You ‘might’ get some nasty traces of chemical in some plastics. But anything used anywhere near food has to be approved for that, and the rules are blooming strict.

coffeeking – Member
Food cooked in the can? I’d expect to see heat effects on the tin surely?

Have you never steamed anything? It’s heated indirectly.

its the dihydrogen monoxide I’m worried about, apparently all our food is laced with the stuff, its found in everything from bleach to sauages. 1 mouthfull of this dangerous substance can kill you in under 3 minutes.

thisisnotaspoon – Member
errrrrrrrrrrr antigee …………… what exactly is your point?

never quite sure what my point is but on this occasion it is my opinion that dented tins are a health hazard – the lacquer is stretched and damaged – the tin and then the steel oxidises as a cell is set up and this can rapidly lead to a small puncture in the can and mould growth can occur

a quick google gave me this from one local authorities premises inspection guidelines
“Dented, damaged or incorrectly processed tins may allow mould growth to occur. This could indicate an error in production or storage. Extensive obvious mould growth is a strict offence and must be reported immediately to the Food Team…..”

ok so crossing the road is more dangerous

spoon, it’s water ?

Stone the crows!

This is now WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY over my head.

😉

yup, just showing a point that to the (below) average person in the street, confronted with that paragarph they’d probably happily sign one of those government petitions calling for it to be banned.

Ive no idea what Bisphenol-A is, but suspect it probably has a less thretening name too, and given its probably existing in your plastic water pipes, what are you going to do?