The heat of cooking and then the long soak in the can/jar will only work so much before the food is saturated and/or broken down as much as it can be.
Now, if you add more heat, some things will break down more. You’ll see this with veggies that start relatively soft to begin with, and things like pasta where there’s something that can “cook loose”. But things with more structure, say something like a beet, can handle a fairly long cook after canning before it turns mushy.
The process of canning kills off microorganisms that would act the break things down, and any enzymes that would do so.
But you’ll see eventual break down with higher acid levels, like canned pastas in tomato sauce. It just takes a really long time to fall apart. Decades.
Basically, water can only dissolve so much.
The heat of cooking and then the long soak in the can/jar will only work so much before the food is saturated and/or broken down as much as it can be.
Now, if you add more heat, some things will break down more. You’ll see this with veggies that start relatively soft to begin with, and things like pasta where there’s something that can “cook loose”. But things with more structure, say something like a beet, can handle a fairly long cook after canning before it turns mushy.
The process of canning kills off microorganisms that would act the break things down, and any enzymes that would do so.
But you’ll see eventual break down with higher acid levels, like canned pastas in tomato sauce. It just takes a really long time to fall apart. Decades.