Nanites with Your Pizza Sauce?

I’ve recently stopped buying any and all brands of canned organic tomato products. I recently found out that all acidic foods, even organic, are packed in cans lined with BPA a very dangerous hormone disrupting chemical that is linked to a whole host of ailments. I prefer to make my own homemade pizza sauce and marinara from tomato products packed in glass to avoid this chemical.

I have to say that I was truly shocked and disappointed upon discovering that even Eden Organics, the company that pioneered BPA free canning, still uses BPA cans for acidic foods like tomatoes.  I realize this situation is not the company’s fault – Eden really wants a BPA free can for acidic foods.    The FDA has just not approved one yet.

Don’t you just love bureaucratic bottleneck where a major public health issue is concerned?

It’s amazing to me how even if you are all over this stuff like I try to be that a very important snippet of information like BPA cans still being used for all organic acidic foods can somehow slip through the cracks!

In the meantime,  I’ve drawn a line in the sand about canned goods. I’m done.  Glass only for me, baby.

I cleaned out my pantry of the very few canned goods I had left in there last week and returned the organic canned tomato products from Eden Organics and Muir Glen (Muir Glen is owned by Campbell Soup, by the way.  Ugh!)

My “glass only” resolve came primarily from a comment on my BPA Update blog back in August from Stanley Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat.  In that comment, Stanley writes about the danger of nanites, something I had never even heard about before.  In that comment, Stanley writes:

“Nanites are tiny particles of various substances, such as silver iodide, nickel,etc, that are used to preserve food and increase shelf life. These tiny particles preserve food by killing bacteria, good and bad. Nobody knows what they will do to a human body. There is concern that these tiny particles could penetrate the cells of human organs and damage them, not to mention killing off beneficial bacteria in our bodies.

There is no labeling requirement for nanites. The government is allowing us to be guinea pigs once again. Nanites are already widely used in food packaging.”

Stanley goes on to say that he will not even buy products packaged in tubes or cartons for the same reason.  He’s a “glass only” person.

I love it when I learn something very important like this from reader feedback!  Stanley, I want to be a glass only person too!

I quickly realized in my zeal to go glass only that I was missing one key piece of information – how to make a decent homemade pizza sauce!

So, before returning my last can of Eden Organics pizza sauce, I wrote down all the ingredients on a piece of paper and started experimenting to come up with something that tasted great.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.  I’m sure I will be tweaking this in the coming weeks, but this basic recipe turned out quite delicious.   All the kids gave it a thumbs up, which is an encouraging sign.   The only thing I didn’t like is that the sauce turned out a bit too thin.    Maybe next time, I will try half strained tomatoes and half tomato paste (both packed in glass from Bionaturae).  That change will probably thicken it up quite a bit.

If you prefer a marinara type of homemade red sauce, you can click over to that recipe instead.

Sarah’s Homemade Pizza Sauce

1 – 24 oz bottle of organic strained tomatoes (sources)
1 TBL organic extra virgin olive oil (sources)
1/2 tsp sea salt (sources) 
1/2 tsp organic basil (sources) 
1/2 tsp organic oregano (sources) 
1/2 tsp organic black pepper (sources) 
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp organic dried onion (sources) 
1/2 tsp organic thyme (sources) 
1/4 cup dulse flakes (sources) 
pinch cayenne pepper (sources) 

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist