PRESERVATIVES USED IN CANNING 179 



From the facts already given it will be seen that the 

 presence of borax in canned foods is totally unnecessary, 

 provided sufficient care is taken in the canning. Its 

 use was a means of covering up a lack of thoroughness 

 in canning, and it has been found in the cheaper products. 

 If the material had not been heated enough to produce 

 complete sterilization, it might still be preserved in cans 

 if sufficient borax were added. In large packing factories 

 where a great amount of food, particularly meat, is to 

 be canned at once, it had become quite common to use 

 a certain amount of such a preservative to cover up this 

 lack of complete sterilization and prevent subsequent loss. 

 The method is of course more economical, because it does 

 not require so much heat and because there is a very 

 much smaller per cent of loss. Whether the material thus 

 preserved is unwholesome is a question that has not yet been 

 positively settled, but the sale of it is to-day forbidden by 

 the national Pure Food Law. In fruit canning in the 

 household it may be given as a universal rule that no dis- 

 infectants of any sort should be used. If the housewife 

 cannot satisfactorily preserve her fruits without them, she 

 would do very much better to depend upon the commercial 

 products which she can buy at the store. At all events, no 

 one should under any circumstances resort to the use of 

 borax, preservaline, antifermentine, or any of the other 

 materials put upon the market for preventing fermentation. 

 They are dangerous to use, they are at least partly poisonous, 

 and their use in any form should be absolutely avoided in 

 domestic work. 



Practically any type of food can be preserved by can- 

 ning. Some materials, however, are very much more 



