Home canning is not something you can just half-ass and do while youre watching videos on YouTube in your kitchen. You’ve absolutely got to pay attention because, just like reloading your own ammo, if you goof it up the whole thing gun blow up in your face.
I don’t have the full story on what happened here, but I’m guessing it was water bath canning and someone either didnt bring things up the proper temperature long enough, didnt clear out all the air bubbles in the liquid, or didn’t check the seals on the jar. Regardless, if you follow directions and inspect your finished product…perfectly safe.
Food poisoning is not something you want to screw around with. Aesop has a great post about it here if you want to read a detailed explanation of the misery that you’ll undergo…assuming you don’t just die.
Does that mean you shouldn’t ‘get into’ canning your own food? Of course not. Everything is dangerous if you do it wrong. Canning has been around for a couple hundred years and it has been done by people far stupider and with worse equipment than you and I. Just do your reading and pay attention.
My go-to resources on the subject:
RE: Aesop’s advice on using OTC Imodium AD for diarrhea. I kind of let nature take its course now because there was a case a while back where a kid was suffering from some sort of food borne illness and the family was on a road trip to Florida. They started loading him up with the Imodium and instead of his body getting rid of the toxins it kept them in. Poor kid died of kidney failure.
I’m no psychic, but I’m gonna guess he’d say something like “One incident isn’t cause to disregard the thousands of people who didn’t have incidents”, and “Used in the proper dosages, and not force-feeding the entire package down a kids throat, the risk is less than dying from dehydration crapping yourself to death”. Or something like that.
Immodium slows down peristaltic action, primarily in the large intestine, which is where your body takes the water used in digestion, pulls it back into circulation, and leaves what’s left over to exit as poop. When you have diarrhea, instead of moving slowly, everything – including that fluid you can’t spare – goes rocketing out your tailpipe and down the toilet. This, and vomiting, are how you jack up your electrolytes, go into moderate to severe dehydration, and feel like your dying.
Immodium should generally be started once diarrhea continues beyond a day, because at that point, you’ve evacuated any bacterium of note you’re going to eject, and are now just dehydrating your patient beyond the means you can remedy at home orally, without access to IV fluid therapy.
Immodium use – even overuse – is related to kidney failure as a knee injury is related to brain damage.
“Toxins”, as from botulism, have entered into your blood stream, and Immodium would have no effect on them in any event.
Anyone dying of kidney failure is generally dying because they’re profoundly dehydrated, meaning too much going out (the exact thing Immodium prevents) and not enough fluids coming in, to flush out daily waste byproducts at the cellular level.
It also happens a lot with the meth heads who binge on meth, and literally forget to drink fluids and eat food.
IOW, if the kid died from kidney failure, it was because his parents were idiots, and didn’t take him to the hospital early enough for admission and IV hydration. It takes days to die of kidney failure due to acute kidney injury because of dehydration.
And children have less reserve than adults, and get into trouble faster, from all causes. In short, with medical issues, children aren’t little adults, they’re aliens from space. They compensate, and compensate, and then try to die in front of you, in minutes to hours.
The use of immodium and the cause of death you cited have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
You want to withhold Immodium from anyone, for 24 hrs? Go ahead.
After that, you’re pretty much just torturing your patient, and dehydrating them needlessly.
And in a situation where there is no hospital, and no IVs?
The sooner you stop the dehydration, the sooner you break the chain of dehydration>kidney failure>death.
If you have kids, and you’re worried about it, talk with your pediatrician, and be sure to ask them about different protocols for
a) when the ER is a quick trip away, vs.
b) there ain’t no ER, and ain’t gonna be one.
Amazing info. Do you have opinion on re-hydrating with oral rehydration salt packets from Trioral? They feel great after running in the sun, better than just 1L of water.
I’d like that information as well. Can Aesop or anyone else here speak with authority about whether there are any rehydration solutions/powders that truly are better at rehydration than clean water? Would IV saline ever be advised if administered by nurses outside a medical facility, or are the risks simply too great?
As for saline, maybe I’ll do a post at my place on the topic.
I’ve added to CZ’s comments section enough, I think.
The short answer on IV saline is a definite maybe.
There are times when it’d be a plus.
There are others when it’d be a bad idea.
Knowing the difference is why there are paramedic schools, nursing colleges, and medical schools. I’ll take a whack at a post-length summary of pros and cons in the near future.
Pedialyte is good go-to, which is why the illegals crossing the desert are carrying it and drinking it from gallon jugs.
For that matter, Gatorade isn’t bad either.
The ICRC’s (International Committee of the Red Cross) oral rehydration solution is dirt-simple:
To 1L of clean water, add:
1/2 teaspoon (3.5g) of table salt
4 tablespoons (40g) of plain sugar
Mix, drink.
It’s no more complicated than that.
I’m not going to read up on any of 50 different ORS packets. I’d advise doing your own due diligence, but if it’s labeled and approved as ORS, you’re probably OK.
Thanks a ton!
Nopales should be pressure canned, prickly pear pads don’t have a high enough sugar or acid content to safely can in a water bath.
Admittedly, I don’t water bath can anything other than jam and tomatoes. When in doubt, go the safest way.
Two other good canning books are So Easy to Preserve from the Cooperative Extension/University of Georgia & Complete Guide to Home Canning from USDA. If you can’t find a canning recipe in either of these books, it’s because there isn’t a safe, tested recipe. Botulism scares the crap our of me. It should scare everyone. Don’t make up your own recipes or use unsafe canning methods – it isn’t worth it.
If it was botulism, it was non-acidic food and not pressure canned at the right time/pressure combination. It may have been somewhat acidic, just not acidic enough, and it may have been pressure canned, but not for long enough. On top of that, there had to be botulism spores. Pressure canning is ok if done correctly, and the USDA guidelines probably have a wide safety margin built in (at https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can).
One factor out there for pickled vegetables is that 4% vinegar is a thing now, which is a form of shrinkflation. It still tastes tangy but its pH will be higher. All canning recipes assume 5%. It’s something to be aware of.